Accelerating Biomedical Research Act

Mr. President, I thank my friend, the junior Senator from Alabama, for his very kind comments and for his relentless leadership in defense of the rule of law and standing against amnesty.

What I wish to speak about this afternoon is the humanitarian crisis that is playing out on our southern border right now and the abdication of responsibility that is playing out in Washington, DC.

A couple of weeks ago President Obama was in my home State of Texas. He found time to go to two Democratic Party fundraisers, to pal around with some Democratic Party fat cats, to collect a whole bunch of checks. Yet somehow he didn't have time to make it down to our southern border.

The day before he was in Colorado and he found time to play a game of pool with the Governor there. I am glad he enjoyed himself playing pool. Yet somehow he didn't have time to go visit Lackland Air Force Base and see the 1,200 children who are being held there who are paying the price for the failure of the Obama immigration policy. In the coming weeks he is headed to Martha's Vineyard. He is, I am sure, going to enjoy himself paling around with swells. Yet the people held in detention facilities up and down the border are not going to see the Commander in Chief because he cannot be bothered to address the human suffering.

He was just in California, in Hollywood, where the producer of ``Scandal'' hosted him. That is kind of fitting because it is scandalous that the President has more time to be ``Fundraiser in Chief'' than he does to do his basic job as Commander in Chief in securing our borders.

Let me tell my colleagues, while the President was running around collecting checks from Democratic Party fat cats, I was back home in Texas. I was on the border this weekend down in McAllen. I sat down with the chief of the Border Patrol in McAllen. I sat down with the line officers of the Border Patrol in McAllen. I visited the detention facilities that are being constructed to hold these children. I saw a remarkable facility. It used to be a gigantic warehouse, and in 18 days the Border Patrol had to stand up a facility to house 1,000 children because that is the volume coming through there every couple of days.

The President is right in one regard. He has publicly stated we are seeing a humanitarian crisis, and that is correct, but it is a crisis of his own creation. This humanitarian crisis is the direct consequence of President Obama's lawlessness. I will note he cannot even be bothered to cast his eyes on the people who are suffering because of it.

If we want to know what is causing this crisis, a simple examination of the numbers will suffice. Just 3 years ago, in 2011, the number of unaccompanied children entering this country was roughly 6,000. Then, in June of 2012, just a few months before the election, President Obama unilaterally granted amnesty to some 800,000 people who were here illegally in this country who entered as children. He did so, presumably, because he thought there would be a political benefit. It was a few months before an election and he thought there was good politics in ignoring the law and granting amnesty. But the foreseeable consequence of that amnesty--the predictable and the predicted consequence of that amnesty--if we tell people across the globe that if they enter as children, they get amnesty, suddenly we create an incredible incentive for more and more children to come and more and more children to come alone.

This year, the Department of Homeland Security estimates that 90,000 unaccompanied children will enter this country illegally. Next year they estimate 145,000. I want my colleagues to compare those numbers for a second. Three years ago, it was 6,000. Now it is 90,000, and next year we expect 145,000. The direct and proximate cause was President Obama's amnesty.

There are some in this body who might not believe what a Member of the opposite party says on this. There is a whole lot of partisanship in Washington. It truly has shut down the ability of this body to deal with real challenges facing this country.

If people don't believe what a Member of the opposite party says, perhaps they will believe the Border Patrol. Just a few weeks ago the Border Patrol conducted a confidential study that was given to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a whistleblower in the Border Patrol, where they interviewed over 200 people who had entered the country recently illegally, and they asked them the question: Why are you coming? Ninety-five percent said we are coming because we believe we will get amnesty; that if we just get here, we will be allowed to stay.

The administration has been giving lots of supposed causes for this humanitarian crisis. One of their favorites is the violence in Central America. It is true. Tragically, there is a great deal of violence in Central America and it has been increasing, but I would note violence is not new to the human condition. There have always been countries across the globe that are racked by violence, racked by civil war, and we have always seen when violence rises, the immigration from a particular country goes up. We see legal immigration from that country go up and we see illegal immigration from that country go up. What we haven't seen in the past is the explosion of children.

The violence in Central America is a reasonable cause to explain the increase in immigrants from Central America, the increase in families coming up to get away from the violence. What it doesn't explain is this new phenomenon: 90,000 unaccompanied children. That is a new phenomenon. There is no reason violence would dictate saying, I am going to take my little boy, I am going to take my little girl, and send them alone. That instead is a direct response to what President Obama did by granting amnesty that was targeted to those who entered as kids. Why are kids entering? Because the President has said, if you enter as a kid, I will grant you amnesty.

Several weeks ago I visited Lackland Air Force Base where roughly 1,200 of these children are being held. I visited with the senior officials there. It is worth understanding that there are many victims of the President's refusal to enforce the law, but some of the most direct victims are these little boys and little girls because the coyotes who are bringing these children in are not well-meaning social workers. They do not have beards and Birkenstocks, and they are not there out of love. These coyotes are hardened, vicious transnational drug cartels, and these children are being subjected to horrific physical and sexual abuse.

When I was at Lackland Air Force Base, a senior official there described to me how these coyotes get custody of these kids to smuggle them illegally into this country, and then sometimes they will decide to hold the children for ransom, to get even more money from the families. If the families cannot or will not pay, horribly, what these coyotes are doing is severing body parts of these children and sending them back to the families.

The senior official at Lackland described coyotes putting machine guns to the back of the head of a little boy or a little girl and ordering them to cut off the fingers or the ears of another little boy or little girl. If the child refuses, they shoot that child and move on to the next one. They described how on our end we are seeing children come into this country--some of whom have been horribly maimed by these violent coyotes and drug cartels, others of whom have enormous psychological damage--from a little boy or a little girl forced to commit such atrocities upon pain of death.

I asked the officials at Lackland: How many of these children have been victimized? The answer: All of them. That was from the senior official at Lackland. By the way, one of the things we hear reports of is these families with the girls, before they send them up, they give them birth control because the expectations are that the risks of sexual assault and rape are so high. That risk is being undertaken because of the promise of amnesty.

When I was down in McAllen this weekend, I asked the line agents--I said: Listen. Every day you guys are on the river, you are in the helicopter, you are securing the border. Why are they coming? What has changed? Just 3 years ago it was 6,000 kids. Now it is 90,000. What has changed? Every single one of the Border Patrol agents gave the exact same answer. They said they are coming because they believe they will get amnesty.

It is important to understand, by the way, the coyotes smuggle them across the border, and as soon as they get across the border, they actively look for the Border Patrol. They are not being captured. They are not being caught. They go look for someone in uniform. They may have ragged clothes falling off their back, they may not have food or water, but they have their papers. They have their papers with them. They cross the border illegally with a coyote and they endure the physical and sexual abuse and then they look for the Border Patrol to hand their papers to. Why? Because they believe once they get here and hand their papers over, they get amnesty.

If we want to solve this crisis, there is one, and only one, way to solve this crisis; that is, to eliminate the promise of amnesty. I mentioned a few moments ago that I wanted to talk about this humanitarian crisis and talk about the abdication of responsibility because Washington has always been lousy at taking responsibility for the suffering our policies create. But the response of this President, and I am sorry to say the Democratic majority in this body, has been particularly callous.

President Obama proposed a $3.7 billion supplemental plan. Mind you, he did not have time to visit the border, to visit the children, to see the suffering, but he proposed yet more spending. The $3.7 billion supplemental is an HHS social services bill. It spends a whole bunch of money. By the way, to give you a sense of just how much $3.7 billion is, for $3.7 billion we could purchase a first-class airplane ticket for each one of these 90,000 children to return them home--first class--sitting in the front row of a commercial airline. After doing so, we could deposit $3.6 billion back in the Federal Treasury. It is a massive amount of money he has asked for, and what is striking, less than 5 percent of it goes to border security.

Here is the cynical part. Here is the sad part. Nothing in the President's proposal does anything to solve the underlying problem. Nothing does anything to eliminate the promise of amnesty. Nothing does anything to solve the problem. What the President is

saying is he is perfectly content for this crisis to continue in perpetuity. Under the President's bill, next year we can expect 145,000--DHS expects--to come. We can expect tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of little boys and little girls to be physically assaulted and sexually assaulted by coyotes.

That is not humane. That is not compassionate. Any system that continues to have children in the custody of these vicious drug cartels is the very opposite of humane and compassionate. As my friend the junior Senator from Alabama pointed out, the magnet of amnesty has been significantly exacerbated in recent months. Why? Because President Obama, in a very high-profile way, met with far-left activists and made a promise. He said: I am going to study how to expand amnesty and to grant amnesty to another 5 or 6 million people here illegally.

Let's be clear. There is nothing--zero--in U.S. immigration law that gives the President the power to grant amnesty. It is open lawlessness and contempt for rule of law, but yet that promise is heard. That promise is heard throughout Central America. That promise is heard by those mothers and dads who make the heart-wrenching decision to hand their sons and daughters over to these coyotes. They do so because they love their kids and they believe, as terrible as the journey will be, that if they get here, they get a permiso, they get to stay in the ``promised land.'' That promise of amnesty is why this crisis has happened.

So I have introduced legislation to solve the problem. Last week I introduced a very simple bill that puts into law that President Obama has no authority to grant any additional amnesty. It is a very simple bill. It prevents the President from taking the DACA Program that he unilaterally and illegally implemented in 2012 and expanding it to cover any new immigrants.

It is interesting. Representatives from the administration go on television and they say: These children are not eligible for amnesty. If that is their position, the administration should support my bill. If that is their position, all this bill does is put into law what they say their position is; that these children are not eligible for amnesty.

Have they supported the bill? They have not. Instead the majority leader of this body took it upon himself to go out and hold a press conference. What is the top priority for the majority leader of this body? To come after and attack the legislation I introduced, to personally come after the freshman Senator from Texas. The majority leader is welcome to impugn any Member of this body. Sadly, that happens all too often. But yet nowhere in the majority leader's comments was a word said about solving this problem. Nowhere in the majority leader's comments was a word said about changing it so little boys and little girls are not physically and sexually assaulted so we do not have tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of kids coming illegally into this country.

Look, we all understand politics in this town. It is an election year. The election is a few months away. Scaring people and demagoguing, unfortunately, is not new to Washington. But the cynicism that is reflected in President Obama's and the majority leader's approach to this issue is a new level for this town.

This week I am introducing broader legislation that not only includes what was included last week--a prohibition on the President granting amnesty--but includes two other elements: a reform of the 2008 law to expedite the humane return of these children to their families and a provision to reimburse the cost for the States calling up the National Guard to secure their borders.

I would like to say a word about the 2008 law. That has actually been discussed a lot in this body. Indeed, the Obama administration has two talking points. If we ask the administration what has caused this crisis, the first one is violence in Central America. There is something convenient about that talking point because if it is violence in Central America, it is not President Obama's fault. It is not anything they have done. It is something else extrinsic. But the second talking point that sometimes the administration will say is that the cause of this crisis is the 2008 law.

There is a reason they point to that. Because it seems there is nothing President Obama enjoys more than blaming everything bad on this planet on George W. Bush. The 2008 law was signed by George W. Bush. So if this crisis was caused by the 2008 law, then mirabile dictu, it is not this administration's fault.

But John Adams famously said: Facts are stubborn things. If someone is going to make a claim that a crisis is caused by the 2008 law, they have to be willing to take at least a moment to look to the facts.

The 2008 law was passed, unsurprisingly, in 2008. The number of children entering unaccompanied did not spike in 2008. It did not spike in 2009. It did not spike in 2010. It did not spike in 2011. In 2011 it was roughly 6,000. If the 2008 law were the cause of this crisis, we would have seen the numbers spike in 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011. No, they did not spike until 2012--June of 2012--when the President pulled out his pen and granted amnesty. That is the cause--the direct cause-- the cause that the Border Patrol tells us these immigrants are telling us is why they are coming.

Once the crisis was created, the 2008 law has had unintended consequences. The 2008 law allowed expedited removal for unaccompanied children from Mexico and Canada--our immediate contiguous countries-- but created slow, delayed, bureaucratized removal for children from more distant countries.

That did not create significant problems in 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011 because we did not have a massive influx of kids from those countries. But once the President illegally granted amnesty and we started getting--as we are expected to this year--90,000 unaccompanied children--most of whom are from Central American countries--now we are seeing the 2008 law cause real problems because returning these children home is delayed, often delayed indefinitely.

When I was in the McAllen meeting with the line Border Patrol agents, I asked them another question. I said: Listen. Washington is dysfunctional. Partisan politics rips the town apart. If you could ignore the politics, what do you say on the frontlines? How do we actually secure the borders? How do we solve this problem? Every single one of the Border Patrol agents answered the same way. They said: We have to send them home.

We treat them humanely. We treat them compassionately--because that is who we are as Americans; those are our values--but humanely and compassionately we need to expeditiously return them to their families back home. Why? Because if the children are allowed to stay--and, mark my words, President Obama wants these children to stay and he wants to grant amnesty to the next children and the next children, which means that promise of amnesty will cause tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of children to continue to be physically assaulted and sexually assaulted in perpetuity.

If we grant amnesty, all it will do is incite yet more kids to be victimized. The only way to solve this problem--this is coming from the Border Patrol agents--is to humanely and expeditiously send them home, reunite them with their families.

The legislation I am introducing this week changes the 2008 law so the policies for sending them home are the same as the policies for Mexico and Canada. We treat Mexico and Canada with great friendship and compassion. There is no reason the very same procedures cannot apply to children from Central America.

The final element of this bill is dealing with the real security crisis that is occurring.

Just today the junior Senator from Alabama and I both heard a briefing from one of our senior military leaders on the national security threats caused by our porous borders, by the same avenues that are taking those kids in and that are also being used to smuggle vast quantities of drugs. The same corridors that are taking those kids in are also being used to smuggle in thousands of aliens from special interest countries, from the Middle East, aliens from countries that face serious issues of radical Islamic terrorists.

A number of our border Governors have stepped forward to respond to this crisis. I commend the Governor of my home State of Texas, Rick Perry, for

showing leadership and calling up the National Guard in Texas. It was the right thing to do. He should not have to do it. The Constitution gives that responsibility to the Federal Government. The Governor should not have to step in and fill the breach. They are doing so because the President and the Federal Government are refusing to do their job. But I commend the Governors for doing so. The legislation I am introducing simply provides that when a State steps up and does the job that is our responsibility, the Federal Government will reimburse the costs.

In all likelihood, next week we are going to have a vote on a bill that is denominated a ``border security'' bill. It is a bill the majority leader wants us to vote on that is a version of the President's HHS social services bill and spends a whole bunch of money and does nothing, zero, nada, to solve the problem.

The majority leader knows that. The President knows that. The intention is to have it voted down. One of the incredible things about where we are right now is this Democratic Senate is a do-nothing Senate. We do not pass any legislation of consequence. There is a reason for that. The majority leader has decided we are not going to pass any legislation of consequence. So instead what do we have? We have a series of show votes, every one of which is designed to fail, every one of which the majority leader knows will fail, and every one of which is poll tested or focus-group tested to allow Democrats running for reelection to campaign based on those votes.

It is not legislating. It is not doing the job the Senate was meant to do. This border security bill that we will likely vote on next week will do nothing for border security. It is not designed to. Even if it were to pass, it is not designed to. It is not designed to do anything to stop President Obama's amnesty. It is not designed to do anything to expedite reuniting these kids with their families back home. It is simply designed to be a fig leaf, to say: The Democrats have responded to this crisis. The evil, mean, nasty Republicans did not go along.

That is a political narrative that is not new. It is common in partisan politics. It just happens not to be true. Unfortunately, the Democratic majority in this body has demonstrated no interest in actually solving this problem. You want to know just how cynical the majority leader's strategy is? They have added to this border bill a provision that would replenish the Iron Dome missiles for the nation of Israel.

I would note that has nothing to do with the crisis at our southern border. It is a policy that is unambiguously good. Every Member on the Republican side of this Chamber supports replenishing the Iron Dome missiles that are right now keeping Israel safe from the Hamas terrorist rocket fire. So why has the majority leader stuck that onto a bill that he knows will fail and is designed to fail?

Well, it is called partisan politics. Because when it fails, the talking points will come out. The majority leader will come out and say: The Republicans do not want to solve the problem on the border. The Republicans are unwilling to stand with our friend and ally Israel. Let me tell you right now, every Republican on this side of the Chamber would vote right now, this afternoon, to replenish the Iron Dome missiles. To be honest, we should be voting. You know, in most parts of the country, Thursday afternoon, 4:30, people who actually have an honest job are still at work. Not in the Senate. The Senate people head on home. People are out campaigning. How about we actually have Senators show up on this floor more than one or two at a time and debate these issues? How about we actually see Senators stand, debate the issues, and resolve the problems?

The majority leader went on television and said: The border is secure. I find that an astonishing assertion. I recognized how from the perch of Washington, DC, it might seem that way. Perhaps the DC/ Virginia border is secure. But I would invite the majority leader and I would invite any Member of the Chamber: Come down to Texas. Come to McAllen. Come visit the border. When I was in McAllen on Saturday, the Border Patrol agents told me the day before they had apprehended 622 people.

I went to the processing center. They had 10 holding centers with 600 or 700 people there. One holding room had little girls below age 14, unaccompanied. Another holding room had little boys under age 14, unaccompanied. The third holding room had girls ages 14 to 19, unaccompanied. The fourth room had boys ages 14 to 19, unaccompanied. The fifth and sixth rooms had family units, mothers and fathers and little bitty babies, including tiny infants needing diapers and formula. Then the final four holding areas held adults.

That was one day. That was not a week. That was not a month. That was one day. Ninety thousand unaccompanied children are expected to enter the country this year. The majority leader of the Senate says the border is secure. I would invite the majority leader to say that to those little boys and little girls who have just been victimized that the border is secure. That sure would surprise them. I would invite the majority leader to say that to the farmers and ranchers and the citizens in South Texas because that sure would surprise them.

By the way, when you get outside of Washington this issue is not partisan. When you go down to South Texas and you visit with the elected leaders there, many of whom--most of whom--are elected Democrats and often Hispanic Democrats, and you ask: What is your top priority? Among Hispanic Democrats on the border, they say: Border security--because the border is so far from secure that their communities are paying the price.

I would invite the majority leader to come to Brooks County, TX. In Brooks County, TX, hundreds of men, women, and children are found dead from crossing illegally. I would invite the majority leader to look, as I have, at the photographs of these bodies. Pregnant women are abandoned and left to die. Those are vicious cartels and coyotes. This is the face of amnesty. Ninety thousand children being victimized, being physically assaulted and sexually assaulted. This is the face of amnesty: Children held in detention centers with chain-link fences going up 18 feet, separating them in separate pens. This is the face of amnesty. Our heart breaks for these kids. But if it really breaks for those kids, we should do something about it. The only way to stop this humanitarian crisis is to stop President Obama's amnesty. As long as the President continues to promise amnesty, these children will keep coming, and they will keep being victimized.

Sadly, as long as Senate Democrats are unwilling to stand up to their President and say, let's actually show some leadership and fix this problem, then the Senate will continue to be the Democratic do-nothing Senate. We will not solve those problems. We will fail in the fundamental obligation all of us owe to the men and women who elected us.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

The junior Senator from Alabama has just described President Obama's stated intention to grant amnesty to an additional 5 to 6 million people here illegally in the months preceding this next election. As the junior Senator from Alabama is certainly aware, there are a number of Senators up for reelection, including a number of Democrats in bright red States where the constituents of those States, whether in Louisiana or Arkansas or North Carolina or many other States, do not support amnesty for another 5 to 6 million people here illegally.

The question I would ask my friend from Alabama: Is he aware of any Democrat in this Chamber, including those Democrats running for reelection in conservative States where the citizens strongly oppose amnesty--is he aware of any Democrat in this Chamber who has had the courage to stand with him in standing up to President Obama and saying: Do not grant amnesty illegally? Is he aware of any Democrat who has joined the two of us in our legislation to prohibit President Obama from illegally granting amnesty to 5 to 6 million people?

Senator Sessions, it causes me great concern. One of the most troubling aspects of the Obama Presidency has been the persistent pattern of lawlessness from this President. We have never seen a President who, if he disagrees with a particular law, so frequently and so brazenly refuses to enforce it, refuses to comply with it, and asserts the power to unilaterally change it.

The President famously said: I have a pen and I have a phone, and he seems to confuse his pen and his phone for the constitutional process of lawmaking our country was built on.

Rule of law does not mean you have a country with a whole lot of laws. Most countries have laws, and many totalitarian countries have a whole lot of laws. Rule of law means no man is above the law. It means that everyone, everyone, everyone, and especially the President, is bound by the law.

President Obama openly defies his constitutional obligation under article 2 of the Constitution to take care that the laws will be faithfully executed.

I would note that Professor Turley, as the junior Senator from Alabama quoted, is a liberal Democrat who in 2008 voted for President Obama. Professor Turley also testified before the House that President Obama has become the embodiment of the imperial President. Barack Obama has become the President Richard Nixon always wished he could be.

Those are the words of a liberal Democratic constitutional law professor who voted for Barack Obama.

But my friend the junior Senator from Alabama is learned and experienced in the ways of the Senate. He has seen lions of the Senate walk this floor. It is unprecedented to have a President so brazenly defy the rule of law, but I state what is equally unprecedented, to have the Senate lie down and meow like kitty cats.

Abuse of power by the President is not a new phenomenon. Presidents of both parties have abused their power. That is a job, sadly, where that tendency has been significant. But in the past, when Presidents have abused their power, Members of their own party stood and called them to account for it. When Richard Nixon abused his power, Members of both parties rightfully decried his abuse of power, so much so that he was forced to resign.

I can state when George W. Bush was President, he signed a two- paragraph order that purported to order the State courts to obey the World Court. I know this because I was at the time serving as the solicitor general of Texas, and it was our State courts that the President's order purported to bind.

George W. Bush is a good man. He is a former Governor of Texas, he is a Republican, and he was a friend and is a friend. Yet I was proud that the State of Texas did not hesitate to stand up to that abuse of power. I went before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the State of Texas and argued that President George W. Bush's order was unconstitutional, that no President has the authority to give up U.S. sovereignty. I am pleased to say the U.S. Supreme Court agreed and struck down the President's order by a vote of 6 to 3.

What is unprecedented today is that on the left side of the Chamber it is both literally and figuratively empty.

We had, not too long ago, the President abuse his power with recess appointments. One of the important checks and balances the Constitution creates on Presidential authority is it gives this body, the Senate, the power of confirmation. President Obama apparently didn't like any checks and balances on his power, so he made a series of recess appointments when the Senate wasn't in recess. It was brazen, it was naked. The President simply asserted: I say the Senate is in recess. Mind you, the Senate didn't say we were in recess, but the President claimed the power to declare us in recess when we weren't.

Do you want to know how extreme that was? Do you want to know how brazen that was? Do you want to know how extraordinary that was?

Just a few weeks ago the Supreme Court unanimously struck it down as unconstitutional.

It is important to underscore that. There is a lot of coverage in the newspaper that suggests we have liberal Justices, conservative Justices, and on any close issue it is going to be 5 to 4. This wasn't 5 to 4, it wasn't 6 to 3, it wasn't 7 to 2, and it wasn't even 8 to 1-- 9 to 0. Every Democratic appointee on the Court--both of President Obama's appointees on the Court. They looked at the substantive issue and they said: This ain't hard. The President doesn't get to say when the Senate is in recess, the Senate gets to say when the Senate is in recess. And if the Senate isn't in recess, the President has to respect the checks and balances of confirmation.

So we have an easy, no-brainier layup of a constitutional law question about the President usurping the constitutional prerogatives of the Senate, and how many Senate Democrats stood up to their party's President? Not a single one. Not the majority leader of the Senate, who we would think might have some interest in the credibility of this institution and, I am sorry to say, not a lone Democratic Senator. It wasn't that long ago there were lions of the Senate on the Democratic side who prided themselves on defending this institution: Robert Byrd, who stood for years defending this institution; Ted Kennedy.

I would say to my friend the junior Senator from Alabama, what is truly unprecedented is that there are no Senate Democrats who say: Enough is enough.

I am hopeful at some point we will see a Senate Democrat listen to their constituents, listen to the Constitution, and listen to the rule of law.

I can assume the reason why Senate Democrats don't do it and why our friends in the press often don't report on this. I can assume their reasoning goes something such as: Well, I basically agree with the policies of President Obama. I like the policies. I agree with what he is doing, and he is our guy. We kind of have to back our guy.

I am guessing that is a reason, but I will note, as the Scriptures say: There came a pharaoh who knew not Joseph and his children.

President Barack Obama will not always be President of the United States. There will be another President. And even to my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle--I must say something shocking and terrifying to you--there will come another Republican President.

If the President has the authority to do what President Obama is claiming, with ObamaCare--28 times--he simply unilaterally changed the text of the law, said: It doesn't matter what the law says, I say it is something different. If the President has that power, a Republican President has that power too.

So I would encourage all of my friends on the left who like these policy issues--well, imagine some of the policy issues you don't like, whether on labor law or environmental law or tort reform or let's take tax law. I will give an example.

Imagine a subsequent Republican President who stood up and stated quite sensibly the economy might do much better if we move to a flat tax, so I am therefore instructing the IRS: Do not collect any tax above 20 percent.

Now one might say, well, that sounds extreme. That sounds radical. As a policy matter, that would be a terrific policy.

But could the President instruct the IRS not to enforce tax laws? Fifty-five Members of this body are already on record saying yes. Do you know why? Because when the President suspended the employer mandate for big business, the text for ObamaCare says the employer mandate kicks in on January 1, 2014. The President said: I am suspending that provision of law. I am granting my buddies in big business a waiver. That was a tax law.

Madam President, earlier today the Senate voted to proceed to debate on legislation called the Bring Jobs Home Act. It is about tax reform. It is about the tax system in this country.

I am glad we are having the debate. I voted to proceed to the debate. I think it is important we talk about it.

I had a reporter come to me earlier today who said: I hear that Democrats are going to talk about inversions. That means when a company of the United States goes overseas and buys a company--usually smaller than they are--and then inverts, they become a foreign corporation.

They said: Are you concerned about that?

I said: No. I think that is great. I think we need to talk about it. I think it is a hidden problem that no one is talking about, and I think it is terrific that we are talking about it.

So I hope what will happen over the next week on the floor of the Senate is we will have an honest conversation about what is happening in our great country, where we have more and more American companies saying, because of the Tax Code they are saddled with, they cannot compete around the globe.

So what do they do? Having a responsibility to their shareholders, they go and find either a foreign company to become part of and become foreign--or they make themselves a foreign company by being acquired by a foreign company. Some of them are simply not growing because they can't compete with other companies from other countries that are buying some of their assets.

A company recently came to me from Ohio, my home State, and said: We do work in Korea. We were in South Korea. We wanted to buy this subsidiary there so we could expand what we are doing in Korea and push more of our product there, more of our exports there. We finished the negotiation with the Korean company, and a company from Germany stepped up and said: Do you know what. Whatever you guys have negotiated, we will take it, but we will pay 18 percent more.

The reason the German company could pay 18 percent more is their after-tax profits were higher, because the German tax code treats the German company better than the American Tax Code treats the American company. That is the reality, and it is happening.

Over the last 5 years, they say there have been 35 American companies that have gone overseas through these inversions, but there are also a lot of American companies that have become foreign entities.

I am a beer drinker, and it is hard to find an American company that can sell you a beer these days. Why? Because they are almost all foreign companies. The two largest American beer companies each have about a 1.4-percent market share--Sam Adams and Yuengling. Great beers, by the way. But this is sad to me.

It doesn't mean these companies have all left the United States. A lot of them still have production here, breweries here, and so on. But by headquartering somewhere else for tax purposes we lose something as Americans. We lose executive jobs over time, but we lose this intangible thing--which is, companies that are willing to invest in our communities--in hometowns, like in my hometown, probably everything we are involved with on the charitable side, some local company has been involved with and helped with. A lot of them tend to be international companies that do a lot to help make our cities a better place to live and to work. But they do it partly because it is where their headquarters is. This is where their towns are. If they are not here-- if they are in Dublin, Ireland, or if they are in London, England, or if they are in Beijing or in Rio, Brazil, or somewhere else, they are not going to be making those investments. So this is a big deal.

It is also a big deal because it is not just about the inversion. I see that as kind of the tip of the iceberg. It is also about all these companies that are losing right now in foreign competition because, again, they can't compete. They have to pay more in terms of taxes than their foreign competitors. So their foreign competitors can afford to broaden their market share, get more customers, can afford to buy a company when one comes up for acquisition.

I had a fellow come up recently from the Boston area. Boston does a lot of biopharmaceutical research, as the Presiding Officer knows. It is very exciting what is going on there, and throughout our country. We are still doing top-notch research. They showed me the list of companies that have been purchased in the last 4 or 5 years. Unfortunately, the majority of those companies were purchased by a foreign company. It wasn't by a U.S. company coming in and consolidating. It was by a company under different tax laws--a Swiss company, a French company, a German company, or a Japanese company-- that had bought an American company, the majority of them--by far the majority. This is happening all over the country, and it is happening under our noses.

We are sitting here in Washington, allowing this to happen because we are abdicating our responsibility to reform the Tax Code so that it is competitive.

By the way, we are the only country that is not waking up to this. Every single one of the other developed countries in the world--the countries that are members of what is called the

OECD, which is all the developed countries--every single one of them is reforming their tax code, except us.

In the 1980s, we established the rate we have now, which is 35 now-- then it was 34 percent. When we add the State tax rates for the companies, it is about 39 percent on average in America. We are the highest rate in the world.

So at the time we set our rate in the mid-thirties, that was just below the average. It was done deliberately, and it was done as part of the 1986 tax reform. We said: Let's set the business rate at something below the average so we can be competitive.

But since that time, we have become the highest rate, and every single one of our developed country competitors--all of them--have reformed their tax code and lowered their rate.

But they haven't just lowered their rate to make us No. 1 in the world--which is not a No. 1 you want to be if you want to compete and develop jobs--they have also reformed their tax code to make it more competitive internationally. We haven't done that. We have been bystanders in this effort to attract jobs and investment opportunities.

We still have what is called the worldwide system, where we don't tax income where it is earned. That has created a real problem.

So I am glad we are having this debate on the floor. I am glad there is an opportunity to talk about this. I must say that, unfortunately, the bill before us, the Bring Jobs Home Act, is not going to help because it doesn't get at this underlying problem we have been talking about today. It does nothing about lowering the rate. It does nothing about changing the international system of taxation. It tinkers around the edges with one issue, and that is to remove deductions and tax credits that, according to the authors of the bill, incentivizes companies to move overseas.

There is a group here in Washington called the Joint Committee on Taxation. They are nonpartisan, and they tell us in Congress what tax policy means, how much it costs, and what the effects are going to be. Here is what they say:

Under present law, there are no targeted tax credits or

disallowances of deductions related to relocating business

units inside or outside the United States.

So why are we having this debate? Why aren't we debating the core issue--the real problem? I guess because this is the better political debate and it is easier to do. But it is not going to help. It would be nice if there were these targeted tax credits that some of the authors claim, because then we could get rid of those and that might help some. But, as the Joint Committee on Taxation has said, that doesn't exist.

Let's take a look at the numbers.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the very small tweaks this legislation will make to the Tax Code by disallowing some of these deductions will amount to around $143 million over 10 years. So they say $143 million over 10 years, because even though there is no targeted allowance or targeted tax credits, they think this legislation will have some effect on the way the IRS will interpret it. By the way, it is left up to the IRS to interpret it, and it is a subjective decision by the IRS since it is not targeted.

But let's say that $143 million over 10 years is the right number. That is what the Joint Committee says. So $143 million over 10 years. Let me give one example.

There is a company in Ohio that is about a Fortune 200 or Fortune 300 company. So it is a big company--not the biggest company, but it is a big company in Ohio. They decided a year or so ago to do an inversion. They bought a company that was one-quarter their size overseas and they became a foreign company. Based on the public filings, we know this year that company will save $160 million on its taxes because it chose to become a foreign company. That is wrong. Our tax system should be fair, it should be competitive. It shouldn't be driving these companies to do this on behalf of their shareholders and under their fiduciary responsibility.

That is $160 million a year versus this bill that, even if it works as the folks are talking about, is intended to be a $143 million impact over 10 years. See what I mean about this not being a serious proposal? Let's get at the core problem.

The other problem is, if we continue to make it harder to be a U.S. company--whether it is to take away a tax credit, whether it is to take away a deduction, whether it is to do something else, to try to block inversion, what will happen? What happens every time we try to put up a wall to stop something but don't deal with the underlying problem? These companies will continue to look overseas, and they will be targets for acquisition.

We talked about the fact that there are no American beer companies anymore, except ones that have less than 2 percent market share. These companies didn't invert. They were bought by foreign companies. That is happening right and left in America, and that is what would happen even more if we make it even more disadvantageous to be an American company because we are trying to block this.

We have to get at the core issue. We can't have the highest tax in the world, and we can't have an international system that is not competitive and hope to have these companies stay American companies. So let's deal with the underlying problem.

Thirty-five companies over the past 5 years have chosen to invert, but so many others have done other things to try to be competitive, including to sell to foreign companies, or not to grow, not to be able to compete with acquisitions, because their after-tax profits are not as high as their foreign competitors.

It is not going to be easy to do tax reform. I understand that. It is never easy. That is not what we were hired to do, the easy things. We are on the floor right now debating this proposal called the Bring the Jobs Home Act, which I think is a misnomer, unfortunately. I guess that would be easy. It wouldn't help, but it would seem easy.

Tax reform is going to be hard, because we do have to lower the rate and broaden the base and get rid of some of these deductions and credits and exemptions and so on that are out there. The Tax Code is now riddled with them. Everybody likes their special provisions. But it is an effort well worth undertaking, because it is about our economy, it is about our future, it is about our kids having jobs here. It is about keeping American companies here. We simply have to do it.

By the way, Congress has done this before. We did it back in 1986. It was led by a Republican, Ronald Reagan, and a Democrat here in the Senate, Bill Bradley; and in the House, Dan Rostenkowski, Tip O'Neill. This was a bipartisan effort. It should be again. There is no reason it shouldn't be bipartisan.

The President has talked about it as a big problem right now in our economy, that our Tax Code is so inefficient, antiquated, needs to be updated. He has talked about lowering the rate, broadening the base. I agree with him, let's do it. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a proposal from the administration.

We had a hearing on this recently and I asked the administration: Where is the proposal?

They said: Well, we are interested in working with you.

Great. I am, too. All of us are.

Some Republicans, including Dave Camp, have put out very specific proposals in the House Ways and Means Committee.

We have to move forward on this. And we have done this before. We can do hard things. It is our job to do hard things. We did welfare reform a year before an election--actually, months before election day, with President Clinton, working with Republicans, including Newt Gingrich.

This seems to be the kind of thing that is harder and harder to do around here, and yet there is more and more urgency to do it.

People call it corporate tax reform or business tax reform and think: It must be about the boardroom and about the executives. It is not. They will be fine either way. We don't need to worry about them. We need to worry about the workers. CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, which is the group that analyzes legislation, has looked at this and said: Do you know who is hurt more by these high corporate taxes we have? It is the workers, of course. More than 70 percent of the burden, they said, is borne by the workers in the

form of lower pay, lower benefits, and fewer job opportunities.

So we need to do this not because we are looking to help the boardroom but because we are looking to help the American worker at a time when it is already tough.

Over the last 5 years, they say, average take-home pay has gone down about $3,500 for a typical family. So pay is not going up, it has gone down. Health care costs have gone up. In fact, they are skyrocketing.

I talked to some folks in Ohio last weekend who asked: Why aren't you doing more to get health care costs down?

I said: Well, I didn't support the ObamaCare proposal. It was promised that the costs would go down, and they are now going up. That is why we need real health care reform.

This is a middle-class squeeze. Health care costs are up, and wages are down, now stagnant. This is an opportunity, not through a sideshow like we are going to see on the floor here talking about how to do these tweaks that aren't going to make any difference, but to really get at the problem is the way to get payback. That is what the Congressional Budget Office tells us.

Our Tax Code should draw companies to our shores, should bring investment here and bring jobs here instead of pushing companies away. All we are looking for is a level playing field. If Americans have a level playing field here, we will be able to be competitive, and we will be able to bring back jobs. We have the greatest innovators in the world, we have the greatest resources, and we have incredible infrastructure in this country. We have a lot of advantages. Our energy advantage now, thanks to what we are doing now on private lands--we should do more on public lands, but what we are doing on private lands is really giving us an advantage in terms of a stable supply of relatively low-cost natural gas, particularly for manufacturing. We see this in Ohio. It is a great opportunity, but to take advantage of that opportunity, we have to reform and improve these basic institutions of our economy, including the Tax Code.

By the way, it is not just the Tax Code, it is about regulatory relief to ensure that American companies are not being saddled, as they are now, with higher and higher costs and more and more regulations that make it harder for them to compete, make it harder for them to create jobs.

It is also about being assured that we have a trade policy that actually works to expand exports. That is a huge issue in my home State of Ohio. We do a lot of exporting. We could do a whole lot more. Twenty-five percent of our factory jobs are now export trade jobs. One in every three acres planted in Ohio is now exported. We want to do more. That gets the prices up for farmers. That is adding more jobs and creating more opportunity for good-paying jobs. These great jobs tend to pay more and have better benefits. We are sitting on the sidelines there too.

Congress could move quickly to provide this President with the negotiating authority every President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has had. Since FDR, every President has also asked for it. This President has now asked for it. You heard him in his State of the Union earlier this year. He hadn't asked for it earlier in his term, but now he has asked for it. Let's provide it to him. Let's give him the ability to knock down the barriers of trade for our workers, our service providers, and our farmers to get this economy moving, along with tax reform and regulatory reform. These are things that would actually make it better for the American people.

On the regulatory side, I am offering amendments in the context of this legislation, and they are bipartisan amendments. One has to do with ensuring that we do allow companies to permit something more quickly. Right now it can take years to permit a project in the United States of America. We have a bipartisan bill. Senator McCaskill and I are the two lead sponsors, but we have other Democrats and Republicans onboard saying this is just common sense. Let's make one agency accountable. Let's be sure there is a way for everybody to transparently look at a windshield and see what the status of the project is and move it forward. Let's reduce some of the legal liability in some of these projects.

What people tell me--whether it is the solar companies I talked to yesterday or whether it is some of the oil and gas producers or whether it is some of the wind companies or whether it is the hydro people who brought this to my attention initially a few years ago--they cannot get foreign investors because it takes so long to permit something in America.

We used to be at the top of the heap, by the way, and now in the annual ease-of-doing-business surveys that are done, America has fallen behind. America is now something like 34th in the world in terms of the ease of doing business on permitting because more and more regulations have been added. For an energy project, there are sometimes up to 34 Federal regulations. Usually it is one after the other because there is no coordination and accountability.

That is what this bill does. It is very simple. It is common sense. It already passed the House. It is the kind of bill that, if passed, would create jobs and good construction jobs, which is why the building trades support it.

By the way, the labor unions, building trades, and others who support this kind of legislation do so because they figured out that America cannot be competitive unless we have these basic institutions of our economy--whether it is regulatory reform or whether it is a smarter energy policy or whether it is the ability to have a tax code that works, they want to be sure we are expanding opportunities for their members. So I appreciate the building trades stepping forward.

The other one is simply to make sure regulations are accountable, make sure there is a cost-benefit analysis, make sure we use the least burdensome alternative in Washington, DC, to get to a policy that is passed by the Congress--commonsense stuff. Again, that has passed the House, too, with bipartisan support.

I am offering these because I do think it is important for us to have this debate on tax reform, and I look forward to further debate on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I think this is a great opportunity for us to talk about the real problems.

I am not going to support this solution because I don't think it will help, but I welcome the debate, and I am glad we have proceeded to this debate. I am glad my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are raising this issue.

To the reporter who asked the question I got today--Are you concerned that Democrats are talking about inversions?--no, I am really happy they are talking about it. We should all be talking about it-- Republicans, Democrats, Independents alike. As Americans, we should be focused on this issue and the broader issue that by our companies not being competitive, we are hurting American workers. If we don't turn this around--not by show votes, not by something that looks good politically but doesn't make any difference, but by actually getting at the root of the problem--the highest rate in the developed world, an international system that doesn't let us be competitive globally because people cannot move around their assets to find the best, most efficient use for them--those two issues, if addressed, will unlock all kinds of opportunities. That is the potential we have. There is a better day ahead, right around the corner, if we do some of these basic things.

I was also asked today at a press conference we do every week with Ohio reporters: How would you grade this Congress? Are they doing the things they ought to be doing?

I have to tell you there are small things that have been done, but, no, Congress is not doing the work of the people. And the work of the people at its core means that the laws, the Federal laws that this place alone--the House and the Senate and the President--have control over, those laws need to help the American people to be successful. It needs to be an environment for success, an environment for people to be able to say: Hey, my kids and grandkids could have it better than I have it because we see America on the upswing.

That is not what we see today--the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. I talked about wages going down, not up. I talked about the higher cost of health care. I talked about the fact that we have now in this

country a lot of people who are discouraged about the future.

CNN did a poll recently, and normally when people are asked in a poll whether they think their kids or grandkids are better off, they say: Yes. That is the American dream. The next generation will be better off.

That is what my grandparents believed, and that is what my parents believed. That is not what today's generation believes. Sixty-three percent of the people said: No, I don't believe that is going to happen.

What is even more troubling is that 63 percent of young people do not believe that. They don't believe their lives are better off than their parents'. We can change that.

I hope we get a vote on these amendments I talked about. I hope we will have a good discussion and debate on these issues. We owe it to the people we represent to solve these big problems.

I thank you for the time, Madam President, and I yield the floor.

Moment of Silence

Mr. President, I want to associate myself with the remarks of the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, my chairwoman, Senator Mikulski.

I would add perhaps one particular point; that is, this Senator will be basking in the Sun in Illinois during the recess, and I invite the Senator from Maryland to come join us any time she would like to. But it will not be in ordinary vacation climes; it will be in my home State. I am sure the Senator is going to be spending a lot of time in hers as well.

I thank Senator Mikulski.

Mr. President, this supplemental appropriations bill is important. It is timely. One of the provisions in it is an additional $225 million for the Iron Dome defense. The Iron Dome defense is a joint effort by the United States and Israel to protect Israel from rocket attacks. Imagine you are living in your hometown and a neighboring State or neighboring town just fired 2,000 rockets into your hometown. These are not Fourth of July rockets; these are deadly rockets that kill. You want some protection. The Iron Dome provides protection for Israel.

This joint effort by the United States and Israel has been successful. Despite 2,000 rocket attacks, the casualties on the Israeli side have been minimal, relatively minimal, and it is because of the Iron Dome defense.

What attacks does Israel face today? Well, they face Hamas attacks from Gaza. Hamas is an organization which the United States characterized as a terrorist organization almost 20 years ago. We know Hamas. We know their tactics. What they are doing is putting rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods near hospitals and apartments and homes, and they are launching these missile attacks on Israel and daring them to fire back into civilian populations.

Iron Dome protects the Israeli population from the missiles being shot by Hamas in Gaza. Now the Israelis have invaded Gaza to go to the source to stop these rocket attacks.

Sadly, during the course of this effort in Gaza, there have been casualties--some on the Israeli side, of course; but hundreds, maybe a thousand on the side of the civilian population in Gaza. This is because the strategy of Hamas is to put their armaments smack-dab in the middle of civilian populations. As has been said, in Israel, they use weapons to protect civilians; and in Gaza, they are using civilians to protect weapons. That has to come to an end. We have to have an end to the hostilities between Gaza and Israel. No nation--no nation on Earth--would sit still for 2,000 rocket attacks into their population. That is what Israel has faced over the past several weeks. But the people of Gaza also need much better than they are receiving when it comes to Hamas.

Hamas, sadly, is engaging in tactics using human shields at the expense of the civilian population. When they are told about the civilians that are dying in Gaza, leaders in Hamas say: Well, they are martyrs for the cause. I will have to tell you, it would be very difficult for me to understand and explain to a family that has lost a child they love that their child has just become a martyr.

This has to come to an end. The hostilities between Gaza and Israel have to end, I hope, in some negotiation and peaceful resolution. Maybe it is wishful thinking, but I do believe we need to make the effort. I commend Secretary of State Kerry for his effort at trying to engage Egypt and others in this conversation.

The supplemental bill before us today provides more money for interceptor missiles for Iron Dome--to protect Israel--money requested by our Secretary of Defense, money which I support. As chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, we added some $350 million for Iron Dome defenses in the next fiscal year which begins October 1. This money is needed now because of the hostilities between these two countries. I certainly support it.

A second part, the major part of this supplemental appropriation, deals with the humanitarian refugee crisis we have on our border. It is not often the United States faces a refugee crisis. Think back in history. The only refugees who come to our shores are usually from nearby countries: Haiti, Cuba. Occasionally, we have refugees coming such as after the Vietnam War, the Hmong people who were our allies in that war.

But we are not like most countries in the Middle East, for example, that have a steady stream of refugees. The United States does not engage in refugee crisis alleviation because of our location and geography and our history. Seldom have we been challenged. But today we are challenged. We are challenged because in the first 6 months of the year 57,000 unaccompanied children--children--presented themselves at the border with Mexico. They were not trying to sneak in. They literally walked across the border and presented themselves to the first person in uniform.

They were told to do that by their families. Why did they make the trip to the border as kids--by themselves--to present themselves? Because in three countries in Central America there is a state of lawlessness: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. Eighty percent of the children who have come to the border came from those three countries. They are not just coming to the United States, incidentally. There has been a 700-percent increase in refugees to adjoining Central American countries from those three countries.

This has been going on for some time. But for the past 2 or 3 years, it has gone from bad to dramatically worse. We met last week with the Ambassadors from these three countries, and we talked about what created this. A lot of it has to do with the drug gangs--drug gangs that are transporting drugs through those countries for sale largely in the United States. These drug gangs have become powerful and rich, well armed and notorious for their barbaric tactics.

They recruit young people into their drug gangs at the point of a gun. They mutilate those who even hesitate to join the drug gangs. God forbid it is your daughter, because they have a reputation for raping young girls. If they are not satisfied with their response, they kill them on the spot and leave them in plastic bags by the highway. That is why many families are sending their kids away from this deadly violence.

Two weeks ago I went to a shelter in Chicago. This was a transitional shelter where 70 children from the border are being held until they can be placed with their families in the United States or with some trusting family that takes up foster care. I saw these kids firsthand. Your image of them may be different than what you actually see.

My wife said to me: Well, why do they not show pictures of these kids? Well, they try to protect their identity and confidentiality by not showing photos. But if you could see them, you would see children of all ages. There were five women who walked into the dining hall at this transitional shelter.

They did not seem to me to be 14 years of age. Each one was carrying a baby. They were the victims of rape in Honduras. They were carrying these newborn infants in their arms, as they

had done during the 8-day bus journey to get to the border. I asked some of the staff at this transitional shelter--I had been told that many of the families, before they send their young girls on this dangerous and sometimes deadly journey, give the girls birth control pills because they anticipate they will be attacked during the course of this journey. They said: It is true.

What desperation would you have to reach before you turned your daughter loose under those circumstances? These families are literally trying to escape a burning home and sending their kids to the only safe and secure place they can think of.

What do we need to do? First, we need to get to these countries and tell them: Stop. Stop these deadly journeys, these journeys which, sadly, lead to harm and even death for some of these children. Do not let this happen any more. We have to work with the governments of those countries to make it clear this is the wrong thing to do. It is wrong because once these kids get into America, they are not entitled to stay. They are not entitled to be citizens, unless, perhaps, they qualify for asylum. They are going to be sent back.

After they are sent back to these countries, if they ever try to reenter the United States they can be found guilty of a felony. This is serious. So the notion that they can just come to America and stay here if they wish is not true. That is the first thing we need to do.

The second thing we need to do is to stop the smuggling and the coyotes that are bringing these kids into the United States. They are charging these poor families in Central America thousands of dollars they do not have to bring these kids to the border. We have to work with Mexico to hold these coyotes and smugglers accountable.

Third, I want to tell you, I think this really is key to our discussion. This is a test of who we are as a country. How many times in our history has the United States rallied for families and children around the world?

Do you remember just a month or two ago in Nigeria when 300 girls were kidnapped by Islamic extremists? Members of the Senate from both parties came to the floor to protest outrage that 300 young teenage girls would be kidnapped by these extremists. We engaged at every level to let the world know America cared. It was not the first time. There is a long history of it. We have stood for families and children around the world for humanitarian purposes throughout our history. Look back to the refuseniks, the Russian Jews who were being discriminated against in the Soviet Union. The United States was one of the leading nations in the world to stand behind those families and those children, bringing them to the United States so that they could escape antisemitism and Communism.

When you look at the victims of the Haitian earthquake, the United States was providing foreign aid to those families and children because we are, in fact, a caring nation. That is who we are. Throughout our history we have shown it. We need to show it again with these children. Some extreme American politicians have said: It is not our problem. Put them on a bus. Put them on a plane and dump them back wherever they came from--not our problem.

God forbid that is the verdict of history, that the United States, when it saw vulnerable, helpless children, did not care. I think more highly of this country. I think we have proven over and over that we do care. There have been some extraordinary statements made about this crisis by many people. The one that caught my eye was from a friend who happens to be the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Deval Patrick was born in Chicago. Maybe that is why I am partial to him. But Deval Patrick spoke about Massachusetts and its feelings toward these children.

He recalled moments of history. Here is what he said: My inclination is to remember what happened when a ship full of Jewish children tried to come to the United States in 1939 and the United States turned them away. Many of them went back to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.

He went on to say:

I think we are a bigger hearted people than that as

Americans.

I agree with Governor Patrick. President Obama has asked for resources to care for these children, to place them, to give them the right of seeking asylum if they can make that established legal claim and, if not, to return them, humanely, to the countries they came from. Two of the three Ambassadors we met with, incidentally, said they could not guarantee the safety of those children in Honduras or El Salvador, if they came back. Let's do the right thing and pass this supplemental appropriation. Let's provide the resources so these children are treated humanely, ultimately given their hearing, ultimately returned, in most cases, to the country they came from.

How will history judge us? How will we be judged if, when these refugee children came to our border, they were turned away and sent back to harm, violence or even death?

We do not want that to happen. That is not who we are as Americans. We care. We show it. Our government should show it as well. The Senate will get an opportunity to do that very soon--we hope maybe this day or this week--as we wind down the session.

The last point I want to make is a tribute to two of my colleagues who have done an extraordinary job when it comes to the Veterans' Administration. I am referring to John McCain, my friend who came to Congress with me many years ago, the former Republican candidate for President and a conservative from Arizona. He teamed up with--of all people--Bernie Sanders of Vermont, self-styled independent socialist Democrat. How about that? Sanders and McCain sat down to solve the challenge facing the VA. God bless them. They did it. They are reporting a bill to us which is a dramatic improvement over the current VA system.

We are now overwhelmed with the Veterans' Administration disability claims. Forty-five percent of the veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan have filed a claim. We have tens of thousands of these claims pending, many of them for post-traumatic stress disorder.

We have said, incidentally, that we are going to help all veterans. Some 400,000 veterans from other wars are making PTSD claims. In addition, we have those who served in Vietnam, exposed to Agent Orange and with nine different diseases being treated. We have those who were victims of Gulf War Syndrome being treated. We have homeless veterans who are now being brought in and counseled so they can get their lives back on track. It is an overwhelming responsibility which the VA has today.

The Sanders-McCain veterans bill is going to address them by providing more resources for our veterans and more medical professionals, which we need. Remember--we all should every single day--that we said to the men and women who enlisted in our military and who volunteered: If you will raise your hand, swear allegiance to this country and risk your life, we will stand by you when you come home.

We are going to keep our word. We promised. We are going to keep our word. This bill--this veterans bill that is going to come before us this week--does exactly that. Sanders and McCain met with the House conferees and worked out an agreement--an agreement which is going to benefit the Hines VA in Chicago with an additional facility which they need. There is an amendment which is going to help facilities all across this country serving our veterans--an amendment which says: If you happen to live too far away from a veterans hospital, we are going to find a way to make sure you get timely care that is near your home. I think it is the least we can do. We owe it to our vets.

I tip my hat to my colleagues, Republican and Democrat alike, who put this together. I am looking forward to voting for it this week.

I yield the floor.

If the Senator from Vermont would yield for just one moment. I want to thank him personally. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has made a point of making sure the DREAM Act, a bill which I introduced 13 years ago, has had a fair hearing before the committee on more than one occasion and has been reported by the committee. It was part of that comprehensive immigration bill. I thank him for bringing it up.

I just want to say for the record that one Republican Senator has said he wants to deport all of the DREAMers. He is in for a fight because these young men and women are proving over and over they can make a valuable contribution to this country. I thank the Senator from Vermont.

(The remarks of Mr. Leahy pertaining to the introduction of S. 2658 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Madam President, I ask to be recognized as if in morning business.

Thank you, Madam President.

I come to the floor today to discuss the ongoing situation in Israel. We all watch with great concern the images of the loss of life, young children, innocents who have lost their lives over the last few days, and also the men and women who served in the defense forces of Israel who have lost their lives in this operation. Our hearts also go out to the men and women who live in the nation of Israel who are living under the constant threat of rockets that are coming over from Gaza.

I came to the Senate floor a week ago to express not simply my concerns with this but also my solidarity--and I believe that of almost everyone in this body--with our ally Israel, and I received a response, a pretty heated letter from the Palestinian Ambassador in Washington, DC. He expressed outrage that I and my colleagues had not expressed the same level of concern for Palestinians as we had for the Israelis. He particularly pointed to the case of the three murdered Israelis but said we had not expressed similar feelings for the young Palestinian who lost his life.

I responded to his letter by pointing out a number of things. The first is that I believe that I and all my colleagues wish and pray and will do all we can to further the ideal that the Palestinian people could live peacefully side-by-side with their Israeli neighbors. It is a sentiment I expressed when I visited the Palestinian officials in the West Bank a year and a half ago.

But I also expressed that there was a significant difference between the way Israel and the Palestinians reacted to these two horrible incidents. The Palestinian Authority had to be basically nudged into expressing any sentiment about the three young people who were missing at the time. In fact, when the bodies were discovered, it led to street demonstrations. It led to celebrations on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza.

In Israel, the discovery of the death of the young Palestinian led to strong statements by the Prime Minister and condemnation. It led to a phone call from the Prime Minister to the family of the Palestinian. It led to visits by Israelis to the family of the Palestinian. It led to real outrage. There was a difference there, although both are horrible tragedies.

But I think there is something now emerging that is not being talked about. We have all seen the images of people being killed, civilians who are losing their lives in Gaza, and some are beginning to say that this is all Israel's fault, that this is Israel's fault. In fact, earlier today--or maybe it was last night--the Prime Minister of Turkey said that what the Israelis are doing in Gaza is worse than what Adolf Hitler did to the Jews. It is, of course, a ridiculous statement, but it gives an indication of where this is headed.

There is a story here that is not being told and that the Palestinian Ambassador himself has ignored, as I point to in my response to him. The first thing he ignores is that we have never in the modern history of the world seen any organization use human shields like Hamas is using human shields today. In fact, the reality behind it is unbelievable.

I would like to read from some press accounts with regards to this.

Washington Post correspondent William Booth, reporting from Gaza, wrote in an article on the 15th of July:

At the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, crowds gathered to

throw shoes and eggs at the Palestinian Authority's health

minister, who represents the crumbling ``unity government''

in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The minister was turned

away before he reached the hospital, which has become a de

facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the

hallways and offices.

Another report by the Washington Post on July 17 recounts:

During the lull--

I imagine in the action--

a group of men at a mosque in northern Gaza said they had

returned to clean up the green glass from windows shattered

in the previous day's bombardment. But they could be seen

moving small rockets into the mosque.

The Japanese Mainichi Daily's correspondent in Gaza reported on July 21:

Hamas criticizes that ``Israel massacres civilians.'' On

the other hand, it tries to use evacuating civilians and

journalists by stopping them and turning them into ``human

shields,'' counteracting thoroughly with its guerilla tactics

. . .

It doesn't end there. A Globe and Mail correspondent in Gaza, Patrick Martin, wrote on July 20:

The presence of militant fighters in the Shejaia became

clear Sunday afternoon when, under the cover of a

humanitarian truce intended to allow both sides to remove the

dead and wounded, several armed Palestinians scurried from

the scene.

Some bore their weapons openly, slung over their shoulder,

but at least two, disguised as women, were seen walking off

with weapons partly concealed under their robes. Another had

his weapon wrapped in a baby blanket and held on his chest as

if it were an infant.

If you think that is bad, it gets worse. I obviously cannot play a video on the floor of the Senate, so instead I will read a statement from Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri. This is a quote on television in Gaza:

The people oppose the Israeli fighter planes with their

bodies alone . . . I think this method has proven effective

against the occupation. It also reflects the nature of our

heroic and brave people, and we, the [Hamas] movement, call

on our people to adopt this method in order to protect the

Palestinian homes.

The response to this is, Israel drops fliers and sends text messages and makes phone calls telling people--civilians--we are going to undertake a military operation, you should leave the area. What does Hamas do? I will tell you what they do.

This is from the Facebook page of their Interior Ministry spokesperson:

An important and urgent message: The [Hamas] Ministry of

the Interior and National Security calls on our honorable

people in all parts of the [Gaza] Strip to ignore the

warnings [to vacate areas near rocket launching sites before

Israel bombs them] that are being disseminated by the Israeli

occupation through manifestos and phone messages, as these

are part of a psychological war meant to sow confusion on the

[Palestinian] home front, in light of the [Israeli] enemy's

security failure and its confusion and bewilderment.

This next statement was on television on July 14:

We call on our Palestinian people, particularly the

residents of northwest Gaza, not to obey what is written in

the pamphlets distributed by the Israeli occupation army. We

call on them to remain in their homes and disregard the

demands to leave, however serious the threat may be.

This is evidence that Hamas is using its own people as human shields.

It doesn't stop there, Mr. Ambassador. Ask yourself: Why did your organization--why did your government--unify with this terrorist organization that uses its own people as a human shield? You didn't mention that in your letter. You didn't mention in your letter that you aligned yourself with an organization that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. You left that out of your letter as well, Mr. Ambassador.

What has been the international reaction to this? Well, I already told you about what came out of Turkey. Just yesterday the so-called United Nations Human Rights Council--and I say so-called because it has such distinguished human rights beacons as Cuba and China on its membership--voted unanimously, except for the United States, to condemn Israel and to call for an investigation into war crimes against Israel. There is a 700-page document that briefly mentions rockets and does not mention Hamas or human shields whatsoever. Meanwhile, this crisis continues.

What do we see coming out of Hamas? Have they stopped what they are doing beyond the human shields? No. What we discovered--and what has been discovered now--is an intricate web of underground tunnels designed to bring killers into the Israeli territory. They attempted, by the way, to carry out a massacre at a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. Luckily they were intercepted by Israeli defense forces. They discovered tranquilizers in their possession, the purpose of which, of course, was to use them to abduct and kidnap Israelis and take them back to Gaza for ransom or worse. The rockets continue to rain down as well.

You also didn't mention in your letter, Mr. Ambassador, the cease- fire, which, by the way, Israel agreed to even though it was extremely unpopular in Israel. Why? Because three times in the last 5 years they had to face this.

I want you to imagine for a moment that you lived in a country with a neighbor that blitzed you three times in the last 5 years with rockets, trying to kill your children and destroy your cities and disrupt and paralyze your economy. There comes a point where you say enough is enough, we have to put an end to this. So you can just imagine how unpopular that cease-fire must have been among some elements of the cabinet and the unity government in Israel, and certainly among the population. Yet the Prime Minister went ahead with it because they desire peace, and in just a few hours Hamas violated the cease-fire.

So please don't come to me and say that both sides are to blame here. That is not true. This crisis would end tomorrow if Hamas would turn over its rockets and stop bombarding people. This would end tomorrow, by the way, if the Hamas commanders were not such cowards. I will tell you why they are cowards. While they are on TV asking these people to go to the rooftops of these buildings, you know where they are? They are hiding in their basement command center, which, by the way, is located in the basement underneath a hospital.

This would end tomorrow--the civilian deaths could end tomorrow--if they stopped storing rockets in schools, including a U.N. school. By the way, when the U.N. discovered these rockets, do you know what they did with them? They turned them back over to Hamas. Don't tell me both sides are to blame here because it is not true. It is not true. This is the result of one thing and one thing alone: Hamas has decided to launch rockets against Israel, Hamas has decided to build this extensive network of underground tunnels so that in a moment of conflict they can get these commandos into Israel and kill Israelis.

What is Israel doing? What any country would do. Of course this is not an excellent example, but imagine for a moment if one of our neighboring countries decided to start hitting us with rockets. What would the United States do? Would we sit there and say: We really have to be restrained and hold back here? We would not tolerate that. Imagine that every night and every morning sirens were going off in your city because rockets were on their way in and you spent the better part of the day running in and out of shelters and taking cover. What would you say? You would say: Take care of this problem once and for all.

Why would we ever ask Israel to do anything less than we would do if we were in the same situation? And that is what they are doing.

In the process of taking care of the situation, tragically, civilians are dying, and do you know why? Because Hamas is deliberately putting them in the way. I just read the quotes. Hamas is asking their people to do what their leaders won't do. They are asking their own people to get in harm's way and act as human shields because they want these images to be spread around the world. They are willing to sacrifice their own people to win a PR war.

I think it is absolutely outrageous that some in the press corps domestically and most of the press corps internationally are falling for this game. So please don't tell me that both sides are to blame here, and please don't tell me this was caused by Israel.

In my time here in the Senate, I had the opportunity to visit multiple countries. I have never met a people more desirous of peace than the people in Israel. But peace cannot mean your destruction, and that is what they are facing here--an enemy force that wants to destroy them and wipe them out as a country. It is impossible to reach any sort of peace agreement with an organization like that. That is what Israel is facing here.

Mr. Ambassador, I ask that you go back to your government and ask them to separate completely from Hamas, condemn what Hamas is doing to your own people--condemn the use of human shields. That is what I ask you to do. Stop writing letters to Senators and being angry at us when, by the way--although we should not be doing it because the law says no money should be going toward any organization linked with Hamas--the United States has been helping you to stand up your security forces in the West Bank through our taxpayer money. Don't write letters to the U.S. Congress complaining to us about what Israel is doing when the people you just created a unity government with are launching rockets against civilians in Israel and using its own people as human shields.

I think you need to take responsibility for your own people and your own part of the world. If you truly want peace, peace begins with laying down your arms and stopping these attacks and condemning those who are conducting these attacks and using innocent civilians as human shields. If you want peace, that is what you should spend your time doing and not trying to rally public support around the world for the idea that Israel is responsible for war crimes.

From our perspective, I hope the United States continues to be firmly on the side of Israel because there is no moral equivalency here. What is happening between Israel and Hamas is totally 100 percent the fault of Hamas. There is no moral equivalency here. All of the blame lies on Hamas.

For this crisis to end, Hamas must either be eliminated as an organization or they must lay down their weapons and adhere to the true precepts of peace, which is the desire to live peacefully side by side with our neighbors in Israel.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are dealing with a very disturbing crisis on our borders. The situation that has developed is unbelievable. It is unbelievable how rapidly it has developed, but it has, indeed, been building up for more than a year. It is a direct and predictable result of the President's policies and not enforcing the laws of the United States when it comes to immigration. It is a very sad day, and it can only end when the President stops suspending laws and starts enforcing laws.

The President is the chief law enforcement officer in America. Every Border Patrol officer, every ICE officer, every Coast Guard officer, every military officer, every Department of Justice employee, and FBI employee works for him. He supervises them and directs them. He has been directing them not to enforce the law rather than to enforce the law. The evidence of that is undeniable.

The law enforcement officers--the ICE officers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers--sued their supervisor directly appointed by President

Obama for blocking them from fulfilling their oath to enforce the laws of the United States of America. There is a Federal court case that is still ongoing, and the judge found, at least at one point in his order, that the President has no right to direct officers not to comply with the law.

We now know that we are facing an exceedingly grave threat of an unbelievable expansion of his unilateral Executive orders of amnesty that go beyond anything we have ever seen in this country and which threatens the very constitutional framework of our Republic and the very ability of this Nation to even have borders, it seems to me, and certainly to create a lawful, equitable, consistent enforcement in our country.

The respected newspaper National Journal, which is here in Washington, a nonpartisan and respected organization, reported on July 3--and a lot of people have missed this, and we need to know what this is saying. We need to know what it means, and we need, as Members of Congress and this Senate, to resist it. We cannot allow it to happen. We will not allow it to happen. The American people, when they find out what is being discussed, will not allow it to happen, in my opinion. Congress needs to be directed by the people--I hate to say--to resist it. It says:

Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to

the limit. He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La

Raza and other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6

million adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation

under a similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for

the so-called Dreamers in June 2012.

The DREAMers being the young people. Five to 6 million would be given legal status in the United States of America when they have entered contrary to law or are in the country contrary to law and are not entitled to work in America.

The article goes on to say:

Obama has now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice

departments to find executive authorities that could enlarge

that non-prosecutorial umbrella by a factor of 10. Senior

officials also tell me Obama wants to see what he can do

with Executive power to provide temporary legal status to

undocumented adults.

What we know is with the children's group, they were provided with an ID card that at the top of it, in big print, says, ``employee authorization card.'' This is exactly what is being talked about here, what the President of the United States is saying.

Remember, the Congress has been asked by activist groups and certain business interests to provide an amnesty for people who are here. The Congress has declined to do so. It has been fully and openly debated and has not passed into law. That is the decision of the Congress. That is the decision we have made--the duly elected body that passes laws. As such, they not having been given amnesty, the President of the United States is not entitled to do so. By declaration of duly passed law, people aren't entitled to come to America unlawfully, to come to America and stay unlawfully. They are not entitled to do that. How simple is this? They are not entitled to be able to take jobs if they do. They are not entitled to certain government benefits if they come illegally. Of course they are not. Of course they are not able to work and take jobs and get benefits if they came into the country illegally.

So when this first got talked about in more general terms, 22 Members of the Senate wrote President Obama and questioned what we are hearing. The Senators wrote this:

These policies have operated as an effective repeal of duly

enacted federal immigration law and exceed the bounds of the

Executive Branch's prosecutorial discretion. It is not the

province of the Executive to nullify the laws that the people

of the United States, through their elected representatives,

have chosen to enact. To the contrary, it is the duty of the

Executive to take care that these laws are faithfully

executed. Congress has not passed laws permitting people to

illegally enter the country or to ignore their visa

expiration dates, so long as they do not have a felony

conviction or other severe offense on their record. Your

actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the

Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of American

citizens and legal residents.

Our entire constitutional system--

The letter goes on to say--

is threatened when the Executive Branch suspends the law at

its whim and our nation's sovereignty is imperiled when the

commander-in-chief refuses to defend the integrity of its

borders.

You swore an oath--

The letter says to the President--

to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the

United States. We therefore ask you to uphold that oath and

to carry out the duties required by the Constitution and

entrusted to you by the American people.

The President is limited. He is not all-powerful. He is entrusted with certain limited powers by the people of the United States of America.

Now we understand he intends to go even further. In the response we got back, he never addressed it at all, except for his Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Jeh Johnson. He announced that, yes, he is indeed, at the order of the President of the United States, conducting a review of how many other people he can provide this amnesty for and work authorization for.

So last week one of our able colleagues, Senator Ted Cruz--a former solicitor general for the attorney general's office in Texas who has argued cases in appellate courts in the country--identified this problem and proposed I think a legislative fix that every Member of this body should sign. Some may say, Well, the President, I don't think he is going to do this. OK. Why not bar him from doing it? Some say, I don't think we should sign it. Why not? He basically said he has already done it with the younger group, and he said it is going to be a tenfold increase in the 5 million to 6 million people who are suggested to be legalized by the President's unilateral Executive order; represents about 10 times the number of people who have already been given lawful status, in effect, by the President's unlawful Executive order.

At this time perhaps it would be appropriate, and I would appreciate it, if the Senator from Texas would explain his analysis of this issue and how his legislation would be effective in ensuring that we don't go down this illegal road any further.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas because it, indeed, is the face of amnesty. He has documented for us, I think indisputably, that this surge of immigration was a result of the amnesty provided for these children by the President of the United States. I think that has been shown. I think we have never had a clearer analysis of it.

I am reading now further in the National Journal article about what the President plans to do next. The concern we have is about the future. I am not making this up, colleagues. This is a very real action the President is considering, as I read from that chart on amnesty. He would execute, contrary to law, what would give legal status and work status to 5 to 6 million people, 10 times the number that he has been provided for in this action.

What did the National Journal report? Well, I am quoting here.

The President also told a group--This is the group of La

Raza and other activist groups that are demanding amnesty

and, really, open borders. He told them that Boehner, the

Speaker of the House ``urged him not to press ahead with

executive actions because that would make legislating more

difficult next year.''

In other words, Speaker Boehner said: Do not use this executive amnesty in the future, Mr. President. So now the President is talking to the group, these activists that have been pushing him and demanding things. This is what the article says.

Obama told the group, according to those present, his

response to Boehner was: `Sorry

about that. I'm going to keep my promise and move forward

with executive action soon.'

It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck as a former Federal prosecutor in Federal court for almost 15 years to have the President say this. The article went on to say:

In the room, there was something of a collective, electric

gasp. The assembled immigration-rights groups had been

leaning hard on Obama for months to use executive action to

sidestep Congress and privately mocked what they regarded as

Pollyanna hopes that House Republicans would budge . . .

Obama told the groups what they had been dying to hear--that

he was going to condemn House Republicans for inaction and .

. . provide legal status to millions of undocumented

workers--all by himself.

I would be pleased.

Well, I am not. One of the things I think the American people do need to understand is when Majority Leader Reid, in conjunction with the President of the United States, blocks even amendments up for a vote, where does he get his power? He gets his power from every Member of his conference.

None of them are breaking in and saying: This is not right.

Senator Cruz's bill would deal with this future danger, that the President might do this again. I think--and we have looked at it hard, our Judiciary staff--we both serve on that committee--and have said this will actually work to ensure that we don't have another rogue action, unlawful, by the President of the United States, directly contrary to deciding the will of the American people and congressional action.

The President is happy that Congress doesn't pass his law, and he says: They won't act, so I will.

But, colleagues, when we don't act, we act. That is an act. It is a decision as sure as if we had passed a law. A decision not to act is a decision. The President of the United States can't simply go around and say: I can do anything I want because Congress won't act. How ridiculous is that? A National Journal article calls this policy explosive, and I believe that is a direct action.

One more question. Senator Cruz, I know, is a student of the Constitution, and Professor Turley at George Washington University has testified numerous times before Congress. I think he considers himself a Democrat, a liberal, but he is deeply concerned about the future of our Republic because of the President's overreach and exceeding the lawful powers given to the President.

Is some other President going to expand it further and very soon Congress becomes nothing? I would ask if the Senator shares this concern, because he was very active in the attorney general's office in Texas. Professor Turley said:

The President's pledge to effectively govern alone is

alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill

that pledge. When a president can govern alone, he can become

a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the

framers sought to avoid . . .

What we're witnessing today is one of the greatest crises

that members of this body will face. . . . It has reached a

constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental

change in how our country is governed.

Does that cause the Senator concern and does he have any thoughts about that?

I thank the Senator from Texas.

I think what he is saying is reflected in what Professor Turley said. It is almost like a plea to his colleague, maybe his Democratic colleague, his friend. He said: ``The President's pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge.''

In other words, his ability to get away with it; that Congress acquiesces in it. Let me say this the President is not going to get away with a unilateral amnesty. We are going to take this to the American people, and at some point this Congress will be held to account if he does so. Remember, every Member is going to have to vote and be responsible for allowing a President to run roughshod over the law of this country, the people's representatives, and, in effect, the people of the United States.

His plan for amnesty, under the circumstances he advocated them, has been rejected.

Congress is always available to consider any issue and make any decision it chooses, but it has, under the circumstances driven in this body, been rejected.

He has no power to go forward and beyond that, and we are not going to allow it to happen. It is wrong. Whether we agree or disagree about how amnesty should be given, it is wrong for the President to unilaterally execute such a policy, as Professor Turley said and as the Senator from Texas has said, the former solicitor general of the State of Texas. He understands it is law, and this matter is not over. We will continue to advocate.

I yield the floor.