Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2013, at 9:30 a.m., in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2013, at 10:15 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2013, at 9:30 a.m. in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2013, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Mismanagement of POW/MIA Accounting.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights, and Agency Action, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2013, at 2 p.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Justice Delayed: The Human Cost of Regulatory Paralysis.''

Madam President, will my friend from Illinois yield?

Madam President, I call up my amendment which is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, I have a lot of affection for my friend from Iowa Senator Harkin and Senator Durbin from Illinois, but I must respectfully disagree with them and rise in opposition to the bill.

I ask for support for an amendment I am offering which is being cosponsored by a number of Senators. I wish to thank Senator Leahy, Senator Wyden, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Schatz, Senator Murphy, and Senator Hirono for their support for this amendment. I also wish to thank the largest educational organization in America, the National Educational Association, for their support of this amendment, and I thank the American Federation of Teachers for their support of this amendment.

The truth is that if the bill on the floor is passed without amendment, it would be a disaster for the young people of our country who are looking forward to going to college and for the parents who are helping them pay their bills. The job of the Congress, it seems to me, is to improve upon the dismal situation we face today in terms of student indebtedness and college affordability. These are major crises in this country. Millions of kids leaving school are deeply in debt and parents are borrowing at high interest rates to send their kids to college. We have a crisis. This bill makes a bad situation worse, not better.

I ask my colleagues to support the amendment I have offered which would provide a 2-year sunset to this bill--an approach which would prevent student interest rates from soaring and allow us the time, through the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, to deal with the issue of student indebtedness in a constructive long-term manner. This issue is too important not to go through a hearing process, not to go through a committee process. I hope we will pass my amendment, supported by eight other Senators, which will sunset this bill in 2 years and allow us to take advantage of the relatively low interest rates now and prevent student interest rates from soaring into the future.

The very sad truth of the matter is that in a number of ways, our government--Congress, the White House--is failing young Americans today, at all ages. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. Almost 22 percent of our kids live in poverty.

I think every working American understands that our childcare system is a disaster. If a person is a working-class mom or dad in Vermont, or I suspect any other place in this country, it is hard to get the quality childcare they need, so that many kids today, because of inadequate childcare from zero to 3 and 4, enter kindergarten or first grade already years behind where they should be intellectually and emotionally. We are failing our young children.

We are failing our teenage young people as well. Today, the unemployment rate for high school graduates is close to 20 percent. That is the official rate. For real unemployment, counting those who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time when they want to work full time, it is even higher than that. What does that mean for millions of kids who graduate high school, can't get a job their first year out of school, their second year out of school, and their third year out of school? What does this mean for their entire lives? We are not dealing with that issue.

I had passed an amendment as part of the immigration bill to provide 400,000 jobs over a 2-year period for young people. That is a start. We have to go a lot further than that. By and large, we are failing working-class, middle-class young people today who are desperately searching for jobs.

For minority youth--for African-American youth--if my colleagues can believe this, the official unemployment rate for ages 16 to 19 is over 43 percent--over 43 percent, African-American young people, unable to find jobs. That is unacceptable.

Our goal must be to make sure the youth of this country, if they graduate high school and they want to go out into the workforce, are able to get decent jobs or if they choose to go to college, to be able to afford to go to college, and to make sure our young people do not end up on street corners doing drugs--not in jail, not in self- destructive activity. That is our job, to make sure those who have the ability and capability are able to go to college and others are able to get meaningful work. Frankly, we are failing in both of those areas. When we do that, we fail not only the young people of this country but the future of this country because the future by definition is with our young people.

All of us know we live in a highly competitive global economy. If this country is going to succeed economically, we need the best educated workforce in the world. Unfortunately, compared to much of the industrialized world, we are doing very little to make that happen.

In June, the OECD--the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--released its annual snapshot on the state of education in developed nations. The report showed the United States is losing ground to other nations that have made sustained commitments to funding higher education opportunities. We are losing ground, and the legislation on the floor today, which will result over a period of years in a strong likelihood that interest rates for student loans will go up, making it harder for moderate and low-income kids to go to college, will only accelerate those losses.

The United States once led the world in college graduates. Thirty, forty years ago, we led the world in the percentage of our people who were college graduates. In fact, as a result, today those people between age 55 and 64 in the United States still lead their peers in other nations in the percentage with college degrees--about 41 percent. So if a person is between 55 and 64, compared to the rest of the world, that age group has the highest percentage of people who are college graduates.

Tragically, over the years, we have lost substantial ground. In 2008--and this is a very sad story indeed, something that should concern every Member of Congress and every American--the same percentage of Americans aged 25 to 34--the same percentage of that younger group--has a degree compared to the older group of 55 to 64. What does that mean? What it means is that for the last 30 years, every President, every Governor, every Member of Congress, virtually every parent in America has said to our young people: The world is changing. Technology is exploding. A high school degree no longer will do it if you are going to make it into the middle class.

That is what everybody has said for the last 30 years. But 30 years later, nothing has changed. The percentage of Americans who have a college degree today is no higher than it was 30 years ago. The result is that other countries have significantly surpassed us in terms of the percentage of their younger people who now have college degrees.

In terms of the percentage of college graduates, we lag behind Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In other words, where we were once first in the world in terms of percentage of college graduates, we are now 15th in the world.

How do we compete in a global economy if we have descended from first to fifteenth in the world in terms of people with college degrees? That is why

on the immigration bill we have people coming to the floor and saying: Americans are not educated. They cannot do these high-tech jobs. We need people from all over the world to come in to do that work.

Well, I do not agree with that, but that is the argument out there: Our people do not have the education. Does anyone believe in any serious way the bill on the floor today is beginning--beginning--to address the issue of making it easier for kids in this country to go to college? The answer is nobody does because, according to CBO projections, interest rates are going to go up, and, in fact, it is going to be harder for families to send their kids to college. I will get into that in a moment.

The other very important point to be made--and I think a lot of people do not understand this--according to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. Government is making huge profits--huge profits--from college loans. In fact, according to the CBO, the estimate is that the U.S. Government will make about $184 billion in profits over the next 10 years.

So what do we have? We have a middle class which is disappearing. We have poverty at a level as high as it has been in the last 60 years. We have millions and millions of families struggling to be able to send their kids to college. My parents did not go to college. My brother and I were the first in our family to go to college. Millions of families are in the same boat.

What is the U.S. Government doing now? We are helping to balance the budget not by asking multinational corporations--that make billions of dollars a year in profit and pay nothing in Federal income taxes--to pay their fair share of taxes; no, that is not what we are doing. We are saying to working-class and middle-class families: Oh, you want to send your kids to college? You want to borrow money from the government? Well, over the next 10 years we are going to make $184 billion in profits off of you.

Let me go on record as saying I think that is a very counterproductive idea. It is a dumb idea. We have to get out of the business of making profits off of struggling families who want nothing more than to be able to send their kids to college.

Let's be very clear about what the legislation on the Senate floor would do. According to CBO--and I fully agree; I do not know what interest rates are going to be tomorrow, next year. You do not. Nobody does. And the CBO is by no means infallible. But the CBO and most economists believe we are leaving this period where interest rates have been historically low. Are they absolutely right? I do not know. Could they be wrong? Quite possibly. But that is what the CBO is estimating. This is what the CBO says.

The CBO says the 10-year Treasury note on which this entire legislation is based is now at 1.8 percent. In 2014 it will be at 2.57 percent; in 2015 it will be at 3.35 percent; in 2016 it will be at 4.24 percent; in 2017 it will be at 4.95 percent; in 2018 it will be at 5.2 percent.

Everybody has to understand that what this legislation is about is basing student loans on a variable interest rate. Interest rates go up; student loans go up.

So let's look at what will happen with student loans under this legislation. The good news is that because interest rates are low now, for the next few years the interest rate for the subsidized Stafford loans will be, in 2013, 3.8 percent; in 2014, 4.6 percent; in 2015, 5.4 percent; in 2016, 6.2 percent; in 2017, 7 percent, in 2018, 7.2 percent. That is for undergraduates.

For the graduate Stafford loans, under this proposal on the floor today, in 2015, 6.9 percent; in 2016, 7.8 percent; in 2017, 8.5 percent; in 2018, 8.8 percent.

For the PLUS loans--those are for parents who are helping their kids--in 2015, 7.9 percent; in 2016, 8.8 percent; in 2017, 9.5 percent; in 2018, 9.8 percent.

Now, does anybody really believe that at a time when families and young people are having an enormously difficult time paying for college that these interest rates make any sense whatsoever? They do not. They are going to put an increased burden on working families and young people.

Today, the average student graduating from a 4-year college leaves school $27,000 in debt. If you are paying interest rates of 7 percent or 8.5 percent for graduate school, there is no doubt in my mind that indebtedness will rise.

Furthermore, not only is it a question of families and young people struggling with enormous debt--on my Web site I asked Vermonters and people all over the country to tell me what the impact would be on their lives of student indebtedness. We heard just enormously painful stories from people who said: You know what. My husband and I wanted to have a baby. We cannot have a baby right now because we do not have the funds. We are paying off our student debt.

We heard from people who are going into professions they really did not want to go into because they just have to make a whole lot of money to pay off their debt rather than doing what was the love of their life, what they studied to do. So what we have is a bad situation which, if the CBO is correct, will only make that situation worse.

My amendment is not my preferred option. My preferred option would be to do what a majority of the Members in the Senate voted to do, which is to freeze interest rates for another year at 3.4 percent while we come up with a long-term solution. My Republican colleagues, as they do on virtually every piece of major legislation, chose to filibuster that bill, and we needed 60 votes. I think we only got 51. A majority spoke for the American people, for the young people, for working families, but we could not get the 60 votes. That was my preferred option.

But this approach, at least, and what my amendment would do is to say, OK, between 2013 and 2014 we will keep interest rates fairly low-- not as low as I would want it--4.6 percent for undergraduate Stafford loans, 6.1 percent for graduate Stafford loans, and 7.1 percent for the PLUS program. It is not ideal by any means, but it is a lot better than what will likely take place in years to come. So we take the best of this bill and sunset it at the end of 2 years.

So if people say there is no option to going forward as opposed to 6.8 percent, I say: Sorry, you are wrong. There is an option. That is what we have done. We have a 2-year sunset on this bill that would be at least a reasonable compromise to give us the opportunity to take a hard look at the higher education bill and figure out two issues: how we create low-interest loans over a long period of time and, second of all, how we, in fact, make college more affordable than it currently is.

Let me be a little bit political, as I finish my remarks, and say this: I respect everybody's point of view, and there are different points of view here. But I think what a lot of Americans are asking themselves--they say: Well, let's see. We just had elections in November, and we were told elections matter. We had a candidate for President of the United States, Barack Obama, who won a very decisive victory, who ran on the platform of saying: Hey, I am going to stand up for the middle class. I am going to stand up for working families.

We had an election in which Democrats, Independents, retained control of the Senate. Now there are 54 votes in the Democratic caucus, and almost without exception Democratic candidates--I ran--Independents stand for working families, stand for the middle class.

So what I do not understand is, when we have a Democratic President, a Democratically-controlled Senate, why we are producing a bill which is basically a Republican bill--very close to what the House Republicans passed.

As most people know, the House Republicans are perhaps the most conservative majority in the House that we have seen maybe ever--the most conservative body. They say: This is a pretty good bill. We will accept it.

Well, if the most rightwing Congress in American history thinks this is a pretty good bill, I would hope that many Democrats would say maybe there is something wrong with this bill; maybe we can do something better than that.

The other point I would make, as I did a moment ago--and people have to understand this--a majority of the Members of the Senate voted to keep interest rates at 3.4 percent for another year. Fifty-one Members voted for that. Most people assume that 51 out of 100 is a majority. But we were unable to pass that legislation because of a Republican filibuster.

What we have seen on virtually every single important piece of legislation is that the majority does not rule in the Senate. We need to have a supermajority of 60 votes. The result is legislation like this, which could well end up raising interest rates for students and their families to an absolutely unacceptable level.

So let me conclude by saying we have a huge crisis in this country. The crisis is that today hundreds of thousands of bright young people who have graduated from high school are now saying--now saying--I would love to go to college. I can do it. I would like to be a professional. I would like to be a doctor. I would like to be a nurse. I would like to do one of many professions. I would love to do it. I am smart enough to do it. I have the drive to do it. I just come from a family that does not have the money to send me to college.

So for those hundreds of thousands of young people whose dream it was to go to college, this legislation only makes that situation worse because it will make college even more unaffordable. Let's be clear: This is a loss not only to those families and to those young people; it is a loss to our country.

A couple months ago I had the Ambassador from Denmark come to the State of Vermont to do some town meetings with me.

The Presiding Officer may or may not know the cost of college education in Denmark in terms of out-of-pocket costs. It is zero. It is zero. It is not just Denmark, there are a number of countries around the world that have the intelligence to understand that the most important thing they can do is invest in their young people. So they say to their young people: You do well in school, regardless of your income, and you are going to be able to go to the best colleges we have. Not only the best colleges but graduate school, medical school, law school, and your cost will be zero.

You know what. I think that is pretty smart. I think investing in our young people is investing in the future of our country. That is what some countries do. They make college education free in terms of out-of- pocket cost. Other countries do not go that far.

I live an hour away from the Canadian border. They heavily subsidize college. So we are seeing many American kids now going off to fine colleges and universities in Canada, where even for people from the United States college costs are less than they are in the United States.

In terms of what we are demanding of young people and parents in out- of-pocket expenses, there is no country in the industrialized world that asks more than we do. The result is that we have seen virtually no gain in the last 30 years in terms of the percentage of our people graduating from college.

We have a crisis. It is a crisis which impacts millions of young people: those who have given up on the dream of college and those who are graduating from college deeply in debt.

It impacts our entire Nation. It is insane to me that we are conceding to other countries around the world and saying: OK, you are graduating large numbers of people. You are allowing them to go to college. But we in this great country, we cannot do that. It makes no sense to me at all. It is bad for the future of this country, bad for our economy, bad for millions of families.

The legislation on the floor today only makes a bad situation worse. It is based on variable interest rates. It is, according to the CBO, likely that those interest rates will rise. In 2018, we are talking about subsidized Stafford loans at 7.25; graduate rates, 8.8; PLUS loans, 9.8. Can anybody really come to the floor and tell me this is where we want to go as a country? So we have a bad situation which we have to address, not make it worse.

Once again, I wish to thank all of the Senators who have cosponsored this legislation: Senators Leahy, Wyden, Whitehouse, Gillibrand, Blumenthal, Schatz, Murphy, and Hirono. I want to thank the NEA, the largest educational organization in the country, for their support, and the American Federation of Teachers for their support.

Let's stand tall today for the working families of this country who believe in the American dream, and that dream is significantly about the desire of our young people to do better than we have done. That was the dream my parents had. It is the dream that millions of families have had. An important part of that dream is to work hard as a parent to enable my kid to get a college degree.

We are failing millions of families right now. This legislation will make a bad situation worse. We can do better. We can do better. Let's stand with the working families of our country today. Let's reject the underlying amendment, and let's pass the Sanders amendment.

With that, I ask unanimous consent the time during quorum calls be charged equally.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to thank Senators Leahy, Wyden, Brown, Whitehouse, Gillibrand, Merkley, Blumenthal, Schatz, Murphy, and Hirono for supporting this amendment. I also wish to thank the NEA and the AFT, the two largest teachers organizations in the country, for supporting this amendment.

This amendment is very simple. It sunsets this legislation after 2 years, takes advantage of current, relatively low interest rates, and gives us the time to reauthorize the Higher Education Act and come up with sensible long-term solutions to the crisis of student indebtedness and college affordability.

According to the CBO, by the year 2018, under this legislation undergraduate Stafford loans will be 7.25 percent, graduate Stafford loans will be 8.8 percent, and parent loans will be 9.7 percent. We have a crisis right now in student indebtedness. We need to solve that crisis, not make it worse.

I ask for support of this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I rise this morning in strong opposition to the legislation which I assume is coming to the floor today which, if passed, would be a disaster for the young people of our country who are looking forward to going to college and for their parents who are helping them pay their bills. Our job is to improve the dismal situation in terms of college affordability and the indebtedness of young people in this country, to improve that situation, to make it better, not to make it worse, and that is exactly what this proposed legislation would do.

I ask for support from my colleagues for an amendment I have filed that would provide a 2-year sunset to this bill, an approach that would prevent student interest rates from soaring and allow us the time, through the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, to deal with this problem through a constructive long-term solution. This issue is too important to be rushed through this body without hearings, without listening to the people who will be affected by this bill--the millions of young people who wish to go to college, who do not want to leave school in deep debt, and their parents as well. We should be listening to them, not rushing this bill through today.

I thank Senators Leahy, Whitehouse, Gillibrand, and Schatz for their cosponsorship of this amendment. I look forward to widespread support from my colleagues.

Let's be honest about something we do not talk about enough; that is, in many ways our government is selling out the young people of our country. When we do that, when we ignore the needs of the young people of our country, in many ways we are selling out the future of the United States of America because the young people are the future.

If we do not turn this around, I fear very much that we will continue on the downward spiral we have seen for the last several decades, a spiral in which the rich get richer, Wall Street and the multinational corporations continue to enjoy recordbreaking profits, while the middle class continues to disappear and poverty remains catastrophically high. If we pass the legislation on the floor today without improving it, we will simply be taking one more step in the wrong direction.

Before I get into the gist of what this legislation is about and what my amendment will do, let me say a few words about where we are today with regard to the young people in our country.

At this moment the United States has, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth--almost 22 percent. In many parts of this country we are seeing a lack of social mobility, where people who are poor, who grow up poor, stay poor. That is not what this country is supposed to be about.

At this moment the childcare situation in this country is beyond disgraceful. Millions of working families are unable to find affordable quality childcare, and many of our young people enter kindergarten and first grade years behind where they should be, both intellectually and emotionally.

At this moment the unemployment rate for high school graduates is close to 20 percent. That is the official rate. The real rate, including those who are working part time and those who have given up looking for work, is actually much higher. If you can believe this--and this is a statistic that should frighten us all; it should make us all ashamed--the official unemployment rate for Black youth age 16 to 19 is 43.6 percent.

I share the concerns many people have recently expressed about the tragic death in Florida of Trayvon Martin. But let's not forget that there are tens of thousands of other young African-American kids all over this country who are worried about where they are going to go with their lives. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics informs us, one out of three African-American men can expect to go to prison during his lifetime. What a horrible waste of human potential.

Our goal must be to see that these young people are ending up in college or in decent jobs--not in jail, not dying from drug overdoses, not involved in petty crime or self-destructive activities. This legislation will simply make it harder for those kids and for all kids to get the higher education they need in order to succeed in life.

Right now, today, hundreds of thousands of young people in this country who have the ability to go to college are looking at the cost of college, the indebtedness they will incur, and they are saying: No, I am not going to go to college.

What does that say about the future of this country?

This legislation, which over a period of years will drive interest rates even higher than they are today, will make it harder for the average kid, the working-class kid to get to college. All of us know we live in a very competitive global economy. If we are going to succeed as a nation in this competitive economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world. Unfortunately, compared to the rest of the world, we are doing virtually nothing to make that happen.

In June the OECD--the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--released its annual snapshot on the state of education in developed nations. The report showed that the United States is losing ground to other countries that have made sustained commitments in funding higher education opportunities. We are losing ground, and the legislation on the floor today--again, over a period of years raising interest rates extremely high--will make that bad situation even worse.

The United States once led the world in college graduates. As a result, interestingly enough, older Americans--those between age 55 and 64--still lead their peers in other nations around the world in the percentage with college degrees, which is 41 percent. But, according to a very thoughtful report from CNN, this number over the years has flatlined. In 2008--and this is a very sad story indeed--the same percentage of Americans age 25 to 34 and age 55 to 64 were college graduates. In other words, in that 30-year period we made no progress at all. During that period, as we all know, with the explosion of technology, what we have said to our young people is, you desperately need a college education. Yet, in terms of percentage of our people with college degrees, we are exactly where we were 30 years ago. Meanwhile, other countries all over the world have significantly surpassed us in terms of the number of people in those countries who are college graduates. In fact, right now, where once we were first in the world in terms of the percentage of our people who are college graduates, today we are 15th in the world.

Many people do not understand that today the U.S. Government is making huge profits off of higher education and

the loans we are providing to our young people and to their parents. In fact, the estimate is that we will make about $184 billion in profits over the next 10 years. To my mind, making huge profits off of young people and their families who want nothing more than to fulfill the American dream of being able to go to college or graduate school and get out and earn a decent wage and make it into the middle class is obscene. We should not be profiteering off working families who are trying to send their kids to college. Yet, with the current legislation that will be on the floor, over a 10-year period we will be making $184 billion in profit.

Some people say: We have a deficit. We need to go forward with deficit reduction. This will help us to the tune of $184 billion in a 10-year period.

I say: If you want to do deficit reduction, don't take it out on working families, low-income families who are struggling to send their kids to college when one out of four major corporations in this country--many of which make billions of dollars a year in profit--is paying zero in taxes. If you want to do deficit reduction, ask those multinational corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes, not working families who are struggling.

Let's be clear about what this legislation that I expect will be on the floor shortly will do. It provides a variable interest rate. Let's look at what the CBO is telling us about where we may be going with interest rates in the coming years. What the CBO tells us is that in 2013 a 10-year Treasury note, on which this formula is based, is 1.81 percent; in 2014 it will be 2.57 percent; 2015, 3.35 percent; 2016, 4.24 percent; 2017, 4.95 percent. Those are CBO projections.

Based on the formula in this bill, here is what Americans will be paying for student loans. The good news is that because interest rates are low now, in 2013 it will be 3.86 percent for subsidized Stafford undergraduate loans; in 2014, 4.62 percent; 2015, 5.40 percent; 2016, 6.29 percent; 2017, 7 percent, according to CBO.

Under the graduate Stafford Loan Program, we are going to go from 5.4 percent to 6.1 percent, to 6.9 percent. In 2016, we will be at 7.8 percent and in 2017 we will be at 8.55 percent. By the way, all of those figures are below the cap in the bill.

What about the parents who are helping their students through the PLUS Loan Program? In 2013 it starts at 6.3 percent; 2014, 7 percent; 2015, 7.8 percent; 2016, 8.7 percent; 2017, 9.4 percent. In other words, people will get up here and say that initially interest rates will be low--because interest rates are low--but they are not telling us that in years to come interest rates are going to go up to unsustainable levels.

My amendment says: OK. Interest rates are low today. Let's take advantage of that fact, and let's sunset this bill in 2 years, where we can then have interest rates that are reasonably low--not as low as I would like them--and will not be prohibitive. Then, through the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, we can sit down and deal with two issues: No. 1, how are we, on a long-term basis, going to provide affordable loans, scholarships, and grants to the people of this country who need to advance their education? No. 2, how are we going to deal with the entire issue of college affordability? College in the United States costs much more than it does in virtually every other country on Earth.

We have over $1 trillion in debt in terms of college loans. College loans have tripled since 2004. Young people are graduating from college with $27,000 in debt. That is average. Some students have more debt. I have talked to dentists who went to dental school and are now over $200,000 in debt from their dental school bills.

We have a crisis right now, and it is a crisis which not only impacts the lives of millions of people and families in our country, it impacts our whole Nation economically in terms of whether we are going to have a well-educated workforce to compete in the global economy.

The legislation that is on the floor only makes a bad situation worse. The result of it will be more student debt than we currently have. The result of that legislation will be more young people who say: I don't want to get out of college and have a $50,000 debt, so I am not going to go to college. I guess I will never make it to the middle class and never be able to contribute to the country I love in a way that I thought was possible. We have to do better than this legislation.

The last point I wish to make is a political point: elections matter. The Presiding Officer recently ran for office. I ran for office in November. President Obama ran for office. When we run for office, we tell the American people what we believe and what we are going to fight for. The end result of those elections is that Barack Obama won a decisive victory. He is the President of the United States. What he campaigned on is: I am going stand up for the middle-class. The other guys aren't going to do it, so I am going to do it. What I ran on--as well as many of my colleagues--was: We are going to stand up for the middle class.

The results came in, and you know what. Barack Obama won. We have a Democratic President. As of today, the Senate has 54 Democrats. My question is: Why, with a Democratic President and a strong Democratic majority in the Senate, are we looking at legislation which is virtually the same as the legislation passed by an extremely conservative Republican House of Representatives? How does that happen?

What are we telling our constituents who voted for us? We said we were going to stand for the middle class. If we are going to stand for the middle class, we are standing for the affordability of college. We need to stand up for working-class kids so they can have the opportunity to be the first in their family--as I was in my family--to be able to go to college. We are talking to African-American kids and saying: You know what. There are alternatives to crime and jail. You too can go to college. Those are the people we are supposed to be talking to. I fear very much that the legislation that is coming to the floor will not do that. In fact, it will make people say: What is the difference? What is the difference between the House and the Senate?

I ask that my colleagues support my amendment. It will give us the time to come up with a long-term solution to a very serious problem.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I thank my friend from Illinois for all the work he has done on this issue and so many other issues. He knows I disagree with him on this and do not intend to vote for this bipartisan agreement.

He makes a good point in saying we don't have the votes. We don't. We don't have the votes because we have a political party here that could care less about the needs of working families and about college affordability.

I would say to my friend from Illinois that if we are going to win this fight and protect college students, we have to take the fight to the American people. When we work with Republicans to make college unaffordable, then the American people are going to say: What is the alternative?

So from a political strategy, I would say to my friend from Illinois we have the people on our side. We have parents on our side and we have young people on our side. Our job is to bring forth a proposal that they can demand be accepted. If we collapse on this issue, then they are going to be looking out and saying: What is the alternative?

The Senator from Illinois makes a valid point; that in the next few years, in fact, it is not a bad deal. It is not as good as I would like, but it is not a bad deal. That is why, as I mentioned to the Senator a few moments ago, I will be bringing forth an amendment to say: Let us sunset this agreement in 2 years. We are bringing up the higher education authorization bill. It will give us an opportunity to deal with this issue of student loans and the higher cost of college in general. Why do we need a permanent bill right now when we are going to be working in the fairly near future on the higher education bill?

So my view is a 2-year sunset to this bill. It is not everything I want, but it will protect students. If we are going to talk about variable interest rates, let them at least take advantage of lower interest rates.

What CBO is projecting is that in years to come interest rates are going to go up. According to the CBO, under this legislation, the good news is that interest rates would only be, for Stafford subsidized, 3.86; in 2014, it will be 4.6, not so good; 2015, 5.4, really not good; 2016, 6.29, worse; 2017, 7 percent; 2018, 7.25; and, by the time we get to 2023, it would also be at 7.25.

We have a crisis right now in terms of student indebtedness. Why would we want to make that crisis even worse?

The second point I would make is that right now it is estimated that the Federal Government will earn about $180 billion in profits over the next 10 years on student loans. I suggest that while I have no problem with the Federal Government making profits on this or that endeavor, this is not a particularly good area to be making profits because they are making profits off of low- and moderate-income people who want to send their kids to college.

I can think of a lot better ways to make money, to help us with the deficit, than by forcing low- and moderate-income parents and students to pay more than they should be paying. If we want to do deficit reduction, maybe we can ask the one out of four corporations in America that pays nothing in taxes to start paying their fair share of taxes. Maybe we can address growing wealth and income inequality in a way that brings us in more revenue. But it is almost a form of regressive taxation to say to low- and moderate-income students and families: You want to go to college, you want to make something of yourself, you want to make it into the middle class, you want to help make our Nation more competitive--and in a 10-year period we are going to make $180 billion in profits off of your desire to go to college. I think that is wrong.

If we look around the world, in an increasingly competitive global economy what we find is that we are at the very bottom in terms of the kind of support we give our young people and their families to go to college. Right now in Vermont, which is a little bit higher than the national average, our young people are graduating from a 4-year school $28,000 in debt. That is on average, meaning lower income young people will graduate deeper in debt.

What does it mean in a difficult economy, a challenging economy, to start off your adult life $40,000 or $50,000 in debt? If you go to graduate school, that number goes way up. I talked to a couple of young dentists in Vermont last year. They had over $200,000 in debt starting off their professional careers--dentists, doctors, people in graduate school.

A couple of months ago I had the Ambassador from Denmark come to the State of Vermont to do some town meetings with me. Do you know how much debt young people who graduate college, graduate school, medical school, in Denmark have? They have zero because that country and many other countries have made what I think is the rational conclusion that it is important to invest in our young people. We need their intellectual capital, we need the best educated workforce that we can get, and we want to encourage people to go to college, not discourage them by high college costs.

I think we can do a lot better than this bipartisan bill. The danger with the bipartisan bill is that the CBO and virtually all economists tell us interest rates are going up. If you peg your student loan to a variable interest rate, and those interest rates are going up, then the proof is in the pudding, according to the CBO, that in a number of years students are going to be paying very high interest rates.

Given the fact we are going to be dealing with higher education reauthorization within a year, which needs to tackle a whole lot of issues within the issue of higher education, including student loans, my suggestion will be, and my amendment will be to say: Let's sunset this legislation at the end of 2 years. Let's take advantage of the low-interest loans and give us the time to come up with a long-term plan.

I look forward to my colleagues supporting that amendment.

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

Mr. President, let me begin by concurring with the remarks of Senator Cardin. Tom Perez will make an excellent Secretary of Labor, and I strongly support his nomination.

Madam President, I am glad an agreement has been reached in which President Obama will finally get Senate confirmation votes on his appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Labor, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. This agreement, as I understand it, will also provide that the President's new nominees for the National Labor Relations Board will be rapidly confirmed. That is a step forward.

While this agreement addresses the immediate need for the President of the United States to have his Cabinet and his senior staff confirmed, this agreement today only addresses one symptom of a seriously dysfunctional Senate. The issue that must now be addressed is how we create a process and a set of rules in the Senate that allows us to respond to the needs of the American people in a timely and effective way--something virtually everyone agrees is not happening now. The Senate cannot function with any degree of effectiveness if a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to pass virtually any piece of legislation and if we waste huge amounts of time not debating the real issues facing working people but waiting for motions to proceed hour after hour where nobody is even on the floor of the Senate.

The good news is that I think the Nation is now focused on the dysfunctionality of the Senate and the need for us to have rules or a process that allows us to address the enormous problems facing our country. When people ask why is it that Congress now has a favorability rating of less than 10 percent, the answer is fairly obvious: The middle class of this country is disappearing. Real unemployment is somewhere around 14 percent. The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Millions of people are working in jobs that pay them poverty wages. Tens of millions of people today lack health care, while we have the most expensive and wasteful health care system in the world. The greatest planetary crisis facing our Nation and the entire world is global warming, and we are not even debating that issue.

The Senate is a very peculiar institution. It is peculiar in the sense that any one Member--one of 100--can come down here on the floor and utter two magical words that bring the Senate to a complete halt; that is, ``I object.'' I will not allow the Senate to go forward, which means the whole government shuts down. I object. I object.

What we have seen in recent years--especially since Barack Obama was elected--is an unprecedented level of ``I object,'' of holds, of a variety of mechanisms that bring the functioning of the Senate to a halt. All of this takes place at a time when millions of people cannot find jobs and at a time when kids are graduating college deeply in debt and millions of others are now choosing not to go to college because we are not addressing the issue of higher education. It takes place at a time when our infrastructure--our roads and bridges and airports and rail systems--is crumbling, when our educational system is in need of major reform, and the gap between the people on top and everybody else is growing wider.

The American people perceive this country has major problems that must be addressed. What does the Senate do? We are sitting here waiting 30 hours for a motion to proceed, to see if, in fact, we can vote on a piece of legislation that requires 60 votes. Time and time again we do not get those votes.

When votes come up, I would like to win, to be on the winning side. That is natural. Everybody would. But what happens here--and the American people by and large do not fully understand it--we do not vote on issues. What happens is the debate ceases because we do not get motions to proceed. So we do not vote on a jobs program, we vote on whether we can proceed to a jobs program to create millions of jobs. We do not vote on whether we can keep interest rates low for college students who are borrowing money, we vote on whether we can proceed to have the vote.

What we have seen in the last several years is an unprecedented level of obstructionism and filibustering. Between 1917 and 1967 there was more or less an agreement in the Senate that a filibuster would only be used under exceptional circumstances. There were only some 40 or 45 filibusters in a 50-year period. When Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the late 1950s, in his 6-year tenure as majority leader he had to overcome a filibuster on one occasion. Since Harry Reid has been majority leader in the last 6\1/2\ years, he has had to overcome 400 filibusters or at least requirements for 60 votes. The amount of time we are wasting is unconscionable.

Furthermore, what the American people do not know is that time after time we are winning. We have the votes to win and have shown that on very important issues. In terms of one major issue, just as an example, right now, rather tragically, we have a situation as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision that corporations and billionaires can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections.

As bad as that is, what is even worse, they can hide their contributions--not make them public. Guess what. The Senate by a majority vote said: That is wrong. If you are going to contribute huge amounts of money into the political process, the people have a right to know who you are.

We have a majority vote on this issue. We could not get it passed because we needed 60 votes.

The American people know our tax system is enormously flawed. We have major corporations--General Electric and other corporations--that in a given year, after making billions of dollars in profits, pay zero in Federal taxes. Legislation was passed on the floor of the Senate by a majority--legislation that begins to address that issue--but we did not have 60 votes.

We provided emergency relief to senior citizens who several years ago were getting no COLAs for Social Security. We had a majority vote but could not get 60 votes.

We had a majority vote to say that women should be paid equal pay for equal work. A majority of Senators said that. We couldn't get it passed.

What we have seen in recent years is reasonably good legislation getting a majority vote, but we cannot get it passed because time after time we need 60 votes. What we are operating under now is a tyranny of the minority.

The American people go to vote. They elect Obama President, and they elect a Democratic Senate. People who campaigned on certain issues--as people go forward trying to implement their campaign promises, they cannot do it because we cannot get 60 votes.

Once again, at one point in Senate history, from 1917 to 1967, the filibuster was used very sparingly--only in exceptional circumstances. Since that point, have Democrats--and I speak as an Independent--have Democrats abused the system? Have they been obstructionist? There are times when they have been. But since 2008 what has happened is the Republicans have taken obstructionism to an entirely new level. Virtually every piece of legislation now requires 60 votes, and virtually every piece of legislation requires an enormous amount of time.

What do we do? My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have made the point that the Senate is not the House. And they are right. In the House there are 435 Members and majority rules. The majority has a whole lot of power. The minority doesn't have that much power. People have said: We do not want the Senate to be like the House, and I agree with that. The Senate should not be the House.

Senate Members should be guaranteed the right to offer amendments, not be shut out of the process. Whether you are the minority or the majority, you should have the right to offer amendments. There should be thorough and lengthy debate. If a Member of the Senate wants to stand here on the floor and speak hour after hour to call attention to some issue he or she believes is important, that Senator has the right, in my view, to do that. If that debate goes on for a week, it goes on for a week. Senators, whether in the minority or the majority, have the right to call attention and to debate and focus on issues they consider to be

important. But at the end of that debate there must be finality. There must be a majority vote--51 votes should win. The concept I support is what is called the talking filibuster. Minority rights must be protected. They must have all the time they need to make their point. But majority rights must also be protected. If democracy means anything, what I learned in the third grade was that the majority rules, not the minority.

What is happening in our country is not only enormous frustration about the very serious economic and environmental problems we face, there is huge outrage at the inability of Congress to even debate those issues.

For example, I am a very strong believer that the minimum wage in this country must be significantly raised. It is now about $7.25. I would like it to go up to $10 an hour, and even at $10 an hour people working 40 hours a week will still be living in poverty, but we have to raise the minimum wage. My strong guess is that if we do not change the rules, despite overwhelming support in this country for raising the minimum wage, we will never get an up-or-down vote here on that issue because Republicans will obstruct, demand 60 votes, and filibuster the issue.

If my Republican friends are so confident in the points of view they are advocating, bring them to the floor and let's have an up-or-down vote. Let the American people know how I feel on the issue, how you feel on the issue, but let's not have issues decided because we could not get 60 votes for a motion to proceed. Nobody in America understands what that is about. Do you want to vote against the minimum wage? Have the guts to come and vote against the minimum wage. Do you want to vote against women's rights? Come on up, have your say, and vote against women's rights. Do you want to vote against global warming? Vote against global warming. At least let us have the debate the American people are demanding.

I will conclude by saying I am glad the President will finally be able to get some key appointees seated. I was a mayor so I know how terribly important it is for a chief executive to have their team around them. I am glad he will get some key appointees.

Everyone should understand that what we are doing today is dealing with one very small part of an overall problem, which is the dysfunctionality of the Senate. I hope--having addressed the immediate crisis--we can now go on and address the broader issue, which is making the Senate responsive to the needs of the American people. Let's have serious debates on serious issues and let's see where the chips fall.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, over the July 4th recess I had the opportunity to talk with a number of young families about the crisis of student debt. Without exception, this is what they said: Please do not double the interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans from 3.4 to 6.8 percent.

Please make college financing more affordable, not more expensive.

This is an issue which not only impacts millions of families, it impacts our entire future as a nation and our economy. Right now, working-class families all over this country are asking themselves a very simple question: Does it make sense for them to go $40,000, $50,000, $100,000 in debt in order to get a college education? Many of these young people and families are saying: No, it doesn't make sense.

So in a competitive global economy, we are saying to families all over this country that we do not want their kids to get a college education. We don't want them to become doctors, nurses, businesspeople, scientists, and teachers. We don't want them to expand their intellectual capabilities and make us a competitive nation in this highly competitive global economy.

Now, if that makes sense to somebody, it surely does not make sense to me. The doubling of student loan interest only makes an existing crisis even worse. According to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the total student loan debt in the United States now exceeds $1.1 trillion, which is nearly triple what it was in 2004. The average loan balance for American graduates has increased by 70 percent since 2004.

Average student debt is near $27,000. In Vermont, it is even higher-- over $28,000.

The burden of student loans is making it much harder for young people to get mortgages and buy homes. Home ownership rates for young adults are among the lowest in decades. Young people are putting off marriage and having children partly because of the burden of student debt.

Over the last several months I have asked Vermonters--and people, in fact, all over the country--to send me their experiences, to tell me what this crushing debt of student loans means to their lives. We received over 700 responses from all over America. What I would like to do is very briefly read to you some of the responses I received from the State of Vermont.

Emily Decker from Colchester, VT writes:

Watching the interest eat away my savings every month is

hard to swallow. To the point where we are not saving any

money because we put anything extra toward my loans so we can

pay them back ASAP. This is putting our plans for having a

family on hold because we want to have our finances in better

order before doing so.

In other words, Emily writes they are hesitating having kids because they can't afford to do so at the current time.

Andrew Craft from Burlington, VT writes:

I am a 25 year old full-time college student at Champlain

College. I am a single mother. I am already $20,000 in debt

and I still have one more year to go before I graduate. I am

currently at an internship working part-time on top of school

and parenting, but I often feel like I am not ever going to

be able to ``get ahead'' and ``make it'' in spite of my

advantages.

Allison LaFlamme from Johnson, VT writes:

I cannot refinance my house, because even though my cars,

home, and credit cards are perfect on my credit score our

debt to income is too high because of our student loans.

Melissa Weber from Rutland, VT writes:

I have found myself struggling to survive independently as

a 25 year old with a Master's Degree. Yes I have achieved a

degree, of which I am proud, but I have also accumulated an

immense amount of debt that will likely haunt me for the

majority of my life. As a result of my daunting loan payments

I find myself barely surviving on an income that should

easily support a small family.

Evan Champagne from St. Albans, VT writes:

My wife and I both have $50K-$60K of loan debt each. We

both have good jobs, but a large percentage of our income is

used to pay back student loans. There are no low interest

consolidation options available. If there were, that would

also help. The education process should be rewarding and

create opportunities. For my wife and I, it did the opposite.

The American people want us to come together and solve this problem now, not make the situation worse. When we tell people who are struggling with these horrendous debts that the Stafford subsidized loan rate is going to double and there are proposals out there that make a bad situation worse, they respond in disbelief. They remember in 2009 when Wall Street collapsed because of their greed and illegal behavior, we bailed them out. They understand that today we are providing large Wall Street institutions with interest rates of less than 1 percent. They are asking: If you can bail out Wall Street-- people whose greed caused the current recession--how come you can't protect working-class and middle-class families and enable their kids to get an affordable college education?

The Republicans in the House passed a proposal. Unfortunately, it is a proposal which makes a bad situation worse. Under the House Republicans' proposal, all student loans would have variable interest rates, exposing graduates to market conditions. Even though the House Republicans' proposal caps interest rates, the Congressional Research Service estimates that students who take out the maximum subsidized student loan amount will pay nearly $6,000 more over the life of that loan than they would if rates are kept where they are today.

The so-called bipartisan student loan bill being discussed in the Senate would also be a terrible deal for students, especially in the coming years. It provides no cap to protect students for the first time in the history of the student loan program. If this proposal were to pass, according to CBO projections of interest rates, by 2018 student loan rates will go up significantly.

Short term, we have to keep student loan interest rates at 3.4 percent. Long term, we need a national solution to make sure college is affordable for all Americans.

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

Mr. President, we have a major crisis in our country today in terms of the high cost of a college education, and in addition to that the incredible debt burden college students and their families are facing. This is a major problem in Vermont, and it is a major problem for every State in our country.

The job of the Senate is to understand that crisis, improve the situation, lessen the burden on students and their families, and not to make the situation worse than it is today. At a time when we need the best educated workforce in the world, hundreds of thousands of bright, young Americans who are qualified to pursue a higher education--who want to pursue a higher education--do not go to college, and they do not go to college for one very simple reason: They cannot afford to go to college.

According to a Pew study of 18- to 34-year-olds who have not completed college, 48 percent say they cannot afford to do so. Higher education for middle-class families and working-class families is simply too expensive, and this is an issue we must address.

What does it say about our country when hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young people who want to contribute and do more with their lives cannot get the education they need? In many cases it deprives them from making it into the middle class, and it denies this Nation the intellectual capabilities they have.

Further, millions of young people who graduate college are saddled with an incredible debt burden which radically impacts their lives. In America today, the average debt for a college graduate is over $27,000 in my State of Vermont. It is about $28,000. That is the average. That means there are many young people who have more debt. For those who go to graduate school or medical school or dental school, the debt can be many times higher. Last year I talked to two young dentists in the State of Vermont. They are in debt to the tune of over $200,000 for the crime of having gone to dental school.

This horrendous debt burden impacts the lives of young people in many ways. It can determine--and this is a hugely important issue--the profession they choose to enter. How can a person become a teacher, a childcare worker, a legal aid attorney or even a primary care physician if the salary a person earns will not enable them to pay off their debt and take care of the obligations they face? In other words, this debt is forcing many young people into professions which are not necessarily their love. It is not what they wanted to do; it is what they have to do in order to earn money to pay off their

debts. This crushing debt burden determines where many young people will live and whether they can even afford to buy a home. How does a person go out and buy a home if they are spending 20 or 25 percent of their income paying off their student debt? This debt burden on our young people even determines, in some cases, whether they get married and have kids.

The higher education debt burden the American people are now carrying at $1.1 trillion is now higher than our credit card debt and is having a significant impact upon our economy. In fact, the Federal Reserve and the Department of Treasury have both issued warnings that high levels of student loan debt could drive down consumer demand and have a negative impact on economic growth. In other words, if a person is spending all their money paying off debt, they are not buying goods or services. So this high level of student loan debt is having a negative impact on our overall economy.

According to a report released by the New York Fed--and this is important for people to hear--student loan debt has nearly tripled since 2004. In less than 10 years it has nearly tripled. Total student loan debt in the United States now exceeds $1.1 trillion. The average student loan balance has increased 70 percent since 2004.

If we do not act immediately, the subsidized Stafford Loan Program will see a doubling of interest rates on July 1, a few days from now. Let me repeat: If Congress does not act immediately, within the next few days, the subsidized Stafford Loan Program will see a doubling of interest rates on July 1. The rates will rise from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent for subsidized Stafford loans. This would be a disaster for millions of students and their families all over our Nation. We must not allow that to happen. At the very least, we must immediately pass legislation that extends interest rates at 3.4 percent for several more years on the Stafford Loan Program. Meanwhile, as part of higher education legislation, we must begin work on a long-term solution that guarantees the students of this country will be able to attend college and graduate school and not be burdened with suffocating debts.

As we contemplate long-term new policy on student loans, one thing we should be very clear about: The Federal Government should not be making a huge profit off the needs of low-income and working families who utilize the Stafford Loan Program. That is simply wrong. In fact, that is what we are doing today.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Government makes a substantial profit from student loans. For loans made this year, in 2013 alone, that profit is expected to exceed $50 billion, and this is higher than the profits made by ExxonMobil, the most profitable company on Earth. As I hear every day on the floor of the Senate, we are reminded we live in a competitive global economy. I hear every day from my colleagues that the United States is not doing all we can do in terms of educating our young people in such areas as science, engineering, technology, and math. In fact, in the immigration bill we are debating, there is an effort to bring hundreds of thousands of workers from abroad, presumably because we do not have enough workers who are knowledgeable in terms of engineering, science, math, and other technologies. What sense does it make if we are doing a bad job now in educating our young people in general, and specifically in the STEM areas, that we make it harder for kids to get a college education? What sense does that make?

I should mention that countries all over the world understand this point, and they are doing a much better job than we are of investing in their young people in general and specifically in higher education. According to a report released just yesterday by the OECD, the United States was one of the few advanced countries in the world that did not increase its public investment in education. In fact, the vast majority of advanced nations do everything possible, and a lot better job than we do, to make higher education more affordable for all of their students.

A couple weeks ago I had the Ambassador from Denmark coming to the State of Vermont to talk about what goes on in Denmark. People asked him: How much does it cost to go to college in Denmark? The answer was: Nothing, not a penny out of your pocket. It is paid for out of the tax base. In fact, students there get a stipend.

But Denmark is not the only country which makes sure all of their kids can get a higher education, a graduate school education, a medical school education, while not having to pay for it out of their own pocket. Austria, Finland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden also do the same. In Canada, which is an hour away from where I live, average annual tuition fees were $4,288 in 2010, roughly half of what they were in the United States. Yet the OECD says Canada is one of the most expensive countries for a student to go to college--half the cost of where we are. Germany is in the process of phasing out all tuition fees. Even when German universities did charge tuition, it was roughly $1,300 per student.

Here is the bottom line: All over this country, students and their families are facing crushing debt, radically impacting their lives and the choices they make. There are some in the Senate who say: Yes, that is pretty bad. How can we make it even worse? How can we raise interest rates for our kids and make it harder for them to go to college and make sure when they get out of college they are deeply in debt?

I say: No, I think that is absurd.

I remind my colleagues that when Wall Street banks borrow money--do my colleagues know what they are getting it for today? They are getting it for less than 1 percent--three-quarters of 1 percent. We are talking about families having to spend 6 percent, 7 percent, 8 percent, 9 percent in order to send their kids to college, to help our country, to make it into the middle class. That is absurd. We have to understand that a well-educated population is perhaps the most important thing we need as a nation if we are going to survive in a highly competitive global economy.

Let me conclude by saying this: This Congress has to act and act immediately to prevent the disaster we are looking at from happening; that is, the doubling of interest rates on the Stafford Loan Program, which will go from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. Short term, we have to extend the 3.4-percent interest rate. Long term, we need to make certain every kid in this country, regardless of income, can go to college and leave school without a crushing financial debt.

I thank the Chair.

I thank the Senator.

Madam President, let me congratulate the Gang of 8 for their assiduous work on this immigration bill, as well as Senator Pat Leahy, the chairman of the committee, for doing a lot of good work.

There is much in this bill I support. I support the pathway to citizenship. I support the DREAM Act. I support providing legal status to the foreign workers who are working in agriculture. We have to have strong border security. I support that effort.

Let me tell my colleagues what I do not support. What I do not support is that at a time when nearly 14 percent of Americans do not have a full-time job, at a time when youth unemployment is somewhere around 16 percent and kids from California to Maine are desperately seeking employment, I do not support the huge expansion in the guest worker program that will allow hundreds of thousands of entry-level guest workers to come into this country.

This is important for at least two reasons. We have kids all over America who are wondering how they are going to afford to be able to go to college. Many of these young people are going out looking for summer jobs, looking for part-time jobs in order to help them pay for college. That is terribly important. We should not pass legislation which makes it harder for young people to get jobs in order to put away a few bucks to help pay for college.

Then there is another group of people, and those are young people whom we don't talk about enough. Not everybody in America is going to college. There are millions of young people who graduate high school and want to go out and start their careers and make some money and move up the ladder. There are others who have dropped out of high school. We cannot turn our backs on those young people. They need jobs as well. If young people--young high school graduates, for example--are unable to find entry-level jobs, how will they ever be able to develop the skills, the experience, and the confidence they need to break into the job market? And if they don't get those skills--if they don't get those jobs and that income--there is a very strong possibility they may end up in antisocial or self-destructive activities.

Right now, on street corners all over this country, there are kids who have nothing to do. And what are they doing when they stand on street corners? What they are doing is getting into drugs, they are getting into crime, they are getting into self-destructive activity. We already have too many young people in this country using drugs. We already have too many young people involved in criminal activity. As a nation, we have more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China. Let's put our young people into jobs, not into jails.

As I have heard on this floor time and time again, the best antipoverty program is a paycheck. Well, let's give the young people of this country a paycheck. Let's put them to work. Let's give them at least the entry-level jobs they need in order to earn some income today, but even more importantly, let's allow them to gain the job skills they need so they know what an honest day's work is about and can move up the economic ladder and get better jobs in the future.

At a time when poverty in this country remains at an almost 50-year high, and when unemployment among young people is extremely high, I worry deeply that we are creating a permanent underclass--a large number of people who are poorly educated and who have limited or no job skills. This is an issue we must address and must address now. Either we make a serious effort to find jobs for our young people now or we are going to pay later in terms of increased crime and the cost of incarceration.

Now, why is this issue of youth unemployment relevant to the debate we are having on immigration reform? The answer is obvious to anyone who has read the bill. This immigration reform legislation increases youth unemployment by bringing into this country, through the J-1 program and the H-2B program, hundreds of thousands of low-skilled, entry-level workers who are taking the jobs young Americans need. At a time when youth unemployment in this country is over 16 percent and the teen unemployment rate is over 25 percent, many of the jobs that used to be done by young Americans are now being performed by foreign college students through the J-1 summer work travel program.

Other entry-level foreign workers come into this country through the H-2B guest worker program. We have heard a lot of discussion about high-tech workers and how they can create jobs and all that. That is an issue for another discussion. Right now, what we are talking about is hundreds of thousands of foreign workers coming into this country not to do great scientific work, not as great entrepreneurs to start businesses, not as Ph.D. engineers, but as waiters and waitresses, kitchen help, lifeguards, front desk workers at hotels and resorts, ski instructors, cooks, chefs, chambermaids, landscapers, parking lot attendants, cashiers, security guards, and many other entry-level jobs.

Does it really make sense to anyone when so many of our kids are desperately looking for a way to earn an honest living that we say to those kids: Sorry, you have to get to the back of the line because we are bringing in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to do the jobs you can do tomorrow?

The J-1 program for foreign college students is supposed to be used as a cultural exchange program--a program to bring young people into this country to learn about our customs and to support international cooperation and understanding. That is why it is administered by the State Department. But instead of doing that, this J-1 program has morphed into a low-wage jobs program to allow corporations such as McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, Disney World, Hershey's, and many other major resorts around the country to replace American workers with cheap labor from overseas.

Each and every year companies from all over this country are hiring more than 100,000 foreign college students in low-wage jobs through the J-1 summer work travel program. Unlike other guest worker programs, the J-1 program does not even require businesses to recruit or advertise for American workers. What they can do is pay minimum wage. They don't have to advertise for American workers. And guess what. For the foreign worker, they do not have to pay Social Security tax, they don't have to pay Medicare tax, and they don't have to pay unemployment tax. So, essentially, we are creating a situation where it is absolutely advantageous for an employer to hire a foreign worker rather than an American worker.

So what I have done is introduced two pieces of legislation to address this

issue. No. 1 basically says while I strongly support cultural programs--bringing young people here from abroad is a great idea--at this moment, with high unemployment, we cannot have those people competing with young Americans for a scarce number of jobs. So we eliminate the employment element of the J-1 program.

The second bill says if we can't do that--and I hope we can--at the very least we need a jobs program for American kids, not just a summer jobs program but a yearlong jobs program. Let's not turn our backs on kids who want to get into the labor market, who want to develop a career. They need something in the summertime, they need something year round, and we have introduced legislation to do just that.

My time has expired. I yield my time, if he wants it, to Senator Grassley.

Mr. President, let me congratulate Senator McCain for all of his hard work in the Gang of 8 and his focus on border security, which is an enormously important issue.

As the son of an immigrant--my dad came to this country at the age of 17 from Poland--I strongly support the concept of immigration reform, and I applaud the Judiciary Committee and all of those people who have been working hard on this legislation.

There are a lot of provisions within this bill that I think should be strongly supported by the American people.

I strongly support a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Bringing undocumented workers out of the shadows and giving them legal status will make it more difficult, among many other things, for employers to undercut the wages and benefits of all workers and will be good for our entire economy--a very important step forward.

I strongly support the DREAM Act to make sure the children of illegal immigrants who were brought into this country by their parents years ago are allowed to become citizens.

I strongly support providing legal status to foreign workers on family farms. Dairy farmers in Vermont and the owners of apple orchards in my State have told me that without these workers, they would go out of business, and it is obviously true in many parts of this country.

We also need to make sure, as Senator McCain has just elaborated, that our borders are more secure and prevent unscrupulous employers from hiring those who have come here illegally.

All of those provisions are extremely important, are included in the legislation passed out of the Judiciary Committee last week, and are provisions I support. I commend my colleague from Vermont Senator Pat Leahy for his leadership on those issues. But let me tell you some of what concerns me very much about the bill as it presently stands.

At a time when nearly 14 percent of the American people do not have a full-time job, at a time when the middle class continues to disappear, and at a time when tens of millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, it makes no sense to me

that the immigration reform bill includes a massive increase in temporary guest worker programs that will allow large corporations to import and bring into this country hundreds of thousands of temporary blue-collar and white-collar guest workers from overseas. That makes no sense to me.

I am particularly concerned that at a time when college is becoming increasingly unaffordable--and every parent out there with a high school kid is worried about how that family is going to afford college for their kids--at a time when young people desperately need jobs to help pay for the cost of a college education, this bill will make it more difficult for young Americans to find the jobs they need.

Today, youth unemployment is over 16 percent, and the teen unemployment rate is over 25 percent. Unfortunately, many of the jobs that used to be performed by young Americans are now being done by foreign college students through the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program and the H-2B guest worker program.

Millions of Americans, including myself--and I suspect many Members of Congress--earned money when they were young at summer jobs or at part-time jobs when they were in college in order to pay for the cost of college. Some Americans today are working as waiters and waitresses. They are working as lifeguards. They are working as front-desk clerks at hotels and resorts. They are working as ski instructors, as cooks, chefs, kitchen personnel, chambermaids, landscapers, and many other similar jobs. And there is nothing any American has to be embarrassed about at working at any of those jobs or any other job in order to earn some income to pay the bills or to make some money in order to afford to go to college. There is nothing anybody should be ashamed about doing that kind of work. What I worry about very much is the degree to which those jobs will be available for young Americans as a result of the J-1 program and the H-2B program.

It pains me very deeply that with minority unemployment extraordinarily high--I was just in Detroit last week talking to kids who are working so hard, and they are working for $7.25 an hour at McDonald's or other fast food places--if they are lucky enough to get that work. Many of them would like to go to college but are unable to earn the money they need in order to go to college. It seems to me terribly wrong that we have programs such as this J-1 Summer Work Travel Program which brings students from all over the world into the United States to take jobs that young Americans want to do.

The J-1 program for foreign college students is supposed to be--is supposed to be--used as a cultural exchange program, a program to bring young people into this country to learn about our way of life, our customs, and to support international cooperation and understanding. Those are extremely important goals. I believe in that passionately. When I was mayor of the city of Burlington, we started sister-city programs with towns around the world in order to develop that type of understanding and cooperation. That is the theory of what the J-1 program is supposed to be, and a wonderful goal it is.

Unfortunately, that is not what it is today. Today the J-1 program has morphed into a low-wage jobs program to allow corporations such as Hershey's and McDonald's and many others to replace young American workers with cheaper labor from abroad. Each and every year companies from all over this country are hiring more than 100,000 foreign college students in low-wage jobs through the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program.

Unlike other guest worker programs, the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program does not require businesses to recruit American workers for these positions, offer jobs to willing and able Americans first, or to pay prevailing wages. In other words, if there are jobs out there that our young people would like to get in order to put aside a few bucks or help pay for the cost of a college education, the employer is not obliged to reach out to these young Americans. It is one thing for an employer to say: Look, I reached out, tried to get some young people to do this job, could not find them, and I had to go abroad. I can understand that. But that is not the requirement of this J-1 program.

Let me read from a Web site of a foreign labor recruiter touting the benefits of using the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program to employers in the United States. This Web site is called jobofer.org. This is one, as I understand it, of many. But here is what it says. I quote from the Web site jobofer.org. This is going to employers who need unskilled workers for the summer.

Whether you are running an amusement park, a water park, a

concessions stand, a golf club, a circus, a zoo, or anything

else where people come to enjoy themselves, it's a great idea

not to miss the opportunities of the season and hire

international seasonal workers to cover your growing staffing

needs.

International seasonal workers.

Jobofer.org has experience in matching candidates from

foreign exchange students with amusement firms all over the

USA, covering every type of entry level position you may want

to cover with seasonal staffing.

The Work And Travel USA program allows exchange students

from abroad to work in the US for up to 4 months during the

buzz season under a J1 visa.

Jobofer.org is committed to understanding your needs as an

amusement business and handling all the seasonal staffing

procedures for you, at absolutely no cost. Check out the list

of positions typically filled with international exchange

students . . .

Now, what this Web site is doing is telling employers--in this case, they are just focusing on amusement parks, but obviously it goes much beyond that into all kinds of resorts, many other areas--but what they are simply saying is that we need unskilled labor.

One knows that historically in this country that is what young people did. When you were in high school, when you were in college, you would try to make a few bucks. You go out and you get a summer job. Maybe you could earn a couple of thousand dollars. Maybe it starts you on a career or maybe it is money to put aside to go to college. I did it. Many Members of the Senate did it. Millions of young people in this country want to do it.

What these companies are saying is: You do not need to hire kids in your community anymore. You do not have to reach out to minority kids who desperately need a job, to kids in Vermont who want to put away a few bucks to go to college. You do not have to do that anymore. We will help you bring in young people from all over the world to do those jobs.

One of the arguments we hear on the floor is we need highly skilled workers because high-tech companies cannot attract the scientists and the engineers and the physicists and the mathematicians they need. When we bring them in, these guys are going to help create jobs in America. Maybe. That is a whole other issue for discussion. But nobody can tell me we need to bring young people from all over the world to work at entry-level jobs because there are not young Americans who want to do that job, when the unemployment rate of young people in this country is extraordinarily high. Nobody with a straight face can make that claim.

Here are some of the jobs being advertised on this very same Web site. There are many Web sites like it. This one focuses on jobs within the amusement industry: Ride operators/attendants, game operators, food service--flipping hamburgers--lifeguard. I guess we have no young people in America who are capable of being lifeguards. Nobody in America can swim and get a job as a lifeguard. I guess we need to bring people from all over the world to be lifeguards. Guest relations, admissions, security, games and attractions, merchandise, grounds quality, season pass processor, entertainment wardrobe, warehouse, safari gatekeepers and wardens, parking lot attendant. I guess nobody in America could be a parking lot attendant. Landscape, cash control.

Here is the interesting point. The Web site, after mentioning all of those jobs specific to the amusement industry, asks the following questions: What happens--interesting question. What happens when you use seasonal employment for your theme or amusement park? Here is the answer this foreign labor recruiter gives on its Web site:

You cover your seasonal staffing needs with young, highly

motivated, English-speaking international staff from 18 to 28

years old and cut costs by paying fewer taxes.

Got that? You can bring in international workers, students from abroad, and one of the advantages you have is you pay lower taxes on that foreign worker than you do for an American worker.

In fact, under the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program, employers do not have to pay Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment taxes, which amounts to a payroll savings of about 8.45 percent per employee. What a bargain. So we are enticing--we are giving an incentive to a company to bring foreign workers into this country and saving them money by hiring foreign workers at the expense of young Americans who certainly can do those jobs.

Under the J-1 program, employers do not have to pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. They do not have to pay unemployment taxes. They do not have to offer jobs to Americans first. They do not have to pay wages that are comparable to what American workers make. What employer in America would want to hire a young American as a lifeguard or a ski instructor or a waiter or a waitress, or any other low-skilled job, when they can hire a foreign college student instead at a significant reduction in cost?

I understand the immigration reform bill we are debating reforms this program by requiring foreign labor recruiters to pay a $500 fee for every foreign college student they bring into this country. Right now, foreign college students bear all of these costs. But in my opinion, that is not good enough. This program is a real disservice to the young people in this country.

I believe in cultural exchanges. I would put a lot more money into cultural exchanges so our young people can go abroad, so young people from all over the world could attend our high schools. That would be a great thing. But that is not what this J-1 program is. It is a program which is displacing young American workers at a time of double-digit unemployment among youth, and it is putting downward pressure on wages at a time when the American people are in many cases working longer hours for lower wages.

In my opinion, this particular program should be abolished. Cultural program, yes; but bringing in young people to take jobs from young Americans, no. At the very least, if we are not going to abolish this program, we need to make sure we have a comparable summer and year- round jobs program for our young people in order to help them pay for college and to move up the economic ladder. At the very least, that is what should be in this bill.

That is why I will be filing an amendment today to the immigration reform bill to create a youth jobs program. My amendment would provide States with $1.5 billion in immediate funding to support a 2-year summer and year-round jobs program for low-income youth and economically disadvantaged young adults. This amendment is modeled on the summer and year-round youth jobs program included in President Obama's American Jobs Act.

This amendment would build on the success from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided $1.2 billion in funding for the WIA Youth Jobs Program. This program created over 374,000 summer job opportunities during 2009 and 2010 for young Americans who desperately needed those jobs. This amendment, in fact, would create even more jobs.

Let me be very clear. The same corporations and businesses that support a massive expansion in guest worker programs are opposed to raising the minimum wage. They have long supported the outsourcing of American jobs. They have reduced wages and benefits of American workers at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high. In too many cases, the H-2B program for lower skilled guest workers and the H-1B for high-skilled guest workers are being used by employers to drive down the wages and benefits of American workers and to replace American workers with cheap labor from abroad.

The immigration reform bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee could increase the number of low-skilled guest workers by as much as 800 percent over the next 5 years and could more than triple the number of temporary white-collar guest workers coming into this country. That is the basic issue. That is my basic concern. At a time when unemployment is so high, does it make a whole lot of sense to be bringing hundreds of thousands of workers from all over the world into this country to fill jobs American workers desperately need?

The high-tech industry tells us they need the H-1B program so they can hire the best and the brightest science, technology, engineering, and math workers in the world, and that there are not enough qualified American workers in these fields. In some cases--let me be very honest--I think that is true. I think there are some companies in some parts of the country that are unable to attract American workers to do the jobs that are needed. I believe in those instances, corporations should have the right to bring in foreign workers so the corporation can do the business it is supposed to be doing.

But having said that, let me also tell you some facts: In 2010, 54 percent of the H-1B guest workers were employed in entry-level jobs and performed ``routine tasks requiring limited judgment,'' according to the Government Accountability Office. Routine tasks.

So when a lot of my friends here talk about high-tech workers, they are talking about scientists, they are talking about all of these guys who are doing a great job, but that is not necessarily the case. Only 6 percent of H-1B visas were given to workers with highly specialized skills in 2010, according to the GAO. More than 80 percent of H-1B guest workers are paid wages that are less than American workers in comparable positions, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Over 9 million Americans have degrees in a STEM-related field, but only about 3 million have a job in one. Last year, the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. These firms are responsible for shipping large numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries. Half of all recent college graduates majoring in computer and information science in the United States did not receive jobs in the information technology sector. So it seems to me this is an issue we have got to deal with.

The second amendment I will be filing today is with Senators Grassley and Harkin. That amendment would prohibit companies that have announced mass layoffs over the past year from hiring guest workers unless these companies can prove their overall employment will not be reduced as a result of these mass layoffs. In other words, what we are seeing is a very clear trend. Large corporations are throwing American workers out on the street, and they are bringing in foreign workers to do those very same jobs.

Many of those very same companies have moved parts of their corporate world away from the United States into Third World countries. So this continues the attack on American workers. We must stop it.

Let me give you a few examples as I conclude my remarks. In 2012, Hewlett-Packard, one of the large American corporations, announced it was laying off 30,000 workers at the same time it hired more than 660 H-1B guest workers. In 2012, Cisco laid off 1,300 employees at the same time it hired more than 330 H-1B guest workers. In 2012, Yahoo hired more than 135 H-1B guest workers at the same time it announced it was laying off over 2,000 workers. Research in Motion hired 24 H-1B guest workers at the same time it laid off over 5,000 people.

I think it makes no sense at all that corporations that are laying off American workers are now reaching into the H-1B program to bring in foreign workers.

Let me conclude by saying there is much in this legislation I support and that I believe the American people support. But problems remain. Problems remain. The main problem to me is this guest worker concept which is being widely abused by employers throughout this country. At the very least, I want to see a summer jobs program for our kids who are now losing jobs because of the J-1 program. But we need to do even more than that.

I look forward to working with my colleagues who have worked so hard on this bill to make it a bill that all Americans and all working people can be supportive of.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I just wanted to say a few words on an issue that is of deep concern to many Americans. In 2001, 2006, and in 2011, I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act. I voted against that legislation because I believed in a democratic and constitutional form of government we can effectively combat terrorism without sacrificing the civil liberties and the constitutional protections which make us a free country.

The President has said he welcomes a debate on this issue, and I agree with him. There should be a debate. And the debate should center on whether the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is still relevant. If it is, let's abide by it. If it isn't, let's not be hypocrites and let's acknowledge we live in a society, in a nation, where our freedoms and liberties have been severely compromised. But let's not pretend the protections the Fourth Amendment guarantees exist when in fact they do not exist.

Here is what the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons,

houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and

seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue,

but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or Affirmation,

and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the

persons or things to be seized.

That is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Now, let's talk about what we learned in the last week about the National Security Agency's activities. We learned it is likely that virtually every phone call made by every American is being collected and stored by the United States Government. The time you made that phone call, where you made that phone call, how long you were on the phone, and to whom you made that phone call is now part of the record of the United States Government. Every husband calling a wife, every businessman making a deal, every elected official talking to a constituent, every candidate talking to a campaign manager, every doctor talking to a patient, every lawyer talking to a client, every journalist tracking a story--all of that information and more--is now on file with the United States Government.

What is even more alarming is that it is not just the government officials who have access to that information. It turns out it is also available to private contractors such as Booze-Allen, and I assume many other contractors.

A few weeks ago, Madam President, you will recall there was a huge uproar in the media, including front-page stories about the Obama administration tracking the phone calls made by reporters from the Associated Press. It was a big deal. Everybody was really concerned about that. While not listening to the calls, they learned who the reporters were speaking to, how long they were speaking, and where the reporters were located. Well, guess what. It turns out what the Obama administration was doing to the AP is nothing unusual. This appears to be exactly what the government has the capability to do to every single American.

Furthermore, we have also recently learned the government has the capability to monitor every Web site we visit, every video we see, and every item we search for online.

Madam President, everybody understands terrorism is a serious issue and the United States Government--and governments throughout the world--must do everything it can to protect its people. We do not want another 9/11. We do not want another bombing such as the one at the Boston Marathon. We do, however, want our government, our intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities to be strong and effective in combating terrorism. But it is my very strong opinion we can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call we make, every Web site we visit, every place we go.

Is that really the country we want to be? Let's be clear: The technology for monitoring every aspect of our daily lives will only increase in years to come as that technology becomes ever more sophisticated.

Opposition to the current NSA policy is coming from across the political spectrum. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a conservative Republican from Wisconsin, and one of the authors of the original PATRIOT Act, said in a Thursday letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that he is ``extremely troubled'' by the National Security Agency's seizure of the phone records of millions of Verizon customers through a secret court ruling. Representative Sensenbrenner also said:

I do not believe the released FISA order is consistent with

the requirements of the PATRIOT Act. How could the phone

records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an

authorized investigation as required by the act? Seizing

phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and

un-American.

That is what Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner said in a press release that accompanied his letter to the Attorney General.

It is clear to me the United States Congress has to take a very hard look at the USA PATRIOT Act, and specifically section 215. The bottom line is we must be strong and effective in combating terrorism, but it is absolutely my view we can do that without undermining the constitutional rights that make us a free country.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I would like to take a moment to recognize Ms. Kathryn A. Condon, who has retired after over 30 years of public service. Specifically, I would like to thank Ms. Condon for her steadfast leadership as the Executive Director of Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery embodies one of our commitments to those who defend our Nation--to provide them with a final resting place that honors their service. With approximately 27 to 30 funeral services a day, Arlington is one of many active cemeteries for our fallen heroes. It is also considered a national treasure for its rich history, dating back to the Civil War, and historic memorials, such as: the Tomb of the Unknowns; the Women in Military Service Memorial, which honors the brave women who have honorably worn our Nation's uniform; and Chaplains Hill, the eternal resting place of Chaplains from four different wars.

Although Arlington is now a shining example of how we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, it has not always been so. In 2010, the Army's inspector general discovered grievous errors, dysfunction, and mismanagement at Arlington. These highly publicized problems were linked to antiquated procedures and failure by the cemetery's senior leadership.

Ms. Condon's steadfast commitment and dedication as Arlington's top executive has reinstated Arlington as a national shrine for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Her leadership has led to the correction of all of the issues highlighted by the Army inspector general's 2010 report and the creation of processes that will ensure the longevity of this national shrine and make certain that previous mistakes are not repeated.

Particularly, I would like to highlight Arlington's new burial record system, ANC Explorer. In 2010, Arlington relied on a paper-based record system that caused confusion and led to the misplacement of burials. Thanks to Ms. Condon, Arlington now operates a new geospatial tracking system, which permits the families of our fallen heroes and cemetery staff to, among other things: receive turn-by-turn direction to any burial site or monument; view events, in real-time, occurring through the cemetery; and easily track and maintain burial space.

On behalf of our Nation's veterans and their families, I would like to thank Ms. Condon for her devotion to reaffirming Arlington National Cemetery's status as a national treasure and commend her on an illustrious career in public service.

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

Madam President, I rise this afternoon to say a few words about the immigration reform bill that, as I understand it, we will begin discussing next week. As the son of an immigrant, somebody who came to this country at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket and who was able to send his two kids to college, needless to say I support immigration. Our country is unique in the world. Our country is great because we are the sons and daughters of immigrants. I think we should all be very proud of that.

I also commend the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy and Senator Schumer and Senator Durbin--all of those people who have been working very hard on what I consider to be a good and strong immigration reform bill. Here are some of the very strong components of that bill that I hope every Member of the Senate would support: That is the need for a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Bringing undocumented workers out of the shadows and giving them legal status will make it more difficult for employers to undercut the wages and benefits of all workers and, in my view, will be good for the entire economy.

I have always--and continue to--strongly support the DREAM Act part of the immigration reform bill, which is to make sure that children of illegal immigrants who are brought into this country by their parents years and years ago are allowed to become citizens.

I strongly support a number of the provisions that deal with agriculture. Some years ago I was in Immokalee, FL, a place that I suspect has some of the most exploited workers in America. They pick the tomatoes which go to the fast-food restaurants throughout this country. I can tell everyone that in the State of Vermont, we have dairy farms that are now dependent on foreign labor, and it is important that we treat those workers with dignity and give them legal status. It is extremely important to have an approach which provides legal status for agricultural workers.

I obviously support making sure our borders are strong and that we stop illegal immigration as best we can, and I applaud the committee for including all of those provisions in the immigration bill that is going to come to the Senate I expect next week.

What I worry about very much, and have deep concerns about in terms of the current legislation, is that while we have made a good step forward in terms of improving our economy as to where it was in the midst of the financial crisis, we still have a long way to go. The real unemployment rate in America is not 7.5 percent. That is the official unemployment rate. The real unemployment rate is closer to 14 percent. If we include those people who have given up looking for work in high- unemployment areas and people who are working part time and want to work full time, the real unemployment rate is closer to 14 percent. In other words, if we include unemployment among minorities as well as the young people in this country, we continue to have a very serious unemployment problem in the United States of America, and it is an issue with which we have to deal. I have a number of ideas on how to deal with it. One thing we sure as heck do not want to do is make a bad situation worse.

It seems to me that in a moment when our middle class continues to disappear, when millions of workers are working longer hours for lower wages, when median-family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999, it does not make a lot of sense to me that we have an immigration reform bill which includes a massive increase in temporary guest worker programs that will allow large multinational corporations to import hundreds of thousands of temporary blue-collar and white-collar guest workers.

One of my major concerns is that corporate America is sort of using immigration reform as a means to continue their effort to lower wages in the United States of America, and we must not allow that to happen.

We all know we have a serious crisis in terms of the high cost of a college education, which is another issue we are going to be dealing with soon on the floor. One thing I can say--and I suspect I speak for a number of other Members in Congress--is if we didn't come from a family with a lot of money and we needed to get some financial help in order to pay for college, we worked in the summertime. I find it alarming that within this bill we are looking at a situation in which we are importing a lot of young people from Europe and elsewhere to fill jobs which young people in this country need in the summertime to allow them to get going in terms of their careers and allow them to make a few bucks in order to help them with their college education.

I understand that jobs such as a waiter, waitress, or busboy--and I did some of that when I was a kid--are not glamorous jobs. But you know what. They help a little bit as far as paying for college. I know it is not glamorous to work as a lifeguard, at the front desk of a hotel or resort, as a ski instructor, as a cook or chef in a kitchen, as a chambermaid, or as a landscaper. The jobs I just mentioned will not pay huge amounts of money, but for someone who needs to figure out how to pay for college in the fall, those jobs help. For someone who needs some experience in order to get their career off the ground, those jobs help. I am concerned that kids in this country are going to be looking for jobs and employers are going to say: Well, actually we don't have any jobs; the job has been filled by some young person from Eastern Europe. So I want us to take that issue into account.

Theoretically the J-1 Program is supposed to bring young people into this country so they can learn about our culture. It is a program to expose young people from around the world to American culture, and that is a good thing. I believe in that. I believe young people in America should have the opportunity to go abroad, and young people from around the world should have the opportunity to learn about America. It is a good thing.

I fear this J-1 Program is being exploited by corporations such as Hershey's and McDonald's in an effort to simply bring students from abroad to work at low-paying jobs in the United States.

Supporters of the temporary H-2B Guest Worker Program claim there are not enough Americans willing to do these types of jobs; that in essence what they are saying is the young American people are too lazy to work at these jobs. I do not accept that. I truly do not accept it. I think it is a slap in the face not only to our young people but to the many working people who do not have much in the way of an education and want to work so they can earn some money. It is a slap in the face to say to those people: No, we are going to have to bring people in from abroad to do those jobs, such as being a waiter, waitress, chambermaid, or lifeguard. These are not high-tech skilled jobs; these are jobs our young people can do and need to do.

I have a great concern about the transformation of the J-1 Program from being a program dealing with American culture to being one where corporations are exploiting young people from abroad to work in low- paying jobs in the United States.

I also find it interesting that instead of raising wages in this country to attract workers, what many of these companies are doing is bringing in people from abroad. We know what supply and demand is about. What we learned in economics 101 in college is that if an employer cannot find a certain type of worker, the way to entice that worker is to raise wages. Instead of raising wages, what employers are saying is: We have huge amounts of cheap labor all over the world. Instead of raising wages for American workers, we are going to bring in cheap labor from around the world, and I think that is wrong. I think as we deal with this legislation, this is an issue we have to address front and center.

When we talk about H-2B jobs, what we are talking about is people who may be working as a landscaper, amusement park worker, housekeeper, waiter, or waitress. Further, during the summer, businesses are using guest worker programs to hire young people from other countries to be lifeguards.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I kind of think there are young people in this country who can work as lifeguards and hold other positions in some of the resorts all over this country. We are talking jobs such as being a ski instructor in Vermont. I can tell everyone that in the State of Vermont, we have a whole lot of young people who are very good at skiing and can teach skiing. We don't need people from Europe to take those jobs away from young Americans.

Let me be clear--and I find this to be interesting, if not ironic-- the same corporations and businesses that support a massive expansion in guest worker programs coincidentally happen to be the same exact corporations that are opposed to raising the minimum wage. These are the same corporations that support the outsourcing of American jobs, not to mention the same corporations which in some cases have reduced wages and benefits for American workers at a time when corporate America is making record-breaking profits.

In too many cases the H-2B Program for lower skilled guest workers, as well as the H-1B Program for high-skilled guest workers, is being used by employers to drive down the wages and benefits of American workers and to replace American workers with cheap labor from abroad.

Here is what it comes down to: supply and demand. If the employers of this country need labor, let them start raising wages for American workers rather than bringing in cheap labor from all over this world. The immigration reform bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee could increase the number of low-skilled--I hear speeches here that we are going to have these genius high-tech guys who are going to start companies and create all kinds of jobs. Great. That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about an immigration reform bill from the Judiciary Committee that could increase the number of low- skilled guest workers by as much as 800 percent over the next 5 years and could more than triple the number of temporary white-collar guest workers coming into this country. During the next 5 years, H-1B high- skilled visas could go from 85,000 to as many as 230,000. The number of H-2B low-skilled visas could go from 65,000 to as many as 325,000. The new W visa program for low-skilled workers could go as high as 200,000.

The first question the American people and Members have to ask is, is unemployment throughout America in States such as Arizona, Oklahoma, Vermont, Michigan so low right now that we desperately need more and more foreign workers to fill jobs Americans cannot fill?

The high-tech industry tells us they need the H-1B Program so they can hire the best and the brightest science, technology, engineering, and math workers in the world, and that there are not qualified American workers in these fields. Let me be the first to admit that in some cases I believe that is true. I have spoken to employers in Vermont. I suspect it is true all over this country, that there are areas where companies cannot find the skilled workers they need so they need employees from abroad, and to the degree that is true, let us address that issue. But let's also give some facts which suggest that may not be quite as true as some of the employers and corporations are saying.

In 2010, 54 percent of H-1B guest workers were employed in entry- level jobs. So the argument is: Hey, we need all of these brilliant guys who are going to start companies and create jobs. In 2010, 54 percent of the H-1B guest workers were employed in entry-level jobs and performed ``routine tasks requiring limited judgment'' according to the Government Accountability Office.

In 2010 the official U.S. unemployment rate averaged more than 9.6 percent per month. Why couldn't these types of jobs be performed by Americans?

So, again, the point is--I know some of my friends say: Every one of these guys is some genius who is going to start a company. I wish that were the case. Many of these are lower wage, entry-level jobs that certainly American workers could do.

Further, only 6 percent of H-1B visas were given to workers with highly specialized skills in 2010. That is the issue I keep hearing about, highly specialized skills, but only 6 percent of H-1B visas went to those folks. More than 80 percent of H-1B guest workers are paid wages that are less than American workers in comparable positions, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Over 9 million Americans have degrees in a STEM-related field, but only about 3 million have a job in that area.

Last year the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. Let me repeat that. One of the great crises we have faced in the last 30 years is that companies have shut down in America, moved abroad, and gotten cheap labor abroad. The top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. These firms are responsible for shifting huge numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries. Nearly half of all H-1B visas go to offshore outsourcing firms, while less than 3 percent of them apply to become permanent residents.

Further, half of all recent college graduates majoring in computer and information science did not receive jobs in the information technology sector. In other words, we have large numbers of Americans who are graduating with degrees who can handle these jobs. Yet we are bringing in large numbers of people from abroad to do them. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Not only would the Senate immigration bill greatly expand the number of H-1B guest workers, it also would provide an unlimited number of green cards to foreign graduates who receive a master's degree or a Ph.D. in a STEM-related field. If we are going to provide green cards to every foreign student with an advanced STEM degree, what purpose does the H-1B program serve other than to suppress the wages of American workers who are already struggling? At the very least I believe we should prohibit offshore outsourcing firms from hiring temporary guest workers.

Under the Senate immigration bill, the number of college-educated H- 1B guest workers and STEM green card holders who are under 30 years of age will exceed the number of jobs that are available for young information technology graduates. What message does that send to young people in our country who are interested in pursuing careers in information technology?

Making matters even worse, I am very concerned that Senator Hatch was able to gut the very modest reforms to the H-1B program designed to prevent companies from replacing American workers with H-1B guest workers. At a minimum it is essential that these proworker reforms be put back into the bill before it is passed by the full Senate.

This country was built by immigrants. I am a son of an immigrant, and many of us are. I believe we are a nation that wants to see comprehensive immigration reform passed. I certainly do.

Again, I wish to congratulate all of those people who have worked on this bill because there are a lot of very important and positive provisions in the bill. But I think we have to improve the bill as it leaves committee and as it comes to the floor of the Senate. What we want to make certain of is

that at a time when this country continues to struggle economically, when millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, when minority unemployment is extraordinarily high, we do not take any action that lowers wages or increases unemployment for American workers.

Again, my congratulations to those who worked on this bill, but we have a whole lot of work to do as the bill reaches the floor, and I intend to be working with my colleagues to make those improvements.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to ask that this body pay high tribute to an outstanding leader and trusted advocate for our nation's injured and ill veterans, their families, and survivors. I am referring to Arthur H. Wilson, the chief executive officer and national adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans. Mr. Wilson, after dedicating 47 years of service to our nation's veterans, is retiring as leader of that august group of 1.2 million veterans. His steadfast devotion and dedication in leading DAV has made the organization the Nation's premier veterans service organization offering assistance, compassion, and support to our injured heroes.

DAV is a service organization representing the brave men and women

who have suffered and survived wartime military service. Founded in 1920 by those wounded in World War I, DAV has been a devoted advocate for 92 years on behalf of those who have sacrificed for our freedom.

Mr. Wilson served with distinction in the U.S. Air Force as a runway construction specialist from 1962 to 1966, including service in Southeast Asia. He joined DAV as a national service officer trainee in Atlanta following his honorable discharge in 1966. He was subsequently assigned as a national service officer in Buffalo, NY, and Philadelphia, PA, and later held supervisory positions in DAV's national appeals office at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Board of Veterans Appeals in Washington, DC, in 1974.

In 1976, Mr. Wilson was promoted to management duties at DAV's National Service and Legislative Headquarters in Washington, DC, serving for 12 years as national service director before being appointed Executive Director of the Washington headquarters in 1993.

For the past 19 years, Mr. Wilson has served as national adjutant and chief executive Officer of DAV.

He is retiring from his distinguished career as only the sixth national adjutant in the history of the organization. He also serves as president of the Disabled Veterans' LIFE Memorial Foundation working to build the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington, DC, and is a member of the board of trustees of the USS Intrepid Museum Foundation.

I ask my colleagues to join me in extending our nation's thanks to Arthur Wilson for his dedication and commitment to our nation's veterans and his leadership of DAV. His devotion to America's wartime heroes serves as a brilliant example to all citizens of our nation.

Mr. President, I wanted to thank Senators Begich, Blumenthal, Bennet, and Merkley for cosponsoring this amendment, as well as support from many environmental and food organizations all over this country. The concept we are talking about today is a fairly commonsense and nonradical idea. All over the world, in the European Union, in many other countries, dozens and dozens of countries, people are able to look at the food they are buying and determine through labeling whether that product contains genetically modified organisms.

That is the issue. In the State of Vermont our legislature voted overwhelmingly for labeling. The State Senate in Connecticut, by an almost unanimous vote, did the same. All over this country States are considering this issue.

One of the concerns that arises when a State goes forward is large biotech companies such as Monsanto suggest that States do not have the constitutional right to go forward; that they are preempting Federal authority. This bill makes it very clear that States can go forward. I would appreciate my colleagues' support for it.