A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Federal approvals required for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline are in the national interest of the United States.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I think we should get a little perspective, at least as I see it, on the Corker-Hoeven-Schumer substitute that was voted on earlier, and we will vote on again. I think this is what happened.

It became clear last week that the Gang of 8 bill was nowhere close to doing what it promised to do on enforcement. The flaws were too dramatic to hide and the CBO found it would only reduce illegal immigration by 25 percent after they had promised dramatic changes in it. And I pointed out that it had holes all through it, like Swiss cheese, and the CBO essentially confirmed that.

The bill was in trouble. Support for the gang's proposal began to fall, and the mood changed from over confidence among the supporters to even panic. The gang knew action had to be taken or things could be lost, so they got--they went to Senators Corker and Hoeven with this idea that they would just add 20,000 Border Patrol agents to our current agents on the border and 700 miles of fencing. Both of those projects they had steadfastly rejected, even rejecting the Cornyn amendment to add 5,000 agents. One of the Members of the Senate said it was dumb to do any fencing, and they opposed the fence.

Well, these provisions of new enforcement were contrary to what the supporters had been saying for weeks. They promised America their bill was the toughest ever, driving those messages into homes all over America with TV advertisements; with Senator Rubio; big business; Mr. Zucherberg pretending he is a conservative advocate; running ads telling us all what we ought to know and do about this bill. The goal, I have to say, was to provide some sort of cover to get wavering Democrats and Republicans to sign on to this new bill that is going to add 20,000 agents.

Well, why would they be willing to make such a dramatic, unceremonious retreat on a position they had taken for months? First, they were desperate. Something needed to be done. Secondly, they know that the promises made in this substitute bill to build fences and to add 20,000 agents will never occur. It is not going to happen. So they are really not worried about that. It is a kabuki dance, a bob-and- weave, a rope-a-dope. Everybody in the Senate knows how this process is working. The staff know it, and I think probably most of the media understand it.

These promised actions are not going to happen in the future. The interests who push this bill have never wanted to end the illegality. I have been fighting on this for years. Every time we get close to fixing E-Verify, every time we get--in fact, we had debates, and I had to hold up bills to keep E-Verify from expiring. Forces were out there trying to kill E-Verify for years, and I held up legislation to insist that at least we keep it alive. We weren't able to strengthen it, which it needed desperately. That is the workplace situation, E-Verify is, where when a person applies for a job they run a quick computer check on a person's Social Security number to determine whether they have a lawful Social Security number. It identifies a lot of people who are illegally here and should not be taking jobs. So those forces have never wanted a lawful system, and they objected to things that occurred.

So their interests and the interests of those who met in secret to cobble this bill together have always favored more immigration, legal immigration, and it seems to me quite a bit of indifference to illegal. These are the forces that have voiced support for but blocked the creation of real border security fencing over the years.

They have voiced support for E-Verify with a blocked extension of it and strengthening of it. They have voiced support for an entry-exit visa system that works in all land, sea, and airports; indeed, we have passed bills to do that--biometric land, sea, and airports. This bill reduces that requirement through just entry-exit visa systems at air and seaports and not on land, and it is not biometric. That is a critical difference because now 40 percent of the people here illegally come on visas and overstay, and we have no idea who is leaving the country. We clock them in on entry, but we don't clock them out when they leave. So we don't know if anybody has overstayed.

That is the situation we are in. I see my friend, Senator Vitter, and I want him to have time to talk. I know he is due to be talking now. I would say one more thing as he prepares to deliver his remarks.

We were promised, when the bill passed, that the economy would be better, wages would improve, and GDP would be up, and unemployment wouldn't be adversely affected. The CBO report said unemployment will go up, and I have a chart they put out in their own report showing that. They say wages will go down over the next decade, and they say unemployment will go up. They say gross domestic product will increase some as a result of the situation of more people, but per capita, per person, GDP declines for 21 years.

So we need to know--at this time of high unemployment, slow growth, low-wage growth, we need to be very cautious about allowing millions of new workers to enter this economy at this time. We want to have immigration, but we want to have it at a rate that serves the national interests and increasing it dramatically is not appropriate.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I support Senator Vitter's motion. There are multiple points of order that could be raised against this legislation. They have declared a number of the spending programs emergencies; if you designate an appropriation as an emergency, it does not count against the budget, but it is real spending all the same.

Normally, we would expect that border enforcement and hiring of officers would not be an emergency; neither would other aspects of what we are doing here be considered an emergency.

We were told by the sponsors of the legislation repeatedly that this bill will be paid for and it will be paid for by fees and fines contributed by those who are here illegally as part of their payment to get citizenship and legal status. Well, that comes nowhere close to funding the legislation.

This chart I have in the Chamber gives us some--I will get to it in a second. But this chart gives an indication of where we stand with regard to budget implications of the legislation.

So the fines and penalties and fees that are a part of this maybe bring in $6 or $7 billion. They said there was enough to pay for the bill. The bill originally started out at $6 billion, then it went to $8 billion, and then, with the Corker-Hoeven amendment, it jumped to $46 billion. There are no additional fees on the illegal aliens.

When they met with the support group, the Gang of 8 met with the real group who has been driving the bill--this coalition of special interests.

They went to them and said: We need to raise some more money.

And they said: Well, you cannot put any more fines on the people here illegally.

So they said: Yes, ma'am. We will not put any more fines on them. We will put more fees on legal immigrants in the future.

So they raised fees on legal immigrants but did not raise fees on the people who are here illegally who originally they said were going to pay for the entire bill. So that is important for us to fully understand. The money is simply not there.

I will note parenthetically that the 2007 immigration bill--that was on the floor and we debated and eventually failed--that bill would have raised as much as $8,000 per illegal individual. This bill only raises $2,000, and it is to be paid over 10 years. This is not a burdensome payment if you are going to say they pay a fine--as the sponsors of the legislation did--to become permanent residents and put them on a path to citizenship. So it is about $17 a month. I calculated it out roughly. That is not a big fine. You are allowed to work. You get a Social Security card, an ability to apply for any job in America on an equal status with anybody else who has been unemployed and looking for work, their children looking for work and need a job. Somebody who was just a few days before illegally here now has full power under this legislation, if it were passed, to take that job. So the idea that $17 a month is somehow going to be breaking the bank is not accurate.

The problem fundamentally with this situation is that it double counts billions of dollars. We need to understand how this process works, this double counting. It was part of the 2,000-plus page ObamaCare health care legislation. This thing is over a thousand pages--1,200 pages--and things get lost in it. What is lost fundamentally in it--and the supporters of it ought to be more candid about this--is that to make their argument that the bill is going to bring in more money than goes out, they have to double count Social Security and Medicare money. They just do. Senator Corker has made that argument. Basically, we have this money coming in.

In one of the conventions of accounting that our budget team uses-- the

Congressional Budget Office--it calculates all the money coming into the government, all the money going out of the government, regardless of whether or not there is a trust fund.

Another form of accounting accounts for the trust funds and accounts for general revenue. General revenue is on-budget. Off-budget is the Social Security trust fund and some other funds.

So look at this chart. I think it gives a picture of where we are. This is the true cost of this immigration bill. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. We wrestle with these numbers all the time. Under this, they claim they have a unified budget surplus of $197 billion. That is the accounting method where all the money coming in is counted against all the money going out. But if you remove the Social Security surplus, that is $211 billion. If you remove the Medicare surplus, that is $56 billion, showing, instead of having a surplus, we have a $70 billion deficit.

You say: Well, CBO said different.

No, CBO did not. CBO, in its report, explicitly shows that the on- budget accounting is negative, that it adds to the debt. It counts a surplus in Medicare and Social Security. Now, how could they do that? Well, these individuals--many of them do not have a Social Security Number and are not paying Social Security and Medicare taxes--the withholding of FICA on our paychecks. They are not paying that. Once legalized, they will pay that. There will be new money coming into the Treasury.

These sponsors of the bill, so desperate to promote their bill and say it is paid for, say that Social Security payment, that FICA payment, is now available for them to spend over here on all the things they want to spend the money on; therefore, it has created a surplus. But it ignores something very important: that each one of those individuals who have paid into Medicare, paid into Social Security, are going to draw out Medicare and Social Security. It is their money. It is their retirement money. You cannot put the money up for their retirement and spend it the same day and expect it to be there.

This is how this country is going broke. This is how they handled President Obama's ObamaCare. They double counted the money. Well, you say that is not accurate. Let me read the letter I got from the Congressional Budget Office Director the night before we voted, December 23. I voted against it. The ObamaCare legislation passed on Christmas Eve. They finally got the 60th vote before Senator Brown from Massachusetts could be installed. This is what the CBO said at the time:

[T]he savings to the [Medicare] trust fund under PPACA--

That is the ObamaCare--

would be received by the government only once, so they

cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and,

at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of

the legislation. . . . To describe the full amount of

[Medicare] trust fund savings as both improving the

government's ability to pay future Medicare benefits and

financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially

double-count a large share of those savings and thus

overstate the improvement in the government's fiscal

position.

If that were a private business that sent out a solicitation to buy its stock and they said, we are on a good basis, we are making so much profit--and they are counting as their profit the money going into their employees' pension plan--I think they would be in big trouble, do you not? Because it is not their money, it is money committed to the employees' pension. You cannot claim it as profit and say, invest in my company, I am making a big profit, counting the money that is in the employees' retirement money.

Well, this is what we have been doing. The Senator from South Carolina used to say: We have been raiding trust funds. If we were in private business, we would be in jail. I think there is too much truth to that, frankly. So this is undisputedly real.

But because there is a score, a unified budget score, the method that says all money comes in and all money goes out, you have a surplus, you can count this as a surplus. Why is that? Well, because most of the people who will be legalized under this bill, those individuals are in a situation where they are younger, maybe 35. So they will pay into Medicare for a number of years, and Medicare for a number of years will see a surplus in their account.

But after they reach retirement age and start retiring, the money is going to be drawn out. In fact, right now the amount of money paid into Social Security and Medicare by American workers is not enough to cover the cost of their retirement. That is why both of those accounts are in serious trouble. We have got to do something about it. We need to be making it stronger, not weaker. This makes it weaker. You are taking the money that should have been going to fund the retirement accounts of the people who were previously illegal who are now legal and spending it on something else.

Senator Vitter is exactly right, there are multiple bases for making a budget point of order against this bill. I believe the motion to waive the budget point of order was a motion to waive all of them, so this will be the only one we will get to vote on. So there are others who could have been raised also.

So what about this argument that wages are supposed to be improved by the bill? We were told that and told that repeatedly. This is what the CBO report says, ``CBO estimates that S. 744 would cause the unemployment rate to increase slightly between 2014 and 2020.'' So this is a fact. So at a time of high unemployment, lower wages, we are passing legislation that will increase unemployment, make more people unable to find work.

This is a chart that was in the CBO report, not my chart. I did not make this chart; it is in their report. It points out the average wage would be lower than under current law over the first dozen years. So we are asked to vote for a bill that CBO says would make the average wage of American working people lower for a dozen years.

I do not see how that is rational, frankly. We have seen since 1999 the wages of American workers have been decreasing as compared to the inflation index. The amount of money they are making is falling compared to inflation. That is a tragic thing. It has been continuous. I thought it might be temporary, but it has been continuing steadily.

One expert, Professor Borjas at Harvard, attributed 40 percent of that to immigration already. This bill will dramatically increase the flow of immigration. So I am worried. This is a chart that has down here 2021, 2023, before it hits the line back where it was. Then you say, well, then it is improving. Not so. Not so. If the bill had not been passed, we would have had some increase all along. The lines would have been much higher. I do not know how many years it would take for this ever to get back to where it would have been if the bill did not pass.

That is what the CBO says. It is not that inconsistent with common sense, that at a time of high unemployment and you bring in millions of workers, it is going to pull down wages. If you bring more coal into America, you bring more iron into America, more cotton into America, the price of those products falls. It is supply and demand. You bring more labor in, you are going to have a lower wage rate, which David Frum has written is what the bill was designed for to begin with, pull down wages.

We need to think about this. I dispute this idea that there is no impact on wages by this immigration law. This is what will happen in the next 10 years: We are going to legalize 11 million people. About half of those are not working effectively in the real job force; maybe they are doing part-time work; maybe their family is taking care of them; maybe they are working in a restaurant or lawn care companies off the books. All of a sudden they are going to be given legal status. They will be able to apply for any job: truckdrivers, forklift operators, coal miners, steelworkers, work for the county commission, city council, State of Alabama. They can apply for all of those jobs. So you are going to see a large increase in the supply of labor available for jobs for which they were not eligible previously.

Second, what about the normal legal flow? We now admit about 1 million people a year into America. That is the most generous admission rate of any Nation in the world. It is pretty significant, very significant. We have been absorbing that. I think we can continue at that rate. However, this bill, in addition to the 1 million I just mentioned, will increase by at least 50 percent the number of immigrants who

come into the country every year hereafter, which is pretty significant.

In addition, there is another 4.5 million who are waiting to come into America. They have been tentatively approved, but there are limits on how many can come each year. So they are waiting their time. They call it a ``backlog.'' They are just waiting their time. That is 4.5 million. They have been accelerated.

Let's think this through. Under the current law, we were on track to admit 10 million people as immigrants into America. By immigrants, I mean people who want to stay here, get legal permanent residence and become citizens. We are on track for 10 million if you follow current law.

Under this bill, we will admit, over the next 10 years to lawful status in America, the 15 million I mentioned, the 11 million plus the 4.5. Then we are going to increase by 50 percent the annual admission rate from 1 million to 1.5, meaning 15 million over 10, which means 30 million. So the number of people who will be given permanent legal status in America over the next 10 years will be 30 million, not 10 if the law had been properly applied.

There is another category. Those are people we refer to generally as guest workers. Guest workers come not to become immigrants, not to stay in the country permanently, but come to work in an area where they can find a job. It is supposed to be in an area where there are not workers to do the work. That is the theory, at least. How will that be impacted by this new legislation? It is going to be double. So the number of guest workers, which is very large now, is going to double under this legislation.

I would say, first of all, it is common sense that the average wage is going to fall. It is common sense that unemployment will go up. It is common sense that it is going to be harder for Americans in this time of high unemployment and falling wages to get a decent job with health care and retirement benefits. It just is.

People can spin and they can quote Grover Norquist and those kinds of things to say otherwise, but Professor Borjas at Harvard says differently, a Federal Reserve economist in Atlanta says differently, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said they had hearings and every witness acknowledged it would be bad for American workers, particularly lower income workers, particularly for African-American and Hispanic workers who are already here. They will get hammered the most under this dramatic increase in workers.

They say it will increase GNP. Well, it will. You legalize 30 million, you are going to have a larger economy and it will be bigger. But the question is, per person, per capita, will America's productivity increase? Will our GDP increase?

Well, what did CBO find? This is their chart. It shows that it dropped. This is the baseline today. If we pass the bill, the per- capita GNP of the United States of America of each citizen drops. That does not make us wealthier as a Nation, as a person. So what if the economy grows a little bit but everyone has less because you have got more people? That is what they say: S. 744 would reduce per capita by 0.7 percent in 2023. That is 2023. This is about 16 years they chart that it will be lower than it would have been if the bill never passes.

So why would we want to pass legislation that clearly reduces the per capita wealth of America, our growth of GNP? I do not think that makes good sense. I am concerned about it. Nobody wants to talk about it, they just want to pretend there is no limit to the number of workers who can be brought in and that that will not have a societal impact on America.

Let's take a look at a few things here. This is the Washington Post from 2 weeks ago when we got the job report dealing with the jobs for the month of May. It was considered to be fairly positive. It was about our normal average increase during the recovery period from the recession. But it is still not much. Not so good.

Unemployment went up, even though we created, they said, 175,000 jobs. That sounded good. We created 175,000. But you have to create about that many jobs each month to stay level, because we have more people coming into the workforce each month.

Look at what they said in the article:

The bulk of the job gains in May were in the service

industry, which added about 57,000 jobs last month. Still,

roughly half of those were temporary positions, suggesting

that businesses remain uncertain of consumer demand.

They go on to note:

Missing from the picture were production jobs in industries

such as construction and manufacturing. . . . Meanwhile,

manufacturing shed 8,000 workers. . . .

Manufacturing jobs went down by 8,000. The increase was in service industries. The increase in half of those were part-time or temporary, not full-time, permanent jobs.

Anybody who says we are in great shape with regard to job creation is not telling the truth.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal, ``Some Unemployed Keep Losing Ground,'' states that ``nearly 12 million Americans were unemployed in May, down from a peak of more than 15 million. . . . ''

At one point a few years ago, we had 15 million Americans working. We now have 12 million Americans working.

The percentage of Americans in the workforce continues to fall. It is the lowest since the 1970s when women were entering the workforce. That is why the percentage went up, but now we are down to that level again. People are not finding work.

The idea that we can bring in millions of workers well above the current rate and that this is somehow going to create jobs is hard for me to accept. The article states:

``At 175,000 jobs per month, we're years away,'' said Adam

Looney, a Brookings economist, from where we need to be in

unemployment rate. The real reason is economic growth has not

increased much.

It goes on to cite some very sad numbers that show the danger for people who have been unemployed for longer periods of time. It does appear, unfortunately, that somebody who is older or somebody who has not found a job for quite a number of months finds it even harder to find a job in the future. This is the Wall Street Journal, and they support immigration aggressively, but this is their story. The article talked about Mr. Ken Gray.

Ken Gray has experienced that frustration firsthand. In

January of 2011, Mr. Gray's wife died after a battle with

ovarian cancer; three months later, he was laid off from his

job as an account manager at AT&T, where he had worked for

more than 20 years. Still grieving from the loss of his wife,

Mr. Gray says he was slow to turn his full attention to his

job search. By the time he did, the Chicago resident was

long-term unemployed, and he has struggled to get prospective

employers even to respond to his applications.

``You just feel so discouraged,'' Mr. Gray said. ``You ask

yourself what's the sense of sending a resume if you don't

hear anything.''

Now 59 years old, Mr. Gray been living off his dwindling

savings since his unemployment benefits expired last year. He

says he remains determined to find work. But long-term job

seekers are twice as likely to leave the labor market as to

find jobs, and many experts worry that many of them will

never return to work. That could create a class of

permanently unemployed workers and leave lasting scars on the

economy.

``Once people reach a point where they no longer consider

themselves employable . . . it is very difficult to pull them

back,'' says Joe Carbone, president of WorkPlace, a

Connecticut workforce-development agency. . . . ``We are

losing thousands of people a day. This is like an epidemic.''

I don't think we can pretend this isn't reality. I think the CBO numbers probably understate the problem. Professor Borjas' studies would indicate that and others would indicate that.

Another example is from the New York Times, May 20, 1 month ago, written by Jessica Glazer:

The men began arriving last Wednesday, first a trickle,

then dozens. By Friday there were hundreds of them, along

with a few women.

They set up their tents and mattresses on the sidewalk in

Long Island City, Queens, unpacked their Coronas and cards--

and settled in to wait for as long as five days and nights

for a slender chance at a union job as an elevator mechanic.

On Monday morning. . . . Those in line--there were more

than 800 by sun-up Monday--were hoping for a chance at job

security, higher salaries and other benefits.

Andres Loaiza, 25, had his eye on a position that includes

minimal physical labor. . . . Every 18 to 20 months, the

union accepts 750 applications for the 150 to 200 spots in

its four-year apprenticeship program. . . . While they

waited, the hopefuls lined the sidewalk along 36th Street. .

. . The union had rented six port-a-potties and hired a 24-

hour security guard. . . . Overnight, they brushed their

teeth with bottles of water; tucked into

their sleeping bags, folding chairs or cars; and tried to get

some rest.

On Saturday a light drizzle fell. Gerry Dubatowka, 20, whose father is in Local 3, waited for his shot.

He is studying electrical technology at Orange County

Community College, but said he would rather work with his

hands than be in school.

``I just want to do whatever, wherever I got to start,''

said Mr. Dubatowka. ``I want steady work all the time.''

For millions of Americans, this is what they want. They want a job with a retirement benefit, a health care benefit, and a steady job. We are not creating enough of them. That is the problem. Continuing:

After Sunday's drenching rain, Monday morning dawned gray.

A few arguments erupted as people tried to cut the line. . .

. At 9 a.m. Monday, the door opened. The first man in line

disappeared inside and emerged moments later with a wide

smile across his face.

``Yay! No. 1!'' one man yelled when he stepped onto the

sidewalk.

``Good luck, big guy!'' said another.

This is the problem we are facing. I would share with my colleagues, at the rate of immigration in the future, we will have well over 100,000 new immigrants a month enter the country who are looking for jobs. We will have more than that enter, but we will probably have about 100,000-or-so-plus a month looking for jobs.

What does our Congressional Budget Office say about our future economic growth pattern? The CBO each year, as part of the budget process, lays out a 10-year projection of economic growth for America. They project all kinds of things. They are not perfect, but they use the best data available from the Labor Department, academic studies, private business analysis, and they project how many people would be employed. They are projecting for America's economy what I think a large majority of other economists and private sector people are predicting; that is, a new normal, where growth has not increased as fast as it has during boom times in the past. You have heard that phrase, ``a new normal.'' This is a new normal, and that is what we are facing.

They predict, in the second 5 years of our 10-year budget window, we will increase jobs in America by 75,000 a month, well below the amount of people immigrating to America to get jobs under this bill. Should we invite people to come who are not likely to have a job? Should we invite more people to come than we will have jobs for when they will make the new immigrants who arrive before them unable to have a good job?

Shall we bring in more immigrants than we can absorb, causing wages to decline for American citizens, making it harder for American citizens to find work? Do we take those people who are not finding jobs and do we then place them on the welfare rolls and put them on a government subsistence program when they have been independent and able to prosper previously in the private sector?

What is the right thing for America, colleagues? I think we have to think about that. These numbers from CBO show there will be adverse impacts on the economy, wages, and unemployment at a time when we need to be doing just the opposite. We need to be creating jobs, putting people to work. We simply have to give first priority to those to whom we owe our allegiance, the people who fought our wars, paid our taxes, and kept the country going when they were able to work.

I raise that point. People don't like to talk about it, but I do believe it is honest and true. A good immigration policy should be focused on a number of things. It should be focused first on the national interests, the interests of the American working people, whether they are lawful immigrants and not yet citizens or whether they are lawfully here as citizens. We owe our obligation first to that cohort of people. They are loyal to our country, and we owe them our loyalty first.

Then we bring in people at the rate we think we can absorb that is healthy for America. Maybe 1 million people a year is about the right rate. If that is where we are, I can accept that. To have it increased by 50 percent, to have the guest worker program doubled on top of allowing early entrants and legality to 15 million, that is a trend that I think is dangerous for America.

My position is this, let's be prudent, friends and colleagues. Let's be cautious. Let's not be increasing the legal flow by 50 percent at a time of high unemployment when it looks as if we are not going to be able to create enough jobs for those people who would be coming here. We surely don't need to be doubling, it seems to me, the guest worker program at a time when we have high unemployment.

This is where we are. I believe that needs to be considered. I think the American people who are out here watching what is going on in the Congress need to be asking their Senators and their Members of Congress who will be taking up these issues soon: Are you thinking about us? Whom are you thinking about? Are you thinking politics or are you thinking about me? Who is thinking about me?

You meet in secret with the Chamber of Commerce. You meet in secret with La Raza, you meet with the politicians, you meet with the meat packers group, and the immigration lawyers association, but you don't meet with the law enforcement officers who have told us this bill will not work.

You don't have representatives from the heart and soul of America in there. Nobody is expressing what kind of impact will be felt by them. This is what my concern is and one of my many concerns as we wrestle with legislation.

We can deal compassionately with the people who have been here for a long time, and I will support that. I believe we need a system that ends the lawlessness and a system that serves the national interests of American citizens.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

The Senator from Oklahoma.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized as in morning business for such time as I may consume.

Let me comment also, the Senator from Alabama has done a yeoman's job. He has studied this issue and looked at all angles. He has one great advantage over me. He is an attorney who understands the ramifications. Let me just mention two things about the bill which concern me. One is that I have been privileged, maybe as much as any other Member of this Senate, to speak at naturalization ceremonies. If my colleagues have never done it before, I say to my fellow Senators, do it. One has a totally different perspective on this whole issue we are talking about; that is, getting to know people who go through the legal channels. You look up and see that these are people who learned the language, who have studied the history and, I daresay, would know as much about the history of the United States of America as we know in this Chamber.

Anything that is going to fast-track a citizenship is something that is of concern to me.

This is not why I am here. I decided to come down knowing that the President of the United States was going to make a talk, and in this talk I wish to make sure people understand what he is advocating is the largest tax increase in the history of this country. It is something we know he has been trying to do, in terms of his global warming activities, actually a long time before he was first elected 4\1/2\ years ago. His speech on global warming indicates he has started delivering on all the promises he gave the environmentalists during his campaign. When I talk about the environmentalists, I am talking about all the groups--good, well-meaning, some are not, some are extremists.

Leading up to his reelection campaign, the President had been given a pass by all these organizations because they knew if the American people thought he was going to do what we now know he is going to do, what he announced today, he would not be reelected because of the cost of it.

So he had been given a pass by the environmentalist groups, such as the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, moveon.org, George Soros, Michael Moore--you know the crowd. They said: Fine, but as soon as you are reelected, since you can't be reelected again, we want to get all these things done. So all these groups want the President to use his regulatory power to make traditional forms of energy so expensive there is no option but to use their preferred alternatives.

They understood if the President wanted to get reelected he would need

to delay many of these regulations until after his reelection, and that is exactly what happened. They were willing to do this because they believed it was that important to reelect Barack Obama for a second term as President, as opposed to Mitt Romney or any of the others who were running. So they gave him a pass, and they didn't talk about this. As a result, he delayed many of the most significant regulations the EPA worked on during his first term until after the election.

One of those regulations was Boiler MACT. Let me explain MACT. MACT stands for maximum achievable control technology. It means what is the maximum in terms of something, such as emissions, that can take place where you have the technology to support it.

This rule sets limits--this is on Boiler MACT--on emissions of industrial and commercial boilers that are actually impossible to meet because the technology required by this rule isn't even available yet. It would cost the economy--and the analysis that was done, by the way, no one has disagreed with--$63.3 billion and would result in about 800,000 jobs being lost. It is called Boiler MACT. Every manufacturer has a boiler, and these are the standards that would be required--an emissions standard--where there is no technology to reach that at this time.

So the President waited to finalize the rule until the day after the election. He didn't want the rule to go out before then because he didn't want people to realize what it would cost until after election day.

Another rule is the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards. It is called the NAAQ Standards, but it affects everyone in America. The President tried to redo President Bush's 2008 update of this standard during his first term. But as the election neared, and the cost of the regulation became clear, he completely punted the effort. Now, however, we know he is actually considering an update of this regulation that could lower the standard from 35 parts per billion to 60 parts per billion. This is on emissions, and this would put as many as 2,800 counties out of attainment.

Let me tell you what that means--and, by the way, we have 77 counties in my State of Oklahoma, and all 77 would be out of attainment. It means you can't go out and recruit industry or keep the jobs you have because you are out of attainment. That is an official standing. This would mean 2,800 counties would be out of attainment in the United States, including all in my State of Oklahoma.

One thing the environmentalists want that the President has not been able to deliver--and it is even worse than all the rest of this stuff-- is to deliver on the CO2 regulations, which is the crown jewel of environmental regulations. In fact, there is an MIT professor named Richard Lindzen, who is supposed to be one of the outstanding and perhaps the premier climate scientist in America today, who said the regulations on carbon dioxide are a ``bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life.''

That is a pretty strong statement. This is because everything--every manufacturing process, every refinery, every hospital diagnostics machine, every home, every school, every church--would have to be regulated. If you can control carbon, you can control every decision anyone ever makes. This is what the liberals want. They want government to control everything, and their crown jewel is CO2. That is where the whole thing started.

Remember, a lot of people are saying now: We never did say it was global warming, now it is climate change. They have changed it around quite a bit, as people realized some of these things aren't true. I can remember when people were talking about global warming--now we know we are actually in part of this cycle that is going down. But that is not important. What is important is they want to regulate carbon dioxide. That is their goal.

So the President first tried to push greenhouse gas emissions on the Nation in 2010 when the Democrats had supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. The last bill they had was called the Waxman-Markey bill--two House Members. It was a cap-and-trade bill. We all know what cap and trade is. We have been talking about it now for 12 years. That is where they cap emissions and then they can trade those around. They can buy and sell them and it results in a huge tax increase. It would have regulated any source of emissions that emitted 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions or more.

That is very important because what the President announced today is far greater than that. In other words, those bills were only going to regulate the emissions of industries that emitted 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases each year. That came to a total cost of about $400 billion a year.

Again, I am using these without documentation now because I have been using them, and we have been documenting them for 12 years with no one arguing the fact that if we pass cap and trade at 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year, it will cost about $400 billion. So that is a huge amount.

While that may not be the largest tax increase in history, what the President proposed today would be. Congress squarely rejected that, and while the bill passed the House, it failed miserably in the Senate. That is because it would have lowered the standards of living for the American people across the country, forced businesses to shut down, and it would equate to the biggest tax increase in American history.

And I think people understood that. That was what happened in the past. What the President wants to do is what they could not get passed in terms of legislation, so they are going to now do it by regulation. The American people knew what was going on, knew the impact this legislation would have, and they told their Representatives to vote against it, and they did. Many of those who voted for it are no longer in this Chamber. They were defeated in 2010.

With the President's reelection squarely secured, the environmentalists have been crying for the President to act aggressively on global warming. It is payback time. We understand, Mr. President, you couldn't push this thing by regulation before the election because you wouldn't have been reelected. But now you are reelected, and we have a law that says you can't be reelected again, so it is payback time. So he is doing this unilaterally, bypassing Congress, and using the authority he is claiming under the Clean Air Act.

In the words of a very prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell, this would be a ``glorious mess'' because instead of regulating only the biggest pollutants--such as in the Waxman-Markey bill, and those who wanted to regulate only industry that emitted over 25,000 tons a year--the Clean Air Act regulation would regulate any facility emitting over 250 tons. So it is not 25,000 tons that would be regulated, it is anything over 250 tons. You can't even calculate how much that would cost in terms of a tax increase.

As the President announced today, he will begin this process with the regulation of greenhouse gases from new and existing powerplants. The President may have said today he will work with the State utilities to make sure they get a policy they like, but that is just window dressing. It is putting lipstick on the pig. Legally, the President cannot get around the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

The Clean Air Act was passed a long time ago. In fact, I supported it. We had the Clean Air Act regulations back when I was serving in the House. They were good and they worked, but they do call for regulation of any facility emitting 250 tons of greenhouse gases a year. It wasn't meant for greenhouse gases that make those kinds of emissions. And while he might not be talking about it, the law he is using to justify greenhouse regulations would not let him stop with regulating just powerplants or allowing him to craft a policy that states that. He doesn't have a choice. The law requires him to eventually impose regulations on every single industry in the country--every single industry--one at a time, with unelected bureaucrats doing the heavy lifting along the way.

This means every school, every hospital, every apartment will eventually be regulated by the President's EPA, and at a much greater cost than the $400 billion a year that was expected under Waxman- Markey. Keep in mind, the Waxman-Markey bill was the last cap-and-trade bill they tried to pass through, and it was soundly defeated. In fact, it is so hard, no one has ever calculated what the cost will be to the American people if they had to regulate down to 250 tons.

Let me give an example. For my State of Oklahoma I always calculate at the first of each year how many Federal taxpayers we have in the State. Then I do the math every time something comes along. Well, in terms of regulating under those industries over 25,000 tons of emissions a year, that amounts to $400 billion, which is about $3,000 a year for each taxpayer in Oklahoma. That is what you have to stop and realize. The cost of this thing is not little, it is huge.

Today's announcement doesn't come as a surprise. We have known they have been working on these regulations since the President was first elected, scheming to give his environmental base exactly what they want.

Roger Martella, former general counsel of the EPA, recently said, ``Two years is about the minimal time it would take to go from soup to nuts on a rule like this,'' and ``these rules don't come out of the clear blue sky and involve lengthy internal deliberations before the public even gets the first peak at them.''

So we know what is going on right now has been happening for a long period of time. Further, the Congressional Research Service recently put out a report saying President Obama has spent $68.4 billion on climate change activities since he has been elected. This doesn't require a vote. This was all done by the President. So that has been taking place, and the CBO substantiated this by saying the annual spending on climate change has reached an annual level of $7.5 billion, with an additional $35 billion being provided in the President's $825 billion stimulus plan.

The President has been intent on giving his environmental base this victory for a long time, and he is willing to bypass Congress to make it happen. And the reason is because it would not pass Congress. We have had his bills here and they have been defeated every time.

I would look at the majority leader right now and say: I bet you couldn't come up with 35 votes to pass cap and trade in the Senate. But on regulations, he can do it without having to go out and get the votes.

The impact is clear: It is the crushing of our economy. As I spoke on the floor last night, developments in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have resulted in a boom in energy production. Oil production in America is up 40 percent in the last 4 years. It is not because President Obama is President; it is in spite of his policies because all these things have happened in hydraulic fracturing.

By the way, I know a little about that because the first hydraulic fracturing was done in my State of Oklahoma, and that was in 1949. There has never been a case of groundwater contamination in the years since then, in over 1 million applications.

Now, the 40 percent increase in production in this country in 4 years all came from the private and State lands. None of it came from the Federal Government because this administration would not let us drill and produce in that area. In fact, the report I just quoted said that on Federal lands it has been reduced by 7 percent.

So while overall oil production nationwide is up 40 percent, on the Federal lands it is down by 7 percent.

The President is setting us on a course of unilateral disarming of our economy the same as he is doing to the military. He wants to impose costly regulations to our energy and manufacturing sectors that no other nation on Earth has. China, India, Southeast Asia, Mexico, all these nations know you need cheap reliable energy. They have to have it in their countries. They are never going to pursue these regulations, and they are waiting for the day America does it unilaterally.

Why would that be? Because if we do it, they know our jobs are going to have to find energy someplace, and they will be after those jobs. Any unilateral greenhouse regulations we have in the United States will only shut down our domestic production.

In fact, when Lisa Jackson was the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, I asked this question, and on live TV she gave me a very honest answer: If we were to pass any of these cap-and-trade bills--such as the ones I have been talking about--would this lower overall emissions of CO2? And she said, No. Because the problem is not here; it is in China and India and Mexico, and other countries where they don't have regulations.

You could carry that argument out and say if you pass these things and we do it unilaterally in the United States, as the President suggested today, it is going to have the effect of increasing CO2, because people will seek those countries where they can actually do this, where they don't have any restrictions at all. So there is no need for the President to take us down this path.

He is beholden to his environmental base which claims global warming is the biggest threat facing humanity. Many have said, even in recent months, that all the major weather events of the last decade have been the result of global warming. Some have even claimed Oklahoma's recent tornadoes are the result of global warming. This isn't true. Oklahoma University's weather center says this year has not been any different than years past. We have plotted our tornadoes since 1950.

The majority leader doesn't have tornadoes in the State of Nevada as we do in the State of Oklahoma. But we have been tracking them since the 1950s and the trend is about the same. It is not any higher this year, last year, and the year before than it has been in the past. It is because we have been having these events since the dawn of time that many environmentalists now refuse to refer to global warming as global warming, so they call it climate change or anything else the public will buy.

We will most likely not be hearing many of these environmentalists talk about the fact that during the last 15 years there has not been any increase in temperature, as reported in The Economist. But even if they did acknowledge this, with the term climate change, they have an alibi, because climate change by its name doesn't necessarily mean warming. It can mean anything. The President's announcement today of his new plan to regulate greenhouse gases to combat global warming does not come as a surprise. He has been working on it for years.

I would conclude and say, let's remember what it was that Richard Lindzen--the foremost authority in America on this subject--stated when he said regulating CO2 is a bureaucrat's dream: If you control carbon, you control life.

And remember the other thing, and that is all the expense, all the trouble we are talking about going through, and all that the President announced today is not going to reduce CO2--not according to a Republican, but to the Democratic former Director of the EPA.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield before he yields to the Senator from Hawaii?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, in little more than a month, the interest rates on loans to millions of the neediest students will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. With that doubling, those that can afford it least will be burdened with more debt. With total student loan debt already surpassing $1 trillion, this Congress needs to stop that interest rate hike, that doubling of the interest rates.

But rather than make it more affordable for students and families to pay for college, this Congress this day in this Chamber is debating a bill--I know people won't believe this--but we're debating a bill to make it more expensive for families and students to achieve a college education. At a time when college costs are rising and historic low interest rates, the majority is asking us to accept a bill that would increase interest rates. And even though the student interest rate is scheduled on July 1 to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, the bill presented on this floor today is worse than that for students and their families. It increases the drag on the economy that the student debt is to families and to young people trying to seek a job and to seek to form family.

This bill is so bad that it means more than the doubling of the interest rates. How do you think that has anything to do with the market rates? According to the Congressional Research Service, when they look at this bill, you can see that under current law interest rates, they would pay $4,000. And they are doubling to 6.8 percent, so they'd pay $8,800 in interest rates. And under the Republican bill, families would pay more than $10,000 in interest. How can that possibly be in the interest of these families? How can that possibly be happening in this economy when people are struggling with interest rates? It cannot be allowed.

You can see here that the parents who may have to contribute something, they would take out a loan to

help their child complete a college education, they are going to pay more than $35,000 over the life of those loans than under the current law, and that's what we've got to stop from happening.

And so what you see is when it is all said and done, this bill asks students over the next few years to pay more than $3.7 billion, almost $4 billion, in increased interest rates. No wonder this poor student has a headache. No wonder this parent is pounding on his head thinking, What am I going to do?

But what do they say? They say we have a market rate here. We have a market rate. Well, many in America, certainly middle class families and many low-income families, will remember the last time when we had this kind of market rate because what they have, they have a teaser rate. For your first year, they'll have a lower interest rate. So you have a teaser rate. But you know that next year that teaser rate adjusts so you don't get that rate because next year you get a new rate. And when you're a sophomore in college and you take out another loan, you get a new rate, a higher rate. And when you're a junior, you take out a loan, and you get a higher rate. And when you graduate, they take all of your loans together and give you a higher rate. Does that sound familiar to people? That's the marketplace. That's the marketplace when you choose to crush the people who are borrowing the money.

The President has the market rate. The chairman has said many times the President is looking to use the markets to set a realistic rate. But as he sets the rate, it's deficit neutral. As he sets the rate, the amendment we tried to offer was deficit neutral. He saves those students and families about $30 billion over the life of those loans. You get the difference? Yes, the market's the market. But you can pick the worst of the market, and you can pick the best of the market. They've chosen to pick the worst of the market for these students.

Now they had options. Republicans last night in the Rules Committee had options. Mr. Courtney offered an amendment to keep rates at 3.4 percent. They rejected it.

I offered the President's market approach. They rejected that.

Then Mr. Heck from the Republican side of the aisle from Nevada offered to say let's provide an incentive to make sure that students in fact continue to pay on time, as they should, as the market would do because you want to incent good behavior because you get more of it. They rejected that.

Mr. Rice of South Carolina went before them. He's a member of the Republican caucus, very concerned about interest rates in this legislation, very concerned about what's going to happen to these families. He thought he could lower the interest rates within their bill, within the market rates, stick with the market principle. They said ``no.''

So all you get today is whether or not you want a solution that is worse than the doubling of the interest rates on July 1. That's not an answer for America's families. That's not an answer for America's students.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa).

I yield the gentleman an additional 10 seconds.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy), a member of the committee.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis), a member of the committee.

May I inquire of the Chair of the time remaining on both sides?

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), a member of the committee.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks).

I have no further speakers.

Is the chairman the last speaker?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I want to thank all of my colleagues who entered into the debate here this morning on this legislation. I think it is clear that there is a very big difference between our positions on this legislation; there's a very big difference between the President's bill, who is trying to use a market system, and this bill before us, Mr. Kline's bill, that uses a market system.

The fact is that the President's bill saves students billions of dollars, but the Republicans would not make President Obama's bill in order for consideration. Why not? They say it's like they're doing the same thing as the President. Well, they're not. In fact, they're adding $4 billion worth of debt onto the backs of students over their program.

And how can they possibly do that? You've heard my colleagues on this side of the aisle speak to the issues that we hear all of the time when we go home. The struggle of students, the struggle of families, be they low-income, be they middle-income, to get access and to be able to complete a college education, to get access to a community college, to a State college system, to get a certificate, to get a degree that will allow them to participate in the American society, in the American economy. That's part of the American Dream.

Yes, we lowered the interest rates to 3.4 percent, and they've held over a period of years. And they held over those exact same years when families were under the most stress because of this recession that was created on Wall Street and the scandals that took away 70 percent of the wealth of African American and Hispanic families in this country, that destroyed the equity and good chunks of middle America because of teaser rate loans, subprime loans.

And what is happening today in the private market? The banks are getting money from the Treasury at 0.75 interest, and they're loaning it to families in private student loans. If you have good credit, they'll loan it to you for somewhere around 7 percent.

Bankers used to go die and go to heaven if they could get a 7 percent spread. That's how you become a billionaire. Get it at 0.75 and put it out at 7. And if your credit rating is not so good, those statistics sort of suggest you drift towards 13 percent.

Obviously, the students and middle class can't survive in that market for the most part, and that's why we have a student loan program. That's why we took this program away from the banks a number of years ago. We took the $60 billion that we were giving to the banks to loan the public's money to students and we said why don't we put that to use for families, and we did.

And we lowered the interest rates, and we increased the participation in the Pell Grants, made it available. We increased some loan limits. We gave people a chance to manage their debt after they graduated, so the more you earn, the more you pay, but you don't get crushed on your first job that may not have the best salary, even though it's the career you want to go in and it takes time to get that salary. We made it more affordable for America's families.

Yes, we lowered the debt to 3.4 percent. It was paid for, and that's all we could afford. Congress will make that decision. Last year, the Congress made a decision to extend it. This year, they've decided that they don't want to extend it on the other side of the aisle. So, fine, come up with a plan. But the plan they came up with is worse than having the 3.4 percent double on July 1.

How can you develop a plan that's worse for students? I guess maybe if you go home and everybody in your district is working and everybody is participating in this slow-growing economy that's getting better. I don't know. Families I represent, they're still struggling. The recession hasn't left town. The recession hasn't left the country.

If you pick up The Wall Street Journal today, there's greater concern about what's happening in China dragging down the world economy, there's greater concern about the Europeans dragging down the world economy. America is trying to struggle and the students are trying to struggle, and we're going to come along and more than double the rate.

We're going to give them a teaser rate, though. This next September when families go out and they get a rate, it will be probably somewhat lower than the current rate. But that loan will be adjusted, and they don't know what those rates are going to be. As long as they're paying on that loan, that loan will continue to be adjusted. We just saw that history in America. We saw what that did.

I don't have a problem going to a market system. How about a fair one? When the President went to a market system for the subsidized Stafford loan, he said on the market system we'll go to 0.9. They said they would go to 2.5--10 years plus 2.5. The President said 10 years plus 0.9.

There are a lot of ways to go to a market system. You don't have to punish the American family. You don't have to punish the students in school to go to a market system. I wish the President had a cap. The gentleman has a cap. This could be worked out, but we don't do things bipartisanly anymore in the Congress of the United States. So, because we can't get the President and the majority on the Education and the Workforce Committee to sit down and work out the market system--because that's not allowed and

we don't do bipartisan work--the victims are going to be the families and the students, and, in the long term, our Nation.

Every Member of Congress has come to this floor and has said how important this education system is to our future economic growth, to competing in a globalized world, to have innovation, to have discovery, to have job creation. We're now creating a drag on job creation. We're now creating a drag on the opportunities for families. We are creating a drag on the ability to achieve the American Dream--and a college education is part of that dream, but a college education is also critical to keeping this economy and this society moving.

I would hope that my colleagues, whether they are committed to a market rate or not, would understand that this is a very flawed market rate.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

I want to congratulate the gentlewoman for offering this motion to recommit. I think she goes right to the heart of the matter, and that is the uncertainty that is being presented by the legislation on the floor today.

Other Members tried to deal with this issue of uncertainty. Mr. Heck from Nevada tried to deal with this uncertainty by providing an incentive for those students who borrowed money and were able to pay 4 years on steady payments to give them incentive to continue to do that. Mr. Rice of South Carolina sought to have a lower rate.

This lower rate isn't chiseled in granite. This isn't the market rate. This is a choice of the Republican Members of the committee to choose these rates. Mr. Rice thought this time couldn't we have the lower rate to begin with, but the Rules Committee turned that out. Then Obama's plan was offered, and they turned that out.

So now we're stuck, and that's why we need this motion to recommit, to do as the gentlewoman from Arizona has said: to protect the students from the escalation of their interest rates, to protect the students from the escalation of the cost of college.

These are families and students. Companies and colleges create calculators to try to show students what it will cost over 4 years. This legislation takes all of that uncertainty out for families: how they set money aside, how they save money, how they borrow money. Those calculators don't work with this variable rate, and this variable rate can go on and on and on and on. That's the problem here.

This is a big choice for most families. I appreciate for some families that it's not a big deal as they've got enough money. From where I live, my family, people around me, my neighbors, this is a big choice and commitment to finance the education of your children. That's why this motion to recommit from the gentlewoman from Arizona is so important. There should be truth in lending for America's students, truth in lending for America's families, and we should get rid of the rates that will just punish them and crush them into the future as they graduate from college and they seek to participate in the American economy and in a career of their choice with the talents that we need as a Nation.

I want to thank the gentlewoman so very much.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

It was a clear, good vote for our new Commerce Secretary. We are very excited about that vote, 97 to 1. I am going to speak to that, but before I do, I yield to my colleague from the State of Louisiana, Senator Landrieu, for 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I first wish to thank the Gang of 8 and our Judiciary Committee for their work. As was discussed in the last few minutes, there has been an incredible amount of patience and hard work that has gone into this bill, and I am very hopeful we will be able to work out the remaining issues and amendments. I think the strong vote yesterday showed an incredible sense of momentum and bipartisan compromise.

Pritzker Nomination

Speaking of bipartisanship, I wish to address the recent vote, the 97-to-1 vote, for Ms. Penny Pritzker. This is a very positive development at a time when we are seeing a lot of nominations that have been stalled out. As a member of the Commerce Committee, I wish to spend a few minutes talking about her nomination.

I think we all know she is extremely well qualified. Over the course of her career, she has started and led a number of business ventures in a wide range of industries, such as finance, real estate, hospitality, and transportation. She has been an advocate for business and assisted companies in expanding into new markets. She is also a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and is chairman of Skills for America's Future, helping to prepare workers for the 21st century.

When I met with Ms. Pritzker, I was impressed not only by her experienced command of what is going on right now with our economy, obviously, but also her understanding of the Department. As we know, the Department oversees the International Trade Administration, the Patent Office, the Economic Development Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and many others. But beyond that, we talked about the fact the Commerce Secretary can actually be an advocate for business today and for jobs today.

I think one thing long overdue is looking at our top exporting industries in America--whether it is farm machinery, agriculture, movies, all of our top exporting industries, medical devices--and seeing what we can do to help them expand in our country, not in other countries, so they are exporting to the world.

My State has been built on exports over the last few years. We have an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent. Certainly, the growth is due in part to the fact we have recovered now 93 percent of the jobs lost in the downturn in our State, but it is a lot about exports and it is also a lot about tourism, something with which Ms. Pritzker is well acquainted. I think this is literally the low-hanging fruit when it comes to exports. We lost 16 percent in international tourism since 9/ 11, and every point we add back is 161,000 jobs--161,000 jobs--right in this country.

We are starting to do that now. We are starting to do that now because we are finally advertising our country under Brand USA, something the Department of Commerce is greatly involved in overseas, but also because we are speeding up the wait time for visas, something the State Department and the Commerce Department have worked jointly on.

Every visa we get down to 2 to 3 days for a tourist visa means someone will choose to visit the Mall of America in Bloomington or choose to visit Las Vegas or choose to visit South Carolina instead of going to another country, instead of going to London or instead of going to Singapore. We want them to come to the United States of America.

I think this is a big part of the job the Commerce Secretary will need to do to continue the improvements we have seen with tourism, to make sure everyone knows they can have a great vacation in West Virginia and to keep that message going.

Another part of why I am excited about Ms. Pritzker in this job is because we are seeing more and more women in the workplace, as we know. We just did a report on that with the Joint Economic Committee. We need to see even more women in areas they haven't been involved in as much, such as manufacturing. The share of women workers in the manufacturing industry has been declining since 1990 and is now at 27 percent, the lowest level since 1971. At the same time, we have job openings in manufacturing, and we need people to be trained in the new skills for today's manufacturing. This is no longer your grandpa's factory floor. There are new skills needed in robotics, advanced degrees, and others to run the equipment, to make the equipment, and to repair the equipment.

On a more general matter with women--and this is something we discussed at our commerce hearing with

Ms. Pritzker--we just have 17 percent of board seats across manufacturing, 12 percent of executives, and 6 percent of CEOs. So there is a lot of work that can be done there.

I am very excited about this nomination and the work that is ahead for Ms. Pritzker, and I am glad to see such strong bipartisan support in the Senate.

NLRB Nominations

As we continue to negotiate the immigration bill, I would like to talk about one more issue that is vitally important to our country's middle class. I just focused on some of the business issues--whether it is reducing redtape for our businesses, making sure we bring our debt down in a reasonable way or simply looking industry by industry at what we can do to make sure our market share increases--our global market share in America--but we also have the issue of America's workers.

While I am here, I wish to talk about something vitally important to our country's middle class; that is, moving forward with the President's nominations for the National Labor Relations Board so it can get back to work protecting the rights of working Americans and employers.

Over the course of the last few months, the President has nominated a full slate of five very qualified people to serve on the NLRB--three Democrats and two Republicans--all of whom have sterling credentials and a track record of focusing on results and working across the aisle.

The first two nominees were named in February--February--the month we celebrate Valentine's Day, and we are now headed to the Fourth of July. The remaining three were nominated at the beginning of April. Yet we still haven't had a vote. In May, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the five nominees to the NLRB. This was an important first step, and I commend Chairman Harkin for moving forward on these nominations. However, until these nominees are confirmed and the NLRB is up and running, workers and businesses will continue to face uncertainty.

The NLRB rules impact people's daily lives and reflect our values as a country: child labor laws that prevent young kids from being exploited and forced to work instead of going to school, fair pay laws which ensure women get equal compensation for equal work, laws that mandate decent working conditions to protect people from being hurt or injured on the job, and laws that uphold the fundamental rights of workers to organize. The impact of the NLRB is critical to workers.

The Board is the only option available to employers and companies that become the victim of unfair labor actions or run into barriers during negotiations with labor unions. This is for both sides. It is there for employers and for workers. We have a responsibility to show some leadership and begin the process of vetting these nominees in the Senate so the NLRB can get back to work.

This is about providing stability and consistency to workers and businesses, but it is also about doing what is right for American families. My mom was a teacher. She taught public school until she was 70 years old, so I have seen firsthand how important it is for workers to have that right to organize, to have that right to make their case. This is why I have always believed we need a good NLRB, a fair NLRB.

We have a President who has put up five nominees, three Democrats, two Republicans. The last time I checked, this President won the election and he has the right to nominate people for this job.

America was built on a strong middle class, and the NLRB is a critical agency for keeping America moving forward, for ensuring every person can work a steady job, with good wages, provide for their families, and save a little for the future. So there is much at stake, and I urge my colleagues to put politics aside and allow the Senate to move forward with consideration of the full package of five nominees to the National Labor Relations Board.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, we are debating this historic comprehensive immigration reform, something that as a member of the Judiciary Committee I have worked long and hard on, and actually worked back in 2007 when I first got to the Senate. I can't tell you the difference it is doing this 5 years later than it was back in 2007. This time we have a coalition that is incredibly strong, that has withstood a lot of different questions and issues about this bill, that has been able to accommodate concerns raised within the Gang of 8 and then on the Judiciary Committee level, and now after last night's vote adding other requests and other things Members have. But I want to emphasize why this bill is so important from an economic standpoint.

When we were in the Judiciary Committee, we had hearings and we had a number of people testify about the bill and what this bill would do in terms of the debt--something I know the Presiding Officer cares about very much. We had a number of Republican economists come forward and talk about how this bill reduces the debt. There were some early figures out there. Then I held a hearing on the Joint Economic Committee and called Grover Norquist as a witness. I was the first Democratic Senator I know of to call Grover Norquist as my witness. But he came forward and talked about the effects this bill would have in terms of reducing the debt. Lo and behold, last week we got the true numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which showed that in fact this bill reduces the debt by $197 billion in 10 years. Then in response to a request from Senator Sessions, they also looked at the 20-year figure, and it showed it reduces the debt by $700 billion in 20 years. This is one example of what you are seeing with this bill.

We are going to see immigrant workers who have been in the shadows come out to get on a path to citizenship that will take 13 years, who will have to pay taxes, will have to pay fines, will have to learn English if they don't know English. They will have to show their records and make sure they don't have any significant criminal records in order to gain citizenship. But it also means they will be paying taxes that will contribute to the well-being of this country, and they will be paying into systems they haven't been paying into before that help other Americans.

The other point economically is the fact we are going to see a better legal immigration system. That is what our country was built on. Everyone came from another country, when you look at the history of our country. For me, it was Slovenian and Swiss immigrants. My grandfather worked 1,500 feet underground in mines and never even graduated from high school. He saved money in a coffee can to send my dad to college. My mom's side of the family came from Switzerland. My grandmother ran a cheese shop. So I am here standing on the floor of the Senate on the shoulders of immigrants, a grandfather who worked in the mines and another grandparent who worked in a cheese factory. Those are my immigrant roots. We all have them. We have to remember what this bill is about, and we have to remember that 90 of our Fortune 500 companies were actually formed by immigrants--200 formed by children of immigrants--and 30 percent of our U.S. Nobel laureates born in other countries.

So when we look at this, yes, we have to look at the enforcement side and enforcement of the border. That is incredibly important. But we also have to look at the economic engine of America that brought us to where we are and where we want to head and how we are going to compete internationally. We do that by welcoming in America's talent, which will be our talent--most of which is homegrown but some of which comes from other countries.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 232, I call up the bill (H.R. 1911) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to establish interest rates for new loans made on or after July 1, 2013, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1911.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1911, the Smarter Solutions for Students Act.

We're here today to address a crisis of Washington's own making. Several years ago, Congress decided politicians, not the free market, were better equipped to set student loan interest rates. Politicians set a fixed rate of 6.8 percent for all loans and then decided to advance legislation based on a campaign promise that would temporarily phase this rate for subsidized Stafford loans down to 3.4 percent.

Last summer, with the expiration of the lower rate scheduled for July 1, 2012, debate about student loans reached a fever pitch. The President began touring college campuses, calling on Congress to prevent the increase that his own party set in motion back in 2007.

As I said at the time, no one wanted to see interest rates double-- particularly at a time when one out of every two college graduates was struggling to find a full-time job. But we need to move away from a system that allows Washington politicians to use student loan interest rates as bargaining chips, creating uncertainty and confusion for borrowers.

When Congress approved legislation to temporarily stave off the Stafford loan interest rate increase, my colleagues and I lent our support with the promise that we would use this time to work toward a long-term solution that better aligns interest rates with the free market.

The Smarter Solutions for Students Act accomplishes this goal by simply moving all Federal students loans, except Perkins loans, to a market-based interest rate system. This responsible legislation builds upon a proposal that was actually put forth by the President earlier this year.

The Smarter Solutions for Students Act is a narrow piece of legislation that will provide a lasting solution to the problem facing the Federal student loan program. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, some critics would rather kick the can down the road and simply extend the current arbitrary rates at a taxpayer cost of roughly $8 billion. They want to continue the failed status quo and leave politicians in charge of setting rates.

Earlier this week, The Washington Post called it a ``weird fact'' that student loan interest rates:

Aren't pegged to anything real, just to the whims of

Congress, which inevitably uses student loans as political

playthings.

Students deserve better. They shouldn't have to watch as Washington holds their interest rates hostage each election year. They shouldn't have to deal with the uncertainty that comes with waiting for politicians to cobble together another temporary fix to keep interest rates in line with the market.

We have an opportunity today to get politicians out of the business of setting student loan interest rates. We have an opportunity to provide students with more stability in the long run by putting an end to quick fixes and campaign promises, and we have an opportunity to build upon common ground with the administration and advance a bipartisan solution that's a win for both students and taxpayers.

I urge my colleagues to support the Smarter Solutions for Students Act.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I'm now pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri), the vice chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Dr. Roe), the chairman of the Health Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Workforce Protection Subcommittee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Walberg).

Mr. Speaker, in order to balance the speakers, I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I now yield 1 minute to a member of the committee, the gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. DesJarlais.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 3 minutes to another member of the committee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Messer).

I yield the gentleman 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I am prepared to close.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as always in these debates, there is a lot of confusion, and there is a lot of misinformation. We are using that old thing about ``figures lie and liars figure,'' and you've got different guesses for interest rates and reports and all those sorts of things, and I want to get into some of that, but some of it is at the core of our differences here. Let's get a couple of things straight.

We watch what has happened as Congress tries to chase an interest rate and gets in political battles year after year. You'll remember that the 6.8 percent that was put in law was considered a good deal. Then there was the plan to take it from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent for all loans. It didn't work. It costs a lot of money, and it's added to the debt, which is a problem that is still nagging us to this day. So interest rates were taken from 6.8 to 3.4 percent gradually over years. It got down to the point where, for 1 year, the interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans--not the unsubsidized Stafford loans, not the PLUS loans, because we didn't have the money for that--took it down to 3.4 percent for 1 year, and then there wasn't enough money. So, by law, the interest rates on those loans went back up to 6.8 percent, and last year, an election year, we had a big political fight, and that's what you can anticipate, apparently, forever as politicians try to use this as a political pawn and fight over what the student loan interest rates ought to be and what can be afforded.

Mr. Speaker, what can be afforded counts because a problem, as I said, that is continuing to nag us is we have a mountain of debt in this country. We've been running deficits year after year of over $1 trillion. We've got over $16 trillion in debt. We have to face that issue here coming before us. So, while we would like all student loan interest rates to be low and as we want to get them as low as we can, we don't want to add to the mountain of debt that's out there.

We thought that it would be a good idea to let the free market determine what those rates ought to be, and we came forward with a proposal, and we talked about our proposal with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--staff to staff, hour after hour--trying to beat this out staff to staff and in talking to the White House and the Department of Education about what we're doing and what they're doing and what might work out. I talked to the Secretary of Education before this bill was ever introduced because I agreed with the President and the Secretary that we needed a long-term solution and to get out of kicking this can down the road with annual--or maybe it's semiannual or biannual--political battles.

So we moved to the market. We used a 10-year Treasury that the White House was proposing using--center Republicans wanted to use a 10-year Treasury--and then we worked it, Mr. Speaker. We worked it and worked it to get it as close to budget-neutral as we could possibly get it because we want to help students, and we wanted to give them certainty, and we wanted them not to rely on the whims of politicians here, and we wanted also not to put the burden on the American people and the taxpayer, and we wanted not to add to that debt. So we tried to get it close to zero.

We've seen charts down here--I love charts, particularly colored charts. We've seen charts down here that say that our bill is adding billions of dollars to student debt. Well, we've got a counterproposal over there. I think the gentleman from California offered it. It's the President's proposal, President Obama's plan. That additional debt to students is $3.1 billion--ours is $3.7 billion--over 10 years. We tried to come together on this. Mr. Speaker, I think we can continue to try to come together on this, and we need to move this forward.

There are a lot of things we need to do to help students. Certainly, one of them is to help graduates get to work. Half of all college graduates now are underemployed or unemployed, doing things, working in places, employing none of the skills that they learned in college. We need to get the economy going. We're still asking, Where are the jobs? We need to get Americans back to work. You can't get Americans back to work if you just keep piling on mountains and mountains and mountains of debt and piles of regulations, but that's a fight for another day. Income-based repayment systems we didn't touch in our bill, but there are some interesting proposals out there we want to look at. Right now, with this bill, we're just trying to determine who is going to set interest rates--politicians here or the market.

So here is what we've heard from the other side today: that Washington should be in charge of setting interest rates on student loans, that Washington should be in the business of creating confusion and uncertainty for student loan borrowers. Washington cannot agree to a long-term solution that will serve the best interests of students and taxpayers. I think we need to keep working to do that.

It was pointed out that the Senate won't act. Well, for many of us in this body, that's not a lot of news, but July 1 is still July 1, and there is an incentive over there, and I believe the Senate must take action. I look forward to working with them to achieve the long-term solution that I think that we all need to see.

It was pointed out that we have a variable rate. The President has a variable rate but then his fixes. Certainly, under our law, when you graduate, if you're in a low-interest environment, you can consolidate those loans and fix them for the duration of however long you're taking to pay off those loans. If it's in a high interest rate environment, you may not want to do that. In the other plan, you've already got a fixed rate.

We believe we can work together. The only way we can continue to work together to solve this is to pass this legislation. Pass it today. I urge my colleagues to reject the failed status quo and to embrace a responsible long-term solution on behalf of students, families, and hardworking American taxpayers. I urge my colleagues to support the Smarter Solutions for Students Act.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my point of order, and I rise in opposition to the motion.

Mr. Speaker, we're trying to get to a long-term solution on how student loan interest rates are set. I believe the process for that is to pass the underlying legislation here, talk to our Senate colleagues, get them to act so that we can come together and come to a long-term solution.

The gentlelady's motion puts Washington squarely back in the middle of setting student loan interest rates. It's the wrong thing to do. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the motion and vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.