Floor Statements

Mr. President, we are in an odd world. Our Democratic colleagues continue to have the gall to suggest and state that the Republicans are blocking funding for homeland security in America when nothing could be further from the truth.

I guess they have gotten away with blaming Republicans for blocking things, so they just keep on saying it. But the House has fully funded all the legal policies and programs within Homeland Security, and they sent the bill over here.

What did they do? They simply said: You can't take money out of homeland security enforcement for immigration and border security, and spend it on activities that violate the law, that undermine immigration law, that in fact are contrary to immigration law--that the President has said he intends to do no matter what Congress does, no matter what the American people want. He says he is going to do it anyway. They simply say we are not going to fund that.

So it comes over to pass. It fully funds the Department of Homeland Security. It doesn't change any of the laws in Homeland Security--and they say this is being obstructed by the Republicans.

But look. What does the media say about it? How is it being reported?

Here is Politico: ``Democrats filibuster Department of Homeland Security bill.'' That was yesterday. And that is exactly what is happening. They are filibustering the bill and saying Republicans are blocking it, when all that the Republicans are saying is: Let's get on the bill. We can't even get on the bill so amendments can be offered because they are filibustering the motion to proceed to the bill, blocking us even getting on the legislation so amendments can be offered.

If they are not happy with anything in the bill--the language the House put in or anything else--they can offer amendments to deal with it and strike it out.

That is what Politico said.

How about the New York Times. They are always favoring Democratic immigration policies. This is their headline: ``Senate Democrats Block Republicans' Homeland Security Bill.'' Isn't that true? That is exactly true.

How about the Atlantic. I think this is almost amusing: ``The New Democratic Obstructionists.'' That is the headline in their publication.

So I would push back at this. Are we through the looking glass? Are we down the rabbit hole into never-never land? Where are we?

My good friend Senator Schumer, one of our able advocates here--and I really admire him. But this is what he said earlier today:

The right wing of the Republican party is risking a D.H.S.,

a Department of Homeland Security, shutdown to get their way

on immigration.

This is how Senator Schumer framed it:

They're saying take our hard right stance on immigration or

we won't fund national security.

He goes on to say:

We think the American people are on our side. We're willing

to have that debate.

Well, why don't we have it? Why don't we bring the bill up and let's have the debate if he wants to offer amendments contrary to what the House did?

But remember, the House didn't do anything but say we are going to spend money on all the programs in Homeland Security. It didn't defund any of them. It didn't change any of those rules.

So, is it really true? Do only rightwing Republicans want to end the President's unlawful actions? No, no, no. That is not what the truth is.

Why don't I share with our colleagues here what many of our Democratic Senators have said about the President's unlawful action. Here is what the junior Senator from Indiana said:

It is clear the immigration system in this country is

broken, and only Congress has the ability to change the law

to fix it . . . I am as frustrated as anyone that Congress is

not doing its job, but the President shouldn't make such

significant policy changes on his own.

That was just November last year.

The senior Senator from Missouri said:

Our immigration system is broken, and I support a

comprehensive plan to fix it, but executive orders aren't the

way to do it.

The senior Senator from West Virginia:

I disagree with the President's decision to use executive

action to make changes to our immigration system.

The junior Senator from North Dakota:

I'm disappointed the president decided to use executive

action at this time on this issue. . . . It's Congress' job

to pass legislation and deal with issues of this magnitude.

Isn't that true.

The junior Senator from Maine:

I also have constitutional concerns about where

prosecutorial discretion ends and unconstitutional executive

authority begins.

Well, I share that thought.

The junior Senator from Minnesota:

I have concerns about executive action. . . . This is a job

for Congress.

The senior Senator from Virginia:

. . . the best way to get a comprehensive solution is to take

this through the legislative process.

So are those right-wingers? Are those people who can't be trusted to put the public interest first? Are they exaggerating? Are they somehow all in error to question the power of the Presidency to execute this policy?

No, and I will cite one more national leader that is well known. I would cite President Obama himself, who on 20

different occasions said he did not have power to do what he now has done. So Congress is not passing any new law. Congress is not passing any new power. Congress is simply saying: Mr. President, you cannot create new laws and fund new programs that are contrary to existing law, in violation of existing law, and in violation of the wishes of the American people and the decided actions of Congress itself.

Remember all these ideas were presented to Congress, and Congress rejected them. They were elected to represent the people of the United States of America, and they rejected these policies. So why should Congress fund the President, who goes and does what they now reject?

Well, Senator Schumer says he believes the American people are on his side, or ``our side,'' the obstructionist side, the side that is blocking Homeland Security.

Let's look at the polling data. This is a poll from Paragon Insights. The question to the American people was: Should you focus on bettering work situations for Americans? Should that be our focus and not immigration advancements or expansion. Among Democrats, 64 percent said yes. Among Independents, 75 percent said yes.

What about this: Do you believe providing amnesty encourages illegal immigration? Democrats, 63 percent. Is that part of the great rightwing conspiracy? How about Independents--68 percent; Republicans, 88 percent.

How about this: Do you believe illegal immigrants take jobs from vulnerable citizens? Democrats, 57 percent; Independents, 73 percent.

How about this one: Do you believe amnesty is disastrous and unconstitutional? Democrats, 53 percent; Independents, 70 percent.

How about the question that illegal immigrants take jobs from vulnerable citizens. What do Hispanics say about that? Mr. President, 65 percent of Hispanics agree with that.

What about the question that providing amnesty encourages illegal immigration? We all know that it does, and 63 percent of Hispanics agree with that. What about the question: Amnesty will hollow out the middle class. We had a lot of talk about what to do with the middle class. Ask the middle class what they think for a change. Will amnesty hollow out the middle class? Independents--not Republicans, not Democrats, not rightwingers--73 percent agree; 62 percent of Hispanics agree with that statement.

This idea somehow that the American people support blocking the Homeland Security bill to protect the President's unlawful Executive amnesty, that the American people support the Democrats in doing that is not true. The data shows that, and that is consistent with my understanding.

How about this question in a poll by Kellyanne Conway's polling company, a nationwide survey: ``President Obama recently said that he may go around Congress and take executive action on immigration policy.'' This was done back in August of last year. ``Which do you support more: President Obama changing immigration policy on his own, or President Obama working with Congress to change immigration policy?'' Well, 74 percent said he should work with Congress. Only 21 percent said he should do it on his own.

How about Independents? How about the Independents--not conservative rightwingers? What do they view as to whether the President should work with Congress and pass a law in the orderly business according to legitimate processes or do it on his own? Among Independents, 81 percent said he should work with Congress, and only 14 percent say he should do it on his own.

So this idea that somehow the American people are all in support of President Obama's outrageous actions, which he himself 20 times said he had no power to do but did anyway, is just false. It is not true, and it is not true the Republicans are blocking the Homeland Security bill, either. The Democrats are filibustering the bill, not allowing it to come to the floor so even an amendment can be voted on.

What do our colleagues do? They seem to think that if they say the Republicans are causing it to happen, then the media will accept it. But the media is not accepting this, and nobody is accepting this. And I hope the Democratic colleagues who openly question this policy will re-evaluate where they stand and think back.

Isn't this the thing to do? Let's move to the bill, and then we can debate all the language and all the issues that are relevant and see where we go from there--not just block the bill. So I would urge colleagues to think that through and change their view from what they have been doing, which is supporting unanimously a filibuster.

Now there is some simple Paragon Insights polling data. It asked a simple policy question without reference to Republicans and Democrats or President Obama. What did they find in their poll, by a 50-point measure?

I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

I didn't know we had a time limit.

By a 50-point margin voters want to pass legislation making it harder to hire workers now illegally in the country--71 to 21. They want us to protect American workers, to make it harder for businesses to hire people unlawfully in the country. We are not doing any of that. The President has given an Executive order that provides 5 million people with work authorizations, Social Security cards, Social Security numbers, and the right to take any job in America when we have a shortage of jobs in America.

Female voters support this action by a 3-to-1 margin. Hispanic voters support the measure by a 19-point margin, 56 to 37 percent. I would say blue-collar voters, people who go to work every day, strongly oppose the President's action by more than a 3-to-1 margin. One in three Obama voters opposes his Executive action, overall.

We are not going to stop. President Obama does not have the authority to do this. It is a challenge institutionally to this body. No matter what you feel about amnesty or providing benefits for people here unlawfully, it is Congress's job, and we have to face up to it and wrestle with it.

Some say that if we don't approve it, then we are not facing up to it. I don't agree. I think it is worth discussing and voting on it. So far Congress has rejected the President's ideas of how it should be handled. I think they will continue to do so. The American people overwhelmingly want the Congress to defend their interests, to defend their right to work, to defend their declining wages, and to do something about the wages that are declining, to do something about the difficulty their children have in finding a decent job--even college graduates. We don't have a shortage of workers in this country; we have a shortage of jobs in this country. That is absolutely clear.

We can do this country a great service, and we can do the struggling, hurting middle-class workers a great service if we slow down a bit in this unlawful immigration flow. We have a generous lawful flow. Let's end the lawlessness and protect them, and maybe their wages will begin to rise, for a change, instead of falling, as they have done for a decade.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley for his remarks. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a longtime vigorous leader in the U.S. Senate, I know he was here and saw the problems of the 1986 amnesty. It had bad ramifications in a lot of ways. I believe if we listened to the experience of Senator Grassley and his understanding of what is at stake, we would all be in a lot better shape than we are today.

The American people want a lawful system of immigration. They want one that is fair to applicants who want to come to America. They are not for eliminating immigration to America. They want a system that allows people to apply, wait their turn, and if they are qualified, be admitted; if they don't qualify, not be admitted. They want that enforced. They don't believe we should have open borders and open visa programs that allow people by the millions to come unlawfully into this country. The President obviously has a different view. As a result, we are in a situation in which the Constitution is at stake in a lot of ways.

We will vote after lunch on moving forward to the Department of Homeland Security bill. The Department of Homeland Security bill, passed by the House of Representatives, fully funds the Department of Homeland Security. The basic funding mechanisms and agreements and allocations of money in that legislation were approved on a bipartisan basis. The House of Representatives simply said: Mr. President, the money in the Department of Homeland Security funding mechanism will be spent for lawful purposes. That money will be spent to secure the homeland in an effective way. That money, however, will not be spent by anyone to take actions outside the lawful limitations and lawful powers of the Department of Homeland Security. But that is what the President wanted to do, and that is what he wants to do through his Executive action.

They are now leasing a new building across the river in Crystal City. They are hiring 1,000 new Federal employees. Those Federal employees will be processing the applications for up to 5 million people and they will be providing those people with photo IDs. These are people in the country unlawfully. They are not lawfully allowed to work in America. Businesses aren't allowed to hire people who are here unlawfully.

It is plain and simple. They are not eligible to qualify for Social Security or Medicare. So the President has declared he is going to set up this office. They will process these individuals, and they will provide up to 5 million photo IDs, 5 million Social Security numbers, and the right to work in America. They will be allowed to participate in Social Security and Medicare.

He says: I am entitled to do that. Well, he is not entitled to do that. As scholar after scholar and as common sense tells us, the President doesn't have that power. That is what this is about.

The House barred any spending on this unlawful activity--an activity the President asked Congress to allow him to do and which Congress rejected. This proposal was presented to Congress, and Congress refused to pass it. But he is doing it anyway. It is an arrogant overreach, a direct challenge to the historic role of Congress in our American system.

Our Democratic colleagues say they don't want controversial immigration riders on this bill--controversial immigration riders. In other words, they don't want the Congress to do what it is required to do--fund the programs it believes need to be funded and not fund programs it doesn't believe should be funded.

As a matter of policy, Congress has not adopted and does not support what the President wants to do. In fact, it has prohibited it. It has no duty whatsoever to allow the President to spend moneys of the United States of America to advocate a program they don't approve of, or certainly one that is unlawful. That is what this is all about. Our colleagues are voting to block the bill that would fund Homeland Security at the level the President has asked for. So there is no policy change here. Every lawful activity of Homeland Security is funded.

There was a headline in the New York Times today. I am going to push back a little on my colleagues because they have been spinning this idea that somehow the Republican House, in sending this legislation over that funded Homeland Security, is disrupting the fair flow and causing controversies within our funding mechanisms of Congress. The headline from an experienced reporter's article in today's New York Times is: ``Democrats Look to Protect Obama's Immigration Directives.''

That is exactly what this is about, colleagues. At least seven of our Democratic colleagues have explicitly said they don't agree with the policy of the President with regard to Executive amnesty and providing work permits and Social Security to people unlawfully here. But they are now united. We are told all of them are going to stand together to protect President Obama's immigration directives.

When they were running for office during the campaign last fall, people were saying they didn't agree with him. Now, when the issue hits the floor and we have an opportunity to do the normal and rational thing and not fund an unlawful policy, they are all sticking together like a palace guard around the White House to protect Obama's immigration directives. This is a sad thing and a disappointing thing to me. The article goes on to say:

Democrats are hoping they can force the new Republican

majority to drop the immigration provisions and send the $40

billion spending bill to the President.

Congress is spending $40 billion on homeland security. All of that money is directed to legitimate lawful policies of Homeland Security and not allowing any of it to be spent on unlawful, unapproved policies in Homeland Security--an absolute power that Congress has, a duty that it has. Congress is violating its fundamental duty if it allows the President to carry out power he is not authorized. It is absolutely violating its duty if it supports and funds actions by the President to violate the law. It has a duty to say no to the President who overreaches.

The article goes on to say:

But Democrats have decided to shut down debate on the

measure altogether, fearful that it could lead to the bill's

approval and could prompt negotiations with the House that

would put them at a disadvantage.

Fearful that the process could lead to the bill's approval during negotiations

with the House--isn't that what legislation is all about? Isn't that what it is all about? Shouldn't our colleagues have the right, if they don't like the language that constricts the President's power to carry on this unlawful act, to offer an amendment to strip it out? They have the ability to strike that language. Why don't they do that? No, they are blocking even moving to the bill in its entirety. Then they are attempting one of the most through-the-looking-glass, down-the-rabbit- hole arguments you have ever heard. They are saying Republicans are shutting down Homeland Security when they are not passing the bill that is on the floor today and we will be voting on. They are rejecting it. All it does is fund the Department of Homeland Security at a level agreed upon on a bipartisan basis, $40 billion.

What kind of world are we in when we do that? I would like to ask who is being protected here. The answer is clear. The New York Times said: They are protecting President Obama's political immigration directives.

I would ask this. Isn't it our duty to protect the Constitution? Isn't it our duty to protect the laws of the United States of America? Isn't it our duty to protect American workers from the decline in wages and their job prospects as a result of now legalizing 5 million people to be able to take any job whatsoever in the entire American economy, including working for the county commission, the power company, the trucking companies?

Isn't that what our duty is? Who should we be protecting here? Shouldn't we be protecting a lawful system of immigration?

But the President wants to take money. He wants Congress to appropriate money to give him at Homeland Security so he can spend it to undermine the law of the United States of America. What an unthinkable thing that is. But that is fundamentally what is happening. He wants and is demanding that this Congress not follow its promises to the American people--not follow its lawful and constitutional duty--but to give him the money so he can carry out a policy in contradiction to the laws of the United States of America and to the good policy of America. This is the way we do business in this country.

I think the reason our Democratic colleagues don't want to move to the bill is because they don't want to debate the substance of it. That is not a good reason. They don't want to debate the substance of it because their position is untenable. The American people understand that Congress is not shutting down the government and is not shutting down Homeland Security. Our Democratic colleagues are the ones that are refusing to pass the legislation that would fund Homeland Security. The President is backing them up and encouraging them, and apparently he has had success. He twisted arms or something because at least seven of the Members said they didn't agree with this, and more probably would have, had they been asked. But no, not now. Now they are all standing together with Senator Reid, the minority leader of the Senate, to advocate this policy.

I don't appreciate it being said time and again by so many of our Democratic colleagues and the President that somehow Congress is acting improperly and that Congress is not funding Homeland Security. This is through the looking glass. This is beyond acceptance. I think the New York Times pretty well said it correct. I don't believe the media is buying this argument. I don't think the American people are buying this argument, and Congress shouldn't buy the argument. The right thing to do, colleagues, is to get on the bill.

Let me say this to my Democratic colleagues. I know many of you are uneasy about this. Let's get on the legislation. There will be amendments. There will be a number of amendments. Perhaps things could develop in a way that you can support them. We will protect the lawful constitutional powers of Congress and fund Homeland Security. We will do it in a way that strengthens the rule of law in America and strengthens our ability to have integrity in the immigration system. It creates a system the American people rightfully have demanded, pleaded for, and prayed for, and that Congress and the politicians have failed to produce for now over 40 years. That is the problem. The American people are angry, and they are not angry at immigrants. All of us have friends and relatives and neighbors who have immigrated to America. We are not against immigrants. I think there is a growing unease out there about the willful refusal of Congress to do what it takes to fix this system.

I would just say one more thing. American wages are down. Wages fell in December 5 cents an hour--not a good event after we have been told everything is getting so much better. There is a limit, colleagues, to how many people we can bring to America to take jobs when we have a limited number of jobs and falling wages.

We have the lowest percentage of Americans in the workforce working today since the 1970s. Things aren't going good. We can't accept everybody in the whole world to take jobs here.

We just had a report produced yesterday that said we have now discovered there are another 5 million people who have been--it looks to me--admitted to work in the country unlawfully. Through the Freedom of Information Act, it was discovered that not only do we have a million people a year come to America with green cards and permanent residency, we have 700,000 guest workers that come every year. Add to that the asylees, plus the refugees and other people. What they found out was we have now--in the last 5 years under this administration-- given work authorization to 5 million more people than anybody knew. Do we think this doesn't impact people's wages, impact women to have a better job, their children to have a better job?

Somebody needs to be thinking about this. There is a limit here, and it is obvious the limits need to be discussed. We need to create a lawful system which protects American workers. We need to be less concerned about protecting President Obama's unlawful directives and more concerned with protecting the interests of the American working person.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, tomorrow we will vote on whether to proceed to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which fully funds the Department of Homeland Security and includes the law enforcement priorities that were agreed to on a bipartisan basis in the House. It is indeed a clean bill. The House of Representatives has voted to fund fully homeland security, as the President has requested.

Now, it is not a perfect bill. Republicans and Democrats and individuals on both sides have different priorities on some matters, but they did come to an agreement to fund all of the programs of the Department of Homeland Security and on how much they were funded-- activities and actions that are authorized, however, by the laws of the United States.

So this bill will not deny a penny of funding. In fact, it says: Mr. President, spend the money on enforcing and following the law. Spend the money on enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act as passed by Congress--that is the law of the United States of America. Spend the money to let our law enforcement officers carry out their duties as prescribed by the laws.

Yet our Democratic colleagues say they are going to block this bill-- that they will all stick together and not even let it come to the floor of the Senate. Why? Why would they do that? Because, they say, they want to give the President the funds, apparently, to spend on his unconstitutional and unlawful Executive amnesty. They will not allow the bill to even be voted on, and without a vote in the Senate, the funding for Homeland Security does not go forward. They are not going to allow it to be voted on because they want to protect the President in his assertion of an unconstitutional and illegal power to order duly-constituted enforcement officers of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to carry out unlawful activity.

The President is not entitled to spend taxpayer dollars to implement a system of immigration that Congress--representing the American people's wishes, let me add--rejected just last year. Surely our Democratic colleagues will not block the Senate from proceeding to this bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. If they are unhappy with the language of the bill of the House of Representatives, if they think the President wrongfully or rightfully, using legitimate powers, could direct them to provide Social Security numbers, Medicare participation, earned income tax credit money from the Federal Government and the right to work in the United States when the law says they are not entitled to be employed in the United States, then they can offer an amendment to the bill and bring it up on the floor of the Senate to strike that language if they think it is so bad.

Of course, if you think about it, that would be a stunning event; would it not be--the Senate taking language from a bill or striking language from a bill that restores the separation of powers as properly understood by the Framers and preventing the President from violating law and the constitution. They are going to vote against that? Maybe that is why they choose not to have this bill go forward. Maybe they do not want to confront the issue.

I am going to quote Senator Reid in a moment because he said we ought to confront the issue square-on. All right, let's do so. I suspect Senator Reid, though, and his team are not so interested in having votes and being held accountable for their votes.

Our colleagues would have the right to offer amendments. Senator McConnell is allowing amendments. He is going out of his way to allow amendments and changing the terrible state the Senate had found itself in under the leadership of Senator Reid. Consistent with the rules of the Senate, those amendments can be brought up, and a motion to strike this language is certainly appropriate.

It is an untenable position--untenable constitutionally, untenable because it is contrary to the will of the Members of the House and Senate who oppose the President's action--Republicans and Democrats. Perhaps most importantly, it is untenable politically because the American people strongly reject it. So why would any Senator--Democrat or Republican--when the very integrity of the Congress is under assault by an overreaching executive branch, not want to assert congressional authority at this point?

We are coequal branches of government, and the President does not have the authority to enforce a law that was never passed--indeed, a law that was explicitly rejected by the Congress of the United States-- and grant amnesty to people who are unlawfully here, provide them work authorizations, a photo ID allowing them to apply for any job in America, with Social Security numbers and the right to participate in Social Security and Medicare. That is what the President's actions are going to do.

This is not prosecutorial discretion--nowhere close to prosecutorial discretion. It is an Executive fiat. It is an imperial act. As the President himself said repeatedly: I am not a king; I am not an emperor. When dealing with this very issue, he told people over a period of years--20 times--that he did not have the power to do this. But then he changed his mind. Under pressure from certain political interest groups and because he couldn't get Congress to vote for the bill he wanted, he just decided to do it on his own.

This is an unthinkable overreach. It is a matter of great national importance. The American people were engaged in this. They were following this issue. The President couldn't get the constitutional process to give him the power he wanted, so he just did it anyway.

Why can't it be stopped? I get asked that. What is the matter with you people in Congress?

Well, we had seven Members on the Democratic side of the aisle, still in this Senate today, who said the President overreached. They said he shouldn't have done this, and it should have been done by the legislature, by the Congress, not by the President. Yet are all seven of them going to vote with Senator Reid and become part of

the palace guard that protects the President in his unlawful act so the President can't be challenged?

That is what it amounts to. There is no doubt about it. That is precisely what it amounts to--a palace guard circling around the White House to protect the President, even though Members of this Senate have said he overreached and what he did was wrong. They are, apparently, going to continue to vote for it. Out of what--party loyalty? Out of loyalty to Senator Reid, the minority leader in the Senate?

Well, they say--and the media even is saying sometimes--Democrats and others are sometimes saying that the bill contains controversial new immigration riders, and therefore, it ought to be blocked. It contains unconstitutional or controversial new immigration riders, and that is bad. That is why it ought to be blocked.

What new policy is in the bill? What new expenditure is in the bill that is not consistent with the laws of the United States? Not one. The bill passed by the House carries out the essential functions in the normal orderly way of Homeland Security. It doesn't add any pork, and it doesn't add any special expenditures for some controversial project. It doesn't do any of that.

So if the President says that he will deploy his Border Patrol officers--no longer at the Mexican border where we have large flows of illegal labor--to Montana or Maine, where we have very few people, in effect, he is saying we are no longer going to enforce the border there or even attempt to, and he is going to reassign them. He is saying: I am the President. They work for me. I can do such things.

Well, would it be a controversial rider for the Senate, or for the House of Representatives, to say no, we prohibit funds to do that? We are going to fund the officers' duty at the border with our Mexican neighbors where they need to be.

The point is who is creating the controversy--not the House of Representatives. It is the President of the United States. He has overreached, without any doubt, and the situation is very grave.

What if the next President of the United States decides to do something else? Senator Cruz, at the hearing for the Attorney General nominee, Ms. Lynch, asked her: What if Mr. Cornyn--whom he was sitting by, at the time, the Senator from Texas--were President and he didn't like certain labor laws that applied to people in Texas and he told his bureaucrats--who in effect work for the President of the United States--don't enforce labor laws in Texas?

So Senator Cruz asked the nominee, Loretta Lynch, who wants to be Attorney General of the United States of America, whether under President Obama's Executive amnesty theory, the next President could do that and bar the enforcement of labor laws in the State of Texas. She said she would have to review it. She wasn't sure. Of course that is blatantly unconstitutional. It shouldn't have taken her 5 seconds to say of course a President can't do that. Have we gotten such a confused understanding of law in America that we are at that point that universal laws of labor are subject to the whim of a President of the United States, and even the Attorney General will not say it is wrong and even the Congress will not say no to the President on this?

Well, the House did say no. They passed a perfectly responsible funding bill for Homeland Security. They said: We are not going to allow you to spend money to advocate a policy which we have rejected-- which they can do just that way: We don't like this action. We are not going to fund this action. The Executive of this country--the President--cannot act on it if he is prevented from spending money on it. It goes to the very core of the legislative process. It is what the American Revolution was about. It is what happened in England. They wrested this power from the King, and we adopted it in terms of the President and put the power in Congress. They had the power in Parliament. It is a big deal.

I don't think we are at a point where we need to back down on this. It is not an overreach. Those great leaders, some at Homeland Security, so confident in their wisdom and policy ideas, having forgotten what the rule of law is, suggest that Congress should just roll over and forget it and go on and let it happen and not be controversial by standing up to it.

Now, look. I like Senator Reid. We battle a lot. He is pugnacious, as this Politico article said, but I can live with that. I am glad he is back and I hope he is doing better and I hope he recovers fully, and I am confident he will. A Politico article by Mr. Burgess Everett earlier today quoted Senator Reid as saying:

Why should we be dealing with issues that have nothing to

do with homeland security?

Nothing to do with homeland security, Senator Reid said.

If my Republican colleagues have some problems with

something the President has done on immigration, for example,

hit it head on. Don't hide it in homeland security.

Well, the problem is Homeland Security. The President has directed the officials of Homeland Security to take money that has been authorized and appropriated for them to enforce the immigration laws of this country and to use those funds to carry out a scheme Congress has rejected.

Under the laws of the United States it is illegal to hire somebody unlawfully in the country. There is no doubt about that. People unlawfully in the country are not entitled to participate in Social Security or Medicare. How could it be otherwise?

So he told the Homeland Security officials to create a new office, a new building across the river in Crystal City. He directed them to hire 1,000 new employees to process applications under his Executive amnesty, a policy Congress rejected. It is breathtaking. It is going to cost tens of millions of dollars just for that one office. That just begins to suggest how much money will have to be spent to execute his vision for immigration that the American people rejected.

So how do we deal with it directly? How do we hit it on the head openly and directly? The Congress has the power of the purse. No money can be spent by this President that Congress hasn't authorized.

So the House discussed this. They went into some detail about it, worked at it for some time, and the House decided they would not fund this action that contradicted laws they passed and execute a policy they didn't agree with. I think that is confronting it head on--no doubt about that--and it absolutely deals with homeland security. My goodness. So this is the kind of logic and weak arguments that are being put forth here.

We will talk about a lot of things as we go forward with this debate that evidences the bankruptcy of the policies carried out by this administration.

One of the things that came out today as part of the President's budget was his assumption that if his immigration policies are passed, we would save lots of money for the U.S. Treasury. Why would it save money? It would save money because we would collect more Social Security benefits, and this would create more revenue for the government and put us in a sound position to help balance the budget.

We are not going to balance the budget. We are not going to come close to it, but he said a substantial amount of money would come from it.

Colleagues, we have to understand what a misrepresentation of colossal enormity is at stake in that statement. Everybody knows Social Security and Medicare are on unsustainable financial courses. Anybody who knows anything about Medicare and Social Security knows the fundamental problem is people are not putting in enough money to take care of those who retire, and so the flow is not enough. Over time it is going to get worse. We are just now beginning to go into deficit for Social Security. The disability portion is in critical shape. It is in very bad shape, but what this calculation is based on is the next 10 years.

So it says we will have more income in the next 10 years, and that may be so. But every person who goes on Social Security today--and even more so in the future--are, under law, projected to take out more than they put in plus interest. So obviously add 5 million new people to the Social Security rolls and no change in the amount of money that they pay in, they make the long-term strength of Social Security even more weak. It makes the hole even deeper that we have to dig our way out of. There is no other way to analyze it.

It is just unbelievable to me that they would make such a statement.

Those of us in the Congress need to be thinking about the long-term financial course of America. We need to be trying to put not just short-term benefits here so Congress can spend more money, but also we need to be thinking about how to place this country on a sound long- term path. Adding more people to Social Security--particularly lower income people as most of these are, who will draw out even more than the higher income people draw out as a percentage on the basis of what they paid in--is not a way to save Social Security.

In a December 1, 2014 article in Investor's Business Daily entitled, ``Obama's Amnesty will create a Fiscal Nightmare for Entitlements,'' Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation, and Mark E. Litow, retired actuary and past chairman of the Social Insurance Public Finance Section of the Society of Actuaries, wrote this:

Obama's amnesty action greatly exacerbates the problem,

because retirees get back far more than they pay in.

That is as plain and as simple as daylight following dark. They go on to write:

But millions of Obama's newly legalized are working-age

adults with children, so many could be in their 40s or older.

Thus, they could pay FICA taxes for the next, say, 15 or 20

years--less than the average American worker--and be eligible

for the full array of Social Security and Medicare benefits.

This is going to be devastating to Social Security and Medicare. It is going to hammer those programs. It is going to make it harder for us to save them, which we have an obligation to do. There is no obligation to give Social Security and Medicare to persons who enter the United States unlawfully. People aren't entitled to come into the country unlawfully and demand the benefits of the country. The first thing we should do to confront unlawful immigration is not to subsidize it with taxpayer money.

The article goes on to say:

Using a basic simulation model, we believe the government

will receive about $500 billion in payroll tax revenue

(including Part B and drug premiums) and expect it to pay out

some $2 trillion in benefits over several decades.

So they pay in $500 billion, but we are going to pay out $2 trillion--four times as much. How does this make America more financially stable?

On December 4 of last year, in an article in the Atlantic magazine entitled ``The Cost of Amnesty,'' senior editor David Frum wrote this:

In the 2011 tax year, the average EITC payment to a family

with children was $2,905, according to the Center for Budget

and Policy Priorities. The Additional Child Tax Credit works

in much the same way, paying an average of $1,800 to

qualifying households.

Earned-income tax credit--that sounds like some sort of deduction you might have, but it is not. So many of the persons who will be given this legal status will be eligible for the earned-income tax credit because they have a family--presumably--that is what the President tells us; these are for families--and their income is at a rate that entitles them to draw earned-income tax credit.

But go to the budget of the United States of America and how the Congressional Budget Office calculates this--they don't calculate earned-income tax credit as some sort of tax deduction. They calculate it as an expenditure of the United States of America, and it absolutely is.

The way it works is your income is so low you have a family of such that you don't owe any income tax, and they send you a credit and they call it an earned-income tax credit, and a tax credit is a cash payment to you. It looks something like a tax matter, but it is really a direct check from the United States of America to lower-income families. So this is going to be qualifying for large numbers of people that will be given a legal status.

Citing the Center for Immigration Studies, Mr. Frum in the Atlantic article explains:

About 14.5 percent of the native-born population of the

United States earns little enough to qualify for the EITC.

Almost twice as great a portion of the total immigrant

population, 29.7 percent, qualifies. But the specific

immigrant groups most likely to benefit from the President's

actions earned even less.

So you have, on a percentage basis, twice as many in the immigrant population eligible for EITC as the average native-born American would be to qualify to receive that check from the United States.

Mr. Frum goes on to say, ``The EITC will cost a shade over $70 billion in fiscal year 2015.''

That is a lot of money--$70 billion. A Federal highway bill is $40 billion, moving up to $50 billion. This is $70 billion.

The refundable portion of the child tax credit will cost

about $33 billion. That's $100 billion in total. Together,

they cost 10 times as much as traditional cash welfare. Soon

they will cost much, much more.

He goes on to note:

Quaintly enough, U.S. immigration law still forbids the

president to grant residency to aliens likely to become ``a

public charge.'' The list of exceptions, however, overwhelms

the rule. Here are the benefits that are ``not intended for

income maintenance'' and therefore exempt, according to the

Citizenship and Immigration Services. . . .

And they list a whole lot of taxes.

Well, I just want to wrap up by saying the House of Representatives can do time and order, pass the bill that fully funds the United States, and it does not contain riders and it does not contain pork spending. Well, maybe it contains it, but it is not being complained about at this time, and it is before the Senate. To fund the Department of Homeland Security the Senate has to pass the same bill with the same expenditures to do so. So all we have to do is fund the Department of Homeland Security but not approve the President's desire to transmit funds in Homeland Security to an illegal, unlawful policy of amnesty that Congress opposes and the American people oppose. Who do we represent?

Since 2009, we learned today, the Obama administration issued 5.5 million extra work permits--double the normal expected flow by over almost a million a year. We understood it to be 700,000. Now we understand there are so many more that have not been calculated in the numbers. His Executive amnesty will issue 5 million more.

Since 2009 family incomes are down $4,000. There is no doubt about it, colleagues, that this incredibly large flow of immigrants into America exceeds the ability of the American economy to absorb them. It is pulling down wages. It is moving people out of the workplace. It is making it very difficult for lawful immigrants to get jobs in America because there will always be a new group coming in willing to work for less. It is eroding the middle class and middle-class values.

So we are going to talk about this as we go forward. I believe this country will continue to be a nation that allows immigration. We don't dislike or hate or demean people that want to come to America and work here. But we need to send a clear message: If you are not coming lawfully, don't come. And if you come unlawfully, you are not going to be given amnesty. You are not going to be given Social Security, Medicare, earned income tax credits, and the right to go to any hospital in America and demand health care. We are just not going to do that.

If we do that with clarity, colleagues, what will happen? The people who are coming here unlawfully will stop coming. The numbers will fall dramatically, and we will be in a position, then, to reestablish a lawful system of immigration that the American people have pleaded with us to establish--one that we can be proud of, that is just and fair where people apply and wait their turn and are accepted or not accepted based on the merits. If we do that, we will have served the American people with what they have asked us to do.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, we are told that next week we can expect the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which fully funds the Department of Homeland Security and includes the law enforcement priorities that were agreed to on a bipartisan basis in the House--and I think will be approved on a bipartisan basis in the Senate, hammered out in the Senate Appropriations Committee--will be coming to the Senate.

The House of Representatives has therefore voted to fund Homeland Security in essentially the way the President has asked for and the Democrats and Republicans agreed on. It is not a perfect bill for everybody, but we have to do those things. We have to agree and fund all the departments and agencies of our government.

Yet we now have a statement that our Democratic colleagues are going to block the bill. They apparently intend to say Republicans blocked the bill and that somehow Republicans didn't fund Homeland Security. That is the message they are going to try to promote.

They are going to say they want a clean bill. What does a clean bill mean? Is it a bill that funds the Immigration and Nationality Act as was passed by Congress, some 500 pages? It funds the officers and enforcement officials who carry out those duties every day. Does it fund those? Yes, it funds those.

What is it that people are complaining about then? What is this clean bill they want to see?

I would suggest it is not a clean bill they want. In reality, they want legislation that will fund action by President Obama that violates the Immigration and Nationality Act, actions that he has taken through Executive amnesty. That is the problem we are dealing with.

Apparently they believe the President of the United States, who doesn't agree with the way immigration law is written, the way it has been carried out for 30, 40 years--he is not happy with that. He asked the Congress to change it.

Congress said: No.

He said: I am going to do it anyway. Right across the river from Washington--I am going to lease a building that houses 1,000 new workers--new workers--and those workers are going to process and give out legal status, work permits, Social Security participation, Medicare participation to 5 million people. People who, according to the Immigration and Nationality Act, are unlawfully in the country and are not able to work. Businesses cannot hire somebody who is in the country unlawfully.

Is there any country in the world that says it is appropriate for a business to hire somebody who entered that country unlawfully? What kind of logic can support such reasoning?

So the President is not an imperial master. He asked Congress and Congress said no, but he wants to go ahead and do it.

Our Democratic colleagues are now telling us they are not going to support funding of Homeland Security because Congress--the House of Representatives bill and the bill I think will have a majority in the Senate--will not fund this building, the 1,000 people, and all the other activities that will be needed to execute this unlawful, unconstitutional Executive amnesty.

It is through the looking glass. I mean, what world are we in?

I was a Federal prosecutor for almost 15 years. They enforce the law, they don't enforce what some President said he would like to see done that is not lawful. Colleagues, this is so serious that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, their association filed a lawsuit, and they challenged the actions of their supervisors telling them not to enforce plain immigration law. They went to Federal court.

Has anybody ever heard of that before? This is the equivalent of the FBI for the immigration service. These are first-rate officers. Many of them have been there 20 or 30 years.

They say: You are asking us to not enforce the law.

They have challenged it in court. I have never heard of anything such as that before. The people in charge of enforcing the law having to go to court to keep from being told not to enforce the law? It is amazing.

This bill will not deny a penny of funding. It will not deny any funding for any program, activity or action that is authorized by law. It does not deny funding for any of those programs that are actually authorized by the laws of the United States. In fact, it says: Spend the money, Mr. President, on enforcing and following the law. You cannot spend money unconstitutionally to advocate and create a system of law Congress rejected--an unlawful activity.

The Congress of the United States is not helpless when it confronts the President. Colleagues, we have to get out from under our desks. Are we afraid to say to the President of the United States we don't agree with this, and we are not going to fund this?

Is that the world we are in? Are we hiding under our desks, that the President may go on television and attack us because we will not agree with his ideas? Surely not, surely not.

The Congress has the power to appropriate money. It goes back to the historic development--before America became a nation--that the Parliament took over the power of money from the King. Parliament passed the laws, not the King.

We adopted that and we created a constitutional order, instead of a King, to decide how we operate. The Parliament, and the Congress of the United States, was empowered to handle the money.

What obligation, colleagues, does this Congress of the United States have to give the President of the United States money to undermine the laws of the United States? What power does he have to compel us to do so? Zero.

We should do the right thing. And the right thing is to say: Mr. President, we are willing to consider a form of immigration law, but we didn't approve of this bill. We didn't support your bill last time and we are not going to pass your bill this time. We are going to continue to work to improve immigration law and make it better and serve the national interest of the United States--not special interests, not activist groups and not big businesses, but the average working American's interest. That is who we are going to serve in this process.

So why are we afraid to push back on that? It is amazing to me. So I don't think we will. In fact, it is sort of remarkable that this is a bipartisan position that the President has overreached. I am not going to quote the names of Senators. I will be a little bit courteous at this point and just quote some of the statements from all separate Democratic Senators in the last few months when asked about this Executive amnesty by the President. A lot of Senators have never been asked. They are probably thankful they weren't asked.

This is what one Senator said:

. . . but the President shouldn't make such a significant

policy change on his own.

Another Democratic Senator:

. . . but executive orders aren't the way to do it.

Another Senator:

I disagree with the President's decision to use executive

action to make changes to our immigration system.

Another Democratic Senator:

I'm disappointed the President decided to use executive

action at this time on this issue, as it could poison any

hope of compromise or bipartisanship in the new Senate before

it has even started. It's Congress' job to pass legislation

and deal with issues of this magnitude.

Absolutely correct. It is Congress's duty to do this.

What about another Democratic Senator:

I worry that his taking unilateral action could in fact

inflame public opinion, change the subject from immigration

to the President. I also have constitutional concerns about

where prosecutorial discretion ends and unconstitutional

authority begins.

A wise quote, I think.

Another Senator:

I have concerns about executive action . . . This is a job

for Congress, and it's time for the House to act.

Another Democratic Senator:

. . . the best way to get a comprehensive solution is to

take this through the legislative process.

So I would say, colleagues, why would any Senator, Democrat or Republican--when the very integrity of the constitutional powers given to Congress are eroded in a dramatic way by the President of the United States--not want to assert congressional authority? It is important for our constitutional structure, in my view.

Well, there we are. We had hearings in the Senate on these issues and on the new nominee for Attorney General. The new nominee said she supports and will actively work for the policy the President established. The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. They take an oath to see that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.

I believe strongly in this. I don't think it is a close question. It is not a close question, colleagues. The President's actions are unlawful. The President's executive actions impose a policy that is detrimental to our ability to ever establish a lawful system of immigration in America. They are against the wishes of the Congress, which rejected this proposal, and they are overwhelmingly in opposition to the views of the American people, as poll after poll has demonstrated.

Do the American people have no role in their government? They can't expect their Members of the Senate to vote for legislation that follows the law instead of breaking the law? Aren't they frustrated already that Congress is not following the law, and they are frustrated with the President's failure to follow the law? I think they are.

Of course I would like to note that President Obama himself said 20 times he did not have the power to do this. He said, in May of 2008:

Congress's job is to pass legislation. The president can

veto it or he can sign it . . . I believe in the Constitution

and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We're

not going to use signing statements . . .

Another time he said:

Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and

obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency

and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter

their reasons, the 11 million people who broke these laws

should be held accountable.

October of 2010:

I can't simply ignore laws that are out there.

On October 25 of 2010, he said:

I am president, I am not king. I can't do these things just

by myself. We have a system of government that requires the

Congress to work with the Executive Branch to make it happen.

Well, even King George couldn't act contrary to the laws passed by Parliament. That statement goes on:

. . . I just want to repeat, I'm president, I'm not king.

If Congress has laws on the books that says that people who

are here who are not documented have to be deported, then I

can exercise some flexibility in terms of where we deploy our

resources . . . but there's a limit to the discretion that I

can show because I'm obliged to execute the law. That's what

the Executive Branch means. I can't just make the laws up by

myself.

Well, how true is that? That is absolutely correct. It goes on. There are 20 of these. I could continue, but we will be talking about this as the weeks go on.

Now, what do scholars say? Do the scholars say that this action is lawful and that Congress should fund it and we have an obligation to fund it or the President has the right to demand it? Jonathan Turley, who is a Shapiro Professor of Law at George Washington University, a nationally recognized constitutional scholar, testified before Congress many times, most often as a Democratic witness, has said he supports President Obama and voted for him. But he said this:

I believe the president has exceeded his brief. The

president is required to faithfully execute the laws. He's

not required to enforce all laws equally or commit the same

resources to them. But I believe the president has crossed

the constitutional line . . .

He said that again yesterday at the judiciary hearing on the Attorney General. He continues:

This goes to the very heart of what is the Madisonian

system. If a president can unilaterally change the meaning of

laws in substantial ways or refuse to enforce them, it takes

offline that very thing that stabilizes our system. I believe

the members will loathe the day that they allow that to

happen. This will not be the last president. There will be

more presidents who will claim the same authority.

Well, I think that is pretty significant. Professor Turley is a supporter of President Obama personally, and someone who has been a frequent Democratic witness for Congress.

Professor Nicholas Rosenkranz of Georgetown University Law Center, in his testimony yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said-- and how simple and true is this. It is pretty insightful, frankly:

Rather than declining to comply with a duly enacted

statute--

The INA.

the President has decided to comply meticulously--with a bill

that never became law.

What a statement that is. And it is absolutely true. He went on to say:

Congress has repeatedly considered a statute called the

DREAM Act, which would exempt a broad category of aliens from

the Immigration and Nationality Act. The President favored

this DREAM Act, but Congress repeatedly declined to pass it.

It is not in the code. It didn't pass. He goes on to say:

Once again, the President does have broad prosecutorial

discretion and broad discretion to husband executive

resources. But in this case, it is quite clear that the

President is not merely trying to conserve resources. . . .

To put the point another way, the President shall ``take Care

that the Laws''--capital L--``be faithfully executed''--not

those bills which fail to become law. Here, in effect, the

President is faithfully executing the DREAM Act, which is not

law at all, rather than the Immigration and Nationality Act,

which is supreme law of the land. The President cannot enact

the DREAM Act unilaterally, and he cannot evade article 1,

section 7, by pretending that it passed when it did not.

How much clearer can you lay it out? This professor is simply telling the truth. There is no other way to look at this, in my opinion. Congress is being challenged at its very core by this action, and the result of this challenge will have constitutional ramifications and it will have ramifications as we consider the relative powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in the years to come.

This is not a little matter, colleagues. It really is an affront to constitutional order. We have a duty no matter what we feel about this amnesty that goes well beyond DREAM Act amnesty. We have a constitutional duty to defend the integrity of the Congress against an encroachment of monumental proportions by the President. That is the fundamental issue we will be dealing with when people complain about the funding bill for DHS.

David Rivkin, who served two Presidents in the Office of White House Counsel, and Elizabeth Price Foley, a constitutional law professor, wrote an article recently in the Wall Street Journal. It just hammers and devastates the arguments the President is making in favor of his executive amnesty. They say this:

By announcing a global policy of nonenforcement against

certain categories, Mr. Obama condones unlawful behavior,

weakening the law's deterrent impact, and allows lawbreakers

to remain without fear of deportation . . . These individuals

are no longer deportable although Congress has declared

them so.

They conclude with a statement we need to consider. I believe their concluding statement is accurate. I think it is pretty much indisputable. And if it is accurate, then Congress has a duty to stand firm.

This is what they conclude:

The President, after months, finally extracted from the

Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice a

memorandum that allows basically what he is trying to do. It

has been heavily criticized. Legal scholars say it is a poor

analysis in a whole lot of ways. In fact, it is unacceptable.

This is what the authors of this recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal said:

The OLC's memo endorses a view of presidential power that

has never been advanced by even the boldest presidential

advocates. If this view holds, future presidents can

unilaterally gut tax, environmental, labor or securities laws

by enforcing only those portions with which they agree. This

is a dangerous precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.

So this is what is at stake. And now we learn that the Democrats intend to oppose even going forward to consider the House bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security--and they intend to block that through the filibuster.

This is what Senator Barbara Mikulski is reported by Congressional Quarterly as saying last night:

Senator Mikulski tells CQ that Democrats will block the

Senate from proceeding to debate the DHS spending bill over

immigration riders.

Have they made that decision? Surely not. Surely we should move to the bill. If they are unhappy with the language the House put in this, then offer an amendment to take it out. They will have the right to have full amendments, consistent with the rules of the Senate, on this legislation. They can offer amendments to strike the language in the House that simply says we are not going to fund unlawful Executive amnesty. It is a pretty stunning thing that we are dealing with and that we will be confronting next week. I believe it is a position that is untenable. It is untenable constitutionally, it is untenable lawfully, and it is untenable because it is contrary to the will of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate who oppose the President's action. It is untenable politically because overwhelmingly the American people reject it.

I am flabbergasted that we are now hearing that Democrats might not even allow the bill to come up on the floor. What does that mean?

I suppose they will say: Mr. Republican Congress, are you shutting down Homeland Security?

Why? I would ask.

Well, because you are putting in language that says the President shouldn't go off and create and endorse and support and fund changing of the law of the United States that Congress hasn't changed, and we insist that you fund his activities and give him the money he needs to carry out this project.

Then Congress says: No. We don't want to do that.

We oppose it and we won't pass the bill that funds Homeland Security.

That is a bad thing to do. The American people won't like it that you don't fund Homeland Security, the Republicans may say.

And do you know what our Democratic colleagues will say?

No. You shut Homeland Security down because you kept the President from doing his activity. We are going to accuse you of not funding Homeland Security, and we are going to say you placed the Nation at risk. The President is going to accuse you of defunding Homeland Security, and he is going to accuse you of putting the country at risk. And the media? Why, they are on our side, and they are going to report it that way. When you turn on your television at night, they are going to say to the American people that Republicans didn't fund Homeland Security, and you are going to lose.

Look, we are not through the looking glass yet. Give me a break. That is not going to sell. The American people are not going to buy that and the press is not going to shill for this kind of story. It is going to be clear who is not funding Homeland Security. It is going to be clear who wants to create a lawful system of immigration and to fund it in an effective way and serve the national interests in this fashion.

I feel strongly about it. Hopefully this won't happen. Hopefully the report last night is not going to be the position of the Democratic Party.

I just read of seven or eight of them who said they don't approve of the President's action. Why would they vote not to even go to a bill? And remember, if the bill comes up and our colleagues don't like this language in it, they can move to alter it or strike it. Let's vote on it.

Sometimes you win in this body; sometimes you lose. We lost many times--many on the Republican side--in supporting the Keystone Pipeline. Now we are told the President may veto the bill that has well over 60 votes and many Democrats voting for it. Well, is Congress going to say ``We are going to ignore that'' and ask the law enforcement officers or the other officers to ignore the President's veto and pretend the law passed when it didn't pass? Of course not. And neither can the President. We are coequal branches, and the President does not have the authority and the right and the power to enforce a law that never passed to grant amnesty to people who are unlawfully here.

It goes beyond prosecutorial discretion. As I said, I was a prosecutor for a long time. It is not prosecutorial discretion to give someone who is unlawfully in the country a work permit, a photo ID--as they intend to do--a Social Security number, the right to participate in Social Security, the right to work, to take any job in America. What job are they going to take? Who is offering any jobs of any numbers today in America? Not many. So these individuals who are here unlawfully will now be able to go to the trucking company and take a pretty good trucking job or maybe a forklift operator job or maybe they want to work for the county commission.

I asked the Attorney General nominee 2 days ago at a hearing would the Department of Justice sue a business that said: Well, we have job openings, but we are going to hire those people who have green cards or who came here lawfully and have a lawful status, but we are not going to hire somebody with temporary Presidential amnesty? Are you going to sue them for some sort of violation of rights?

She said she didn't know. They might. She basically said they might sue them. So this is a real danger.

The truth is, colleagues, we don't have enough jobs in America today. We have the lowest percentage of Americans actually working, in the working ages, that we have had since the 1970s. It has dropped steadily year after year. There is no doubt that if you bring more people into our country than we have jobs for, it does make it harder.

Also, an excess of labor pulls down wages, and things aren't really getting better. Median family wages since 2007 are down $4,000. That is a stunning amount. Wages in December--last month--in America dropped 5 cents an hour.

This idea that the economy is on track, everything is wonderful--it is not so wonderful for average working Americans. Their wages went down, not up, as we have been told is happening. This is not going to help. It is going to make that situation worse.

Fundamentally, we need a lawful system of immigration that we can be proud of, and somebody needs to be concerned first and foremost about the people we represent. We should be concerned about the people who have immigrated here lawfully. Their wages are down also, in some cases even more so. In fact, they are often competing most directly against unlawful immigrants.

I would say this: This is not the right way to do it. We are going to continue to talk about this. I believe the Congress of the United States, once it is really understood what is happening, will listen to the constituents of America. They will decide first and foremost that our duty is to create a lawful system of immigration that is fairly endorsed, that we can be proud of, and that serves the interest of the American people--the national interest. That is what is being overlooked.

People are coming from abroad. They want to come to America. We have always had the most generous immigration system in the world, and we believe in immigration. But they should come lawfully and the Congress should help create a system that supports a lawful entry into America.

The council that represents the Customs and Immigration Service Officers just January 22nd of this year issued a strong statement. They said:

The dedicated immigration service officers and adjudicators

at USCIS are in desperate need of help. The President's

executive amnesty order for 5 million illegal immigrants

places the mission of USCIS in grave peril.

Has anybody been listening to them or do they just listen to big business? Do they just listen to activist groups? Do they just listen to lobbyists, politicians with their political schemes to win elections? Is that what they are listening to? They are not listening to the officers who are carrying out the duties.

Last fall the same group who represents these government workers--Ken Palinkas, a very able leader, said this:

Making matters more dangerous, the Obama administration's

executive amnesty, like S. 744 that he unsuccessfully lobbied

for, would legalize visa overstays and cause millions

additionally to overstay--raising the threat level to America

even higher.

It goes on with many other points.

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak. I am very worried that our Democratic colleagues are making a mistake. I think it is the right thing in this new Senate with Majority Leader

McConnell who has allowed more votes in 1 day than the Republicans got from Senator Reid the entire year last year. We probably doubled the number of votes this year than we had all of last year.

The Democrats are saying, we are not even going to go to this bill that would fund Homeland Security. And if we don't go to it, then Homeland Security is not funded. Are they going to block a bill that would fund Homeland Security?

Senator McConnell is saying you can have your relevant amendment. If you don't like the language the House put in that says the money can only go to fund lawful activities, then you can vote to take it out and offer an amendment to take it out; but if you don't have the votes, you lose. That is the way the system should work.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I honor the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Coast Guard, officially established on this day, January 28, 1915, when President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation merging the Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service into one organization.

The Coast Guard has a long and noble history, dating back to 1790, of defending the shores of our Nation. It remains a vital component of our national security infrastructure--performing law enforcement, lifesaving, and military duties. Whether it is intercepting drug smugglers in the Gulf of Mexico or rescuing stranded fishermen off the coast of Alaska, the Coast Guard always answers the call and performs its mission bravely. Our Nation is safer thanks to the work done by the brave men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard.

I am honored that my home State of Alabama has a significant Coast Guard presence in the city of Mobile. U.S. Coast Guard Sector Mobile is home to over 200 Active-Duty military and civilian personnel who play a crucial role in enforcing our Nation's laws and providing maritime security along the gulf coast of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. Mobile is also home to one of the Coast Guard's largest units, the U.S. Coast Guard Aviation Training Center. The Aviation Training Center is home to roughly 600 Active-Duty military and civilian personnel, and it serves as the Coast Guard's aviation and capabilities development center--responsible for training Coast Guard pilots. It also serves as an operational Coast Guard air station, performing traditional Coast Guard aviation missions such as search and rescue, homeland security, and environmental protection in an area encompassing the Gulf of Mexico from the Louisiana-Texas border to the Florida panhandle.

I am proud of what these Coast Guard installations do to protect the people of the gulf coast and the Nation as a whole. I would like to thank the U.S. Coast Guard for everything it does to enhance and ensure the national security of the United States, and I congratulate and honor the Coast Guard on its 100th anniversary.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Hoeven for his hard work on this Keystone XL Pipeline bill, as well as Senator Murkowski and others who have worked together on it on both sides of the aisle.

Climate Change

We have been talking about global warming and climate change. I have been on the Environment and Public Works Committee for some time, and we have had a number of good hearings on the subject. I wish to share some thoughts on climate change because so much of what is driving our energy policies in America today is entirely dependent on a fear of the impact of global warming in the years to come.

There have been a number of votes on global warming. I was asked by a reporter today: You voted with the Whitehouse amendment; why did you do that? Well, I just have this to say. It is true, to my understanding, and according to the best science we have, that the Earth has warmed by a degree in the last 100 years, and exactly what is causing that, we are not so sure.

If that were to accelerate, then, to a significant degree, it would be a cause for concern. It would be a cause for America and the entire world to really begin to evaluate what our future is and what action might be taken. That is what has happened.

The world has been engaged mightily in the effort to drive up the cost of electricity, drive up the cost of gasoline, drive up the cost of the production of products that use energy, and drive up the cost of transported items that you go to the grocery store and buy.

I will just say this. The scare tactics we have been hearing are not coming to fruition. Over a time period, they were predicted to come to a fruition, but they just are not. As public servants--as elected officials who represent 320 million Americans--we need to ask ourselves: Should we press down an excessive, increased burden of energy costs on the backs of working Americans to meet the fears that we have been hearing about? And if we do that, how much can we afford to do? How much can we afford to ask of them?

We are reducing CO2 emissions in the United States and doing a pretty good job of it. But the fear is--at least the concern from so many of us--is that we are now projecting--the President is projecting massive increases in regulations that will significantly and further hammer coal and hammer the price of energy in America.

Many Members of Congress want to take drastic action that would increase the cost of electricity and gasoline from fossil fuels. It would do that. There is no doubt about that. And it would virtually end coal production in the United States, a product we have a lot of.

They claim the science of global warming is settled, but I suggest questions remain. Global climate change advocates have, over many years, relied upon a number of climate models. These models are designed to predict the temperature over time, and they

have done that, and I will show my colleagues the result of these models in a minute. They predict not only increasing temperatures but increasing droughts, increasing flux--droughts and flux--increasing severe weather events such as hurricanes and tornadoes. These models have long predicted this. So we have a history of how well the models have performed over time. An easy measure, a critical measure, of the validity of any model is how well it compares to actual data. So the actual weather data, I tell my colleagues, is proving that the models have not been accurate.

There are other facts we are dealing with that give concern to those of us who are less than certain about what the climate will do in the future.

Last week, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed that 2014 was the hottest year on record. Perhaps my colleagues heard that. It was based on their analysis of 3,000 ground-based thermometers around the world. They backtracked on that claim the very next day, however, because the increase was so small that the ground-based system fell within the margin of error.

There are other problems with those assertions. Data gathered at the Earth's surface has limitations in measuring the temperature. It is a relatively small sample influenced by human construction. Instead, the best data, I think most scientists agree, for determining warming of the atmosphere is a method that can objectively gather far more data, and that is satellites.

There are two research groups that track atmospheric data, one satellite and one balloon. They both show temperature data that has barely risen for 35 years. The balloons validate the accuracy of the satellites and the satellites tend to validate the accuracy of the balloons. So there is a wider and wider divergence over the years from what the models claim and what the actual temperature is doing. There just is.

Other evidence can be seen in the Earth's ice coverage. A few years ago former Vice President Al Gore claimed the Arctic might be ice-free in the summertime by 2014. That was last year. That was a prediction. Another study said it would be ice-free by 2029. But this past summer, the ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean was 43 percent greater than it was in 2012.

Senator Murkowski, that is an increase the size of the State of Alaska, which is a pretty sizable State, for heaven's sake. It has become well-known that ice coverage in Antarctica is also at its record recorded levels.

There have been dire predictions made about extreme weather events. On the Weather Channel on our TV, they love to talk about storms, and it is exciting, and people watch it. I have had people call from Alabama and tell me, Have you gotten your food in? You are going to have a big storm. You are going to be shut in.

When temperature data stopped supporting the applicants' claims of warming, they started claiming that storms and droughts would worsen; we would have more of them. We all heard that many times. It is hard to know what to think about it when we heard that over the years.

It has now been nearly 3,400 days since the last major hurricane hit the United States. This is no little matter to me. I remember moving to Mobile in 1979, and that year we had Hurricane Frederic that slammed the city. Trees were down everywhere. Power was off for weeks. I believe it was a category 3 hurricane. Earlier we had Hurricane Camille hit, and that was in the 1960s. Then we had Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans and hit my hometown of Mobile a very significant blow. But it has been nearly 3,400 days since the last major hurricane hit the United States. That is a category 3, 4, or 5. That is almost 10 years. I think that is the longest period maybe this century.

According to Dr. Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who testified before our EPW Committee last year, he said hurricane seasons in the United States are 20 percent less intense and have seen 20 percent fewer landfalls than in 1900.

We have received testimony in the Environment and Public Works Committee from Dr. Roy Spencer, who said this:

There is little or no observational effort that severe

weather of any type has worsened over the last 30, 50, or 100

years.

He said that in his testimony before the committee.

The IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, fifth climate assessment released in 2013, what did they say about these predictions? Quote:

Current data sets indicate no significant observed trends

in global tropical cyclone frequency over the last century.

So I suppose they have acknowledged that prediction to be incorrect.

That same report talked about floods. We have been told we will have more floods.

The IPCC says:

In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and

thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the

magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.

According to the Palmer Drought Index, there is a statistically insignificant decrease in global droughts from 1982 to 2012.

So, remember, CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. It is a small part of the atmosphere. It is a clean gas. There is no damage to us. It is a gas that is plant food. If we understand photosynthesis, plants breathe in CO2, grow, and create carbon stalks and emit oxygen, which is good for us. So in itself, CO2 is not an inherently bad product.

From 1982 to 2012, when we had some of the greatest increase in CO2--I guess the greatest increase in CO2 in the history of the planet, unless there was some volcano or some event--we have seen actually a decrease in droughts. Small, but a decrease nonetheless.

Last July, the Budget Committee, which I was the ranking member of, had a hearing on the cost of climate change to the economy and the Democrats called that hearing. The Republican witnesses were Dr. Bjorn Lomborg and David Montgomery. Professor Lomborg, from the Copenhagen Institute in Denmark, said this:

While some warming may have occurred, it will not mean the

end of the world. The total, discounted cost of inaction--

not doing anything on global climate change--

over the next five centuries is about 1.2 percent of

discounted GDP. The cumulative cost of inaction towards the

end of the century is about 1.8 percent of GDP. While this is

not trivial, it by no means supports the often apocalyptic

conversation on global climate change.

It goes on:

The cost of inaction by the end of the century is

equivalent to losing one year's GDP growth.

Last year we had, what, 2 percent GDP, using an average of 2.5 percent, 2 percent, 1 year's worth; not 100 years' worth, 1 year's worth, the equivalent, he said, of a moderate 1-year recession. The cost of inaction by the end of the century is equivalent to an annual loss of GDP growth on the order of .02 percent, or two-hundredths of 1 percent--not 2 percent; two-hundredths of 1 percent.

Professor Lomborg, who believes that human activity has contributed to some global warming--he said that--also pointed out that climate control policy, based on current data, will cost far more than the ``benefits'' it delivers.

Isn't that the question we have to ask ourselves? When we impose a cost on the American people, shouldn't that cost produce more benefit than the cost in currency?

He continues:

A slightly warmer Earth means net benefits through the

first half of this century, until 2065.

So until 2065 it will benefit America, warmer temperatures. After that, these models and other projections--he is taking them from the IPCC's own data--find that costs do begin to occur.

He continues:

However, an aggressive government response to warming now

can wipe out the benefits we can expect to receive.

Plus we will have higher taxes; more spending, more regulations will cut jobs, reduce incomes, hurt savings, and, thus, set us back more as a nation.

Dr. David Montgomery, who testified at the hearing, said: It is far from clear that recent weather events are anything more than normal variability in storm frequency and intensity and the nature, timing and extent of damage from climate change remains highly uncertain. This does not imply that no action is justified, but it does imply that costs and avoided risks must be balanced carefully.

I think that is what we need to do, balance the cost and the risk.

In sum, these experts before the Budget Committee highlighted that the climate change could be happening and it could be a part of human action, but its costs in the near term certainly are not great. This compares to the cost of trying to stop climate change by reducing human activity as very large indeed.

Congress considered legislation in 2009 and 2010 to put a price on carbon through a cap-and-trade system that President Obama supported. The cost was deemed too high. Congress said no. The bill that passed the House would cost $161 billion--it was in Democratic hands at the time--would cost $161 billion in the first year, and it increased in additional years. How much is $161 billion? Well, we are desperately trying to find $10 billion, $12 billion a year for the next 6 years to fund the highway bill. That is $10 billion a year. This is $160 billion a year. The amount we spend on education in America is about $100 billion a year. This would be $161 billion a year. Over a decade, we are talking $2 trillion hammered onto the American economy.

This is a serious matter and, fortunately, Congress did not yield. Congress rejected the legislation. So the President decided to pursue the same results, not through the elected representatives but through the regulatory process. In 2007, the Supreme Court sided with the State of Massachusetts in a critical case. It empowered EPA--if it chose--to regulate greenhouse gases, based on the Clean Air Act of the 1970s, when global warming was never dreamed of and nobody ever considered CO2 to be a pollutant. This was an activist Supreme Court decision, in my opinion. Congress would never pass this law. There has never been one time in the last 30 years, or certainly before that, that Congress would pass a law recommending huge regulatory powers to the EPA over CO2.

So the Court did not require EPA to regulate gases, but the Court allowed that under the Clean Air Act. So now the EPA is developing a rulemaking called a Clean Power Plan. This regulation will cost between $41 billion and $73 billion annually, more than the road bill and almost as much as the educational bill according to analysts.

On top of this, consumers will have to spend hundreds of billions conserving electricity. Electricity rates are going to increase by double-digit percentages throughout most of the country. These are the costs of only one of the regulations EPA is pursuing. In total, the Heritage Action expects the President's Climate Action Plan will cost $1.47 trillion in lost GDP by 2030. The costs of action far outweigh the cost of inaction, it seems to me. That is the basis of my concern about many of the extreme actions we are taking. The Nation is crisscrossed with pipelines. They are all over it.

In my home State of Alabama, we are not having complaints about that. This idea that we shouldn't have a pipeline to bring oil from our ally and friend Canada to drive down further, hopefully, the cost of energy in the United States is an erroneous idea. It is all driven at the bottom by this global climate change idea. I am not a climate denier. I don't know what the truth is and what history will teach. I have assumed over the years scientists are on to something when they claim that CO2 will be a blanket effect in our atmosphere and temperature might increase. I do know that if we burn fossil fuels, burn plants, it creates CO2. I know that. It increases it in the atmosphere. The models which are predicted increasing temperatures from this steady rise in CO2 that has been occurring for over 100 years as the planet's population increases have been wrong.

Let me show this chart. It is prepared by Dr. John Christy, who worked at NASA and the University of Alabama at Huntsville. The red line represents from 1975 to 2025, a projection average of all the models--and there are many of them; I think about 30 people doing modeling of the temperatures and the average shows this rise. This is an alarming rise. It was based on those predictions, those modeled effects, that people have demanded we change what we do with energy in America and we reduce fossil fuels and we pay more for energy to avoid this trend.

We are getting not too far from 2025. That is a 50-year trend. Look at the reality though. These are the numbers, satellite data, and balloon data around the world. We basically had very little increase from 1980 to 2015. For 18 years or so it is basically totally flat. So what does that mean?

I am not sure. Maybe it will start surging next year. Maybe we will see more. But at this point, as reasonable Congressmen and Senators, I don't believe we can conclude that we should burden this American economy weak as it is--high unemployment, December wages dropped 5 cents an hour. The President kept talking about how great things are. Wages dropped 5 cents an hour in 1 month alone--December. We have the lowest percentage of Americans in the working ages actually working in America today since the 1970s. Things aren't going so well. We don't need to be driving up costs for our businesses, making them less competitive in the world marketplace, making gasoline more expensive for working moms, making electricity more expensive for our elderly who are at home and cold. We just don't.

So who cares the most? I say we need to care about the people we represent. We need to care about their welfare.

Mr. Steyer, with his tens of millions of dollars in contributions, demands we don't pass Keystone Pipeline, to carry out his theory--this billionaire that he is--and he doesn't care apparently about what is happening to jobs in America, competitiveness in America, and the welfare of the citizens of this country.

Congress represents the interests of 320 million people. We need to defend their interests, not ideological activists. It is almost a religion to them. We have to be objective and realistic as we evaluate. So there can be no doubt that this agenda will increase energy prices, it will shrink the middle class, it will eliminate jobs, it will increase costs across the board, it will reduce wages, and it will throw millions of Americans out of work. It just will if we carry out this agenda.

It is not being done in China. It is not being done in Russia. It is not being done in Brazil. So it is of utmost importance that the American people know about these claims and the effects of regulations before we go headlong into enacting them.

The blocking of Keystone Pipeline is a clear example of what has happened. We will be denying struggling Americans and businesses another source of energy that will put further downward pressure on energy prices. We can have only one effect to produce the greatest supply and to help contain the price of oil. Whatever the price of oil is, it will be less with Keystone Pipeline than if we didn't have that source from the Keystone Pipeline in Canada.

This will make us more dependent on foreign suppliers, many of which are not our friends. Canada is our friend, our best trading partner in the world, perhaps our best ally in the world. It is already causing great frustration with our friends in Canada.

I met with the Canadian parliamentarians. Last year we had a meeting. I was surprised how deeply they felt about this. They were hurt. They cannot understand why we can't get this done. It is such a commonsense thing to them.

Some of our Democratic colleagues argue our economy will not be affected by the agenda, the President's Climate Action Plan. Others acknowledge the cost but justify this as a speed bump and not significant. Congress represents most closely the people of the United States, and Congress has never voted to give unelected bureaucrats and officials the power to regulate CO2. We are not close to doing that today. It would never pass this Congress, either House or Senate. There is zero chance it would pass if it was actually voted on.

As long as Congress has decided not to act, how can EPA act? It is acting against the wishes of the American people and the interests of the country. It takes the consensus of the American people to move large and costly legislation such as this, hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. That consensus is not formed. It is not there.

On Keystone and other key issues, the consensus is against government excess, not for the government to do more. Talk to the American people. Look at the polling data. Someday maybe things will change, it is true, I will acknowledge. Temperatures could start to rise significantly and storms

could begin to worsen. But as long as the measured data fails to match the alarmists' climate models, I believe Congress should approve this pipeline and reject the agenda of the climate alarmists and conduct a policy that is beneficial to the people of our Nation.

I thank the Chair, and I yield floor.

First, I would like to thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for his thoughtful remarks. As one who has been involved in law enforcement for a number of years and having great friends in the law enforcement community, I am well aware of what their duties are like.

I remember we had a dangerous event here at our Capitol, and one of the police officers raced around the building to the scene of the event. Did he know what could happen to him? Could there be a team of terrorists waiting to assassinate him when he came around that corner?

What if a police officer responds to a domestic violence call at the a home? They don't know what is behind that door and what might happen to them. It is a tough job. They have a right to come home to their family and their children. They do not have to allow themselves to be murdered by someone who is a danger. It is a tough issue. Police departments work at it very hard.

I thank Senator Toomey for his beautiful remarks. I think they are very appropriate at this time.

Mr. President, with regard to the Keystone Pipeline issue and the discussion we have been having here, I want to associate myself with a series of very important and balanced concerns raised in support of that pipeline.

We have pipelines that criss-cross my State, as the Presiding Officer does in Oklahoma. We don't have problems with them. I cannot remember when somebody raised a problem, environmentally, about a pipeline. We know they are less likely to cause environmental damage than transportation by train or truck. We know they are less likely to be accessed. We know there is less energy consumed in that process. So I want to associate myself with that.

But there is something that has been bothering me for quite a long time, and I want to raise that point today because I think it is so valid and I think it is important for all of us to understand. The reason this Senator and I think others have advocated for more production of American energy, advocated for these issues and for more production is not to benefit some oil company, as we have been wrongly accused, not to benefit some rich group, it is to benefit the American consumer. The more energy we produce in America, the more the American people benefit.

We import a great deal of oil today. It is less now because we are producing more through the new technology of fracking and other technology. We have seen a reduction in the amount we import. Much of it has been imported from places such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Libya--many places with which we have not had very good relations. So we have made a transfer of wealth from the American people to foreign nations--weakening us and strengthening them. Many of them have not been friendly to us over the years, as I have said. So we have a choice in this vote to help supply a shortage we have from our--perhaps-- closest ally in the world, Canada.

I was at the Canadian-American Interparliamentary Group. I was surprised how deeply our Canadian friends feel about this pipeline. They cannot imagine why we wouldn't want to buy oil from them as opposed to other countries around the world. They purchase all kinds of products from us. We have a good, fair, and honest trading relationship with Canada. They support us throughout the world, consistently in the U.N. and in other places, on important issues--important to the American people. We have so many common interests.

No. 1, I just want to say if we are going to import oil from around the world to meet our needs, there is no better country we could ever choose to import from than Canada, our friend and neighbor.

No. 2, it has been said that this is being done to help some big business. That is not the way this system works. In a free market system, bringing in this oil provides another source of oil for consumers. They don't have to buy the Canadian oil if it is not cheaper. They wouldn't build this pipeline if they didn't think they could sell the oil cheaper than Saudi Arabia and Venezuela could produce it or even America could produce it. They believe they can sell it, and they have to sell it for a lower cost or they won't sell it.

What would the lower cost mean? It means good things for mothers, for children, for families, and for businesses. All over America we have lower cost energy to make America a stronger, more vibrant world-class economy. We are able to compete in the world market if our energy costs are below other nation's energy costs. It helps us overcome the wage differences that Americans have compared to other places around the world. This reliable source of energy is important.

I guess what I wish to say to my colleagues is that this is an opportunity for us to make a statement. The statement is we are going to help the American people by reducing the cost of their energy so they may have more money each month to maybe go out to a movie, to go out to eat--and it can make quite a difference.

Well, they say the price is fixed. You know, these guys have got these powers, and try to manipulate prices. I don't deny that goes on in the world. But one of the most powerful forces in the world is supply and demand. If the oil companies are so powerful, why has oil fallen from $110 a barrel this summer to now $46 a barrel today? Why did this happen? Because there is a supply from fracking, from other sources around the world. It has brought up the supply, created some surplus, and the prices have collapsed. There are a lot of oil companies out there that are hurting today.

So if you don't like big oil and you don't like the big oil companies, why would you want to oppose importing oil that would be cheaper? This is the way the free market system works. I would say the market system is working. I saw an expert yesterday in Barron's indicating that oil could fall to $20 a barrel. That would be great for the American consumer.

I spoke with an oilman. I teased him a little bit. I said: I hope you saved some money, because I like this low-priced oil. Don't come in here and ask me to have oil go up on my constituents, on American consumers.

I mean, I appreciate the fact that people go out there and they drill these multimillion dollar wells and sometimes they are dry and sometimes they hit. That is the great American free market system. Some people have gotten rich. A lot of them have gone broke. There has been boom and bust in the oil industry since the beginning of time, as it is documented by Daniel Yergin in the book ``The Prize'' and by other writers. This is the way it has always been.

We benefit when the price falls, and importing a good source of oil from our neighbor Canada at a competitive price provides one more source that helps keep the price down and gives more options to the American people. It is the

right thing to do, colleagues. I cannot imagine that we would want to favor importation of oil from other countries over Canada.

I believe we should go forward with this, and I am concerned that the President and his allies are not in agreement. But look, this is a true fact, as many of us who have been involved in these issues for several years have come to understand. There is a large group of folks out there--activists, environmental extremists, and not just good environmentalists but people who have extreme views--who want the price of energy to go up. President Obama even said it in the campaign when he ran the first time. He said the price of electricity would necessarily skyrocket. That is not my policy. That is not the policy of a good public servant, in my view, for America, for the American workers. Personally, I want the electric bill as low as we could possibly keep it, consistent with good environmental and clean activities, and I want that gasoline bill as low as we can get it. That is what we should do, and that is how we can make this country better. It will make it tougher for a lot of these guys who have been sitting on oil at $100 a barrel and now it is $46.

So who is the loser with more supply? The guys who have been sitting on the energy. I don't bear any grief for them. I am happy if they make money. They have to go through tough times just as everybody else does.

I want to thank Senator Hoeven and others who worked so hard on this legislation. I believe we are in a position to see some positive action occur in the next few days and look forward to creating an additional supply of oil from an ally of the United States that will bring down the price of oil perhaps even further in the world and in the U.S. market.

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

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

Madam President, the attacks on the people of France demonstrate in the most chilling terms the threats posed to Western nations by those who are imbued with Islamic terrorism. While there are many factors that play into the spread of this jihadist ideology in the West, it is time for an honest and plain admission that our open immigration policies are ineffective and have failed to meet the minimum standards that are set by existing law in the United States.

This is something I have been dealing with for quite a number of years--a decade really. We have laws that would improve dramatically our ability to identify and block terrorists from entering and staying in the country, but they are not funded and they are not

carried out and it is unacceptable, as I will point out.

Dozens of terrorists and terror plotters have been admitted to the United States on visas or are relying on broader networks to simply enter into our country, taking advantage of lax immigration policies. For instance, the 9/11 attackers all came here on visas. A visa is a document that allows an individual to come for a limited period of time and then return to their home country. This visa system is essential in a modern world, but it needs to be managed and carried out in an effective way.

The Boston bombers came as asylees, people seeking asylum, while their mosque was linked to foreign nationals tied to ISIS and foreign terrorists.

The individual behind the attempted Christmas bombing in Oregon was a refugee. We have a class of individuals we accept each year who claim to be refugees from foreign countries. This one was from Somalia.

The recently foiled plot to bomb a courthouse and school in Connecticut was attempted by a Moroccan national who had a revoked student visa. Many individuals have visas to be students in the United States. We are not managing that well at all. This one had a revoked student visa. It was revoked because of information that came to the attention of officials, but no one made an effort or successfully attempted in any real way to find the individual so he might be deported.

Al Qaeda operatives who were apprehended in Kentucky were on visas from Iraq.

These are only some of the examples that are out there. These individuals use lax visa policies, flawed asylum policies, flawed refugee policies, and flawed border protection policies. In addition, we are not organized in a way that works effectively. In addition to that, the President of the United States has directed his ICE officers, his Citizenship and Immigration Services officers, and his Border Patrol officers, who are the key individuals in this system, to conduct their business in a way that guarantees failure. That is just the fact.

The 9/11 Commission--we all remember that great Commission after the terrible attack on 9/11--zeroed in on our lax immigration policies. Among other things, the Commission demanded implementation of a biometric entry-exit visa system. What does that mean? That means a biometric system where people are identified effectively through fingerprints or some other identifier.

I have been through this for years. Back when President Bush was President and we worked with Homeland Security, Governor Ridge was the Secretary of Homeland Security. I think at the end he was finally convinced, and I worked on him very hard. But he volunteered, the last day in office, to use a fingerprint biometric system. It should have already been done by the time President Bush left office, but it wasn't, and it hasn't been done yet. We need a system that works.

By the way, police officers have in their cars all over America computer-type screens where they can stop someone on the road, they can ask them to put their hand on the screen, and it reads their fingerprints. It checks the National Crime Information Center to find out whether the person is wanted for murder in New York. He might have caught him in Texas. It lets the officer know whether there are warrants out for these individuals. This is the way the system works in our country, and we need to use it with regard to people who come here on visas.

It is an outrage that this hasn't been done, completed fully, and made operational years ago. It is an outrage. It is in the law of the United States. Congress has funded money for this project and it has not yet been done. It will cost us in the future, as the 9/11 Commission has so warned. The 9/11 Commission demanded this system, and it is designed to track those entering and departing the United States on visas.

By the way, almost half of the people, at least 40-plus percent now of individuals unlawfully in America entered on a visa. In other words, they didn't come across the border unlawfully. They came lawfully-- perhaps using false documents, but they got a visa. They came to the United States maybe lawfully, but they just did not return to their home country when the visa expired.

My colleagues have to know no one is checking. We have no idea whether they left the country or stayed in the country. We do not have an operable exit visa system. This is so bizarre because it is not expensive. It can be implemented rapidly. It will work and give us valuable information that we must have if we are serious about this process, and we must be serious about the process.

The individuals in France--I mentioned the ones in the United States--left the country, went through Yemen, apparently, were trained in some sort of terrorist camp, and came back and executed their violent acts in France. So we have to do a better job of this, and we can do it.

President Obama's administration has refused to implement the entry- exit system as required by law. We have talked about this publicly and debated it for years. Just last year the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, in an evaluation of how well the recommendations they made back after 9/11 have been carried out--a 10-year review of how their report had been received and how much of it had been accomplished-- issued this written statement.

Without exit-tracking, our government does not know when a

foreign visitor admitted to the United States on a temporary

basis has overstayed his or her admission.

Here is the language. We put it on a chart because it is important that we understand this.

Without exit-tracking, our government does not know when a

foreign visitor admitted to the United States on a temporary

basis has overstayed his or her admission. Had this system

been in place before 9/11, we would have had a better chance

of detecting the plotters before they struck. . . . There is

no excuse for the fact that 13 years after 9/11 we do not

have this much capability in place.

Amen. That is exactly correct. That is from ``Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the 9/11 Commission Report,'' Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, in 2014.

In fact, the original report said this:

The Department of Homeland Security, properly supported by

the Congress, should complete, as quickly as possible, a

biometric entry-exit screening system.

That was the report from 2004. It is a very important report. They went to great length to help this Nation figure out what is the responsible thing to do to protect ourselves better from those attackers on 9/11, many of whom were visa overstayers. They didn't come across the border unlawfully; they came across on a lawful visa. Some of them I think had false documentation to get that visa, but they came on a visa, for the most part lawfully, and did not go home as they were required to go home. They overstayed their visa. Nobody knew they had overstayed. Nobody made an inquiry about it.

The ``Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations,'' by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, 2011, said this:

Full deployment of the biometric exit component of US-VISIT

should be a high priority. Such a capability would have

assisted law enforcement and intelligence officials in August

and September 2001 in conducting a search for two of the 9/11

hijackers that were in the U.S. on expired visas.

This would have helped. Indeed, of course, those of us who have some experience in law enforcement know that when you get to one or two of the guys, the whole scheme may get disrupted, and we can penetrate the organization and break it up and stop crime from occurring. To me, it is mind boggling, as the commission leaders have told us, that we haven't completed this.

I am told there are forces that don't like the exit visa system. They think it might slow things down a little bit. First, this is not correct. When you come into the country, you are clocked in and you are biometrically fingerprinted. What would you have to do when you leave? Go to the airport, go in a certain line, go through, show your ticket, show your passport, put your hand on a biometric screener, you are read, and you are approved to leave. It is not going to take any massive amounts of time. One excuse after the other has slowed this down, and it is not acceptable. We have to do better.

In fact, the administration has suspended enforcement of the visa system almost entirely. We have to understand, colleagues: If we don't have even an exit visa system where we know

who left the country, how do we know who overstayed and who stayed in the country? Unless somebody overstays their visa and they are caught for speeding and the police officer identified that, I will ask colleagues, what happens? Under the policy of this President of the United States, directed to the lowest officers in America, nothing happens. If the individual does not commit a serious felony, they will not be processed for deportation, even though they have come to the country on a promise to leave on a certain date and flatly refused to do so.

This is not acceptable. If we don't have a system that has integrity, then everybody gets the message pretty soon: Just get a visa, come to America, you never have to leave. If you don't get a felony charge against you, you are never going to be deported.

This is the policy of this government at this very moment. It is hard for anybody to believe, but that is the truth. We have approximately 5 million visa overstays in the United States. But as the National ICE-- Immigration Customs Enforcement--officers Council president Chris Crane has explained:

ICE agents are now prohibited from arresting illegal aliens

solely on charges of illegal entry or visa overstay.

What a dramatic statement that is. And not only visa overstays, they are prohibited from arresting and removing people who came across the border illegally. That is what he means by illegal entry or visa overstays.

This of course removes a cornerstone of integrity in any law system. If we can't look people in the eye and say: We give you a visa, you have a 6-month visa, but at 6 months you have to return to your home country, and mean it, and say: Eventually you will be apprehended and deported if you don't--then the system has no integrity. That is where we are today.

Unsurprisingly, ABC News reported that the Obama administration had lost track of 6,000 foreign students who had overstayed their visas and were of ``heightened concern.''

In other words, these 6,000 had some special concern in their background that made us worry about them, whether it was drugs or terrorism or whatever. Of course they have lost sight of them. They are not attempting to find them.

So the head of the union representing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers, one of the three major components of the Department of Homeland Security dealing with immigration, Mr. Ken Palinkas, was explicit in his warning to us. It is remarkable what Mr. Crane has said and now what Mr. Palinkas has said:

There is no doubt that there are already many individuals

in the United States, on visas--expired or active--who are

being targeted for radicalization or who already subscribe to

radicalized views. Many millions come legally to the U.S.

through our wide open immigration policy every year--whether

as temporary visitors, lifetime immigrants, refugees, asylum-

seekers, foreign students, or recipients of our ``visa waiver

program'' which allows people to come and go freely. Yet our

government cannot effectively track these foreign visitors

and immigrants.

This is the man whose officers do this job. They are the ones who approve the visas and manage this system.

He went on to warn that the President's so-called Executive amnesty would make the situation radically worse, saying:

I write today to warn the general public that this

situation is about to get exponentially worse--and more

dangerous. . . . Express your concern to your Senators and

Congressmen before it is too late.

It is a national security imperative to stop this Executive amnesty. It sends exactly the wrong message. What it says is that if you can get into America--through the border, by boat, by plane, on a visa--any way you get into this country and pass the border, you are not going to be asked to leave unless you commit some felony--some serious felony, for that matter. Many felonies don't qualify. And we have over 100,000 people who have committed serious felonies who have been released into America. We don't know where they are, and they are not going to be deported.

We have to restore immigration enforcement, establish better controls and screening on immigration from high-risk regions of the world. We really should give more attention to that. It is perfectly legitimate.

The visa system, the immigration system of the United States, should serve who? It should serve the interests of the American people. Somebody doesn't have a constitutional right to come to America. The decision is whether America feels like it is in its interests. We have always accepted a large number of people. In fact, we have the largest immigration numbers of any nation in the world. We admit 1 million a year lawfully. When they come from high-risk areas of the world, terrorist states, we should indeed give more scrutiny to those applicants.

Census data shows that legal immigration to the United States from the Middle East is one of the largest and fastest growing categories of new admittances. For the national security of the United States, it is imperative that Congress block Executive amnesty and restore essential enforcement, basic bread-and-butter law enforcement. Anyone who claims to be concerned about our national security should be resolutely focused on this task. There is so much that can be done with relatively little difficulty if we have the leadership and will to get it done.

It would be unthinkable for the President to veto the Homeland Security appropriations bill in order to continue this illegal and dangerous amnesty scheme during a time of growing threats abroad.

Again, let me say that this: the entry-exit visa system is an unappreciated, important part of American immigration law. It is critical to the national security of the United States, as the 9/11 Commission has so stated on more than one occasion. We can do this. Why is it not being done? What forces, what special interests, are interceding between the people of the United States, the national interests, and their special interests that block this kind of system?

We can make it work. It is not that hard. We need a biometric system, and that system should be founded on the fingerprint. It took us a number of years, but I think the government has finally concluded it must be the fingerprint for a lot of reasons, one of which is if somebody got a visa to the United States and they committed a murder, an armed robbery, a terrorist act, a major fraud, and a warrant was issued for their arrest--if you don't clock it in at the airport, who knows when they are leaving? So this would pick it up and would pick up any warrants that might be outstanding for those individuals anywhere in the United States that are put in the NCIC, National Crime Information Center.

That is the way the system should work. It is long overdue. In the course of the discussions we will have in the weeks and months to come about the necessity of fixing a broken immigration system, the entry- exit visa system has to be implemented. It is long overdue. We can make it happen. It is not that expensive. It is relatively inexpensive, actually, and it will make us much safer in the process.

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

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

I ask unanimous consent that the time allotted to each side and utilized be counted against both sides equally during quorum calls.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I had an indication that if I were here on the floor I would be recognized. I don't know if there is any agreement on that or just an informal understanding.

I believe I have the floor and I would like to share some remarks at this time.

I understand Senator Hirono was expecting to speak after Senator Carper and was informally promised time, and Senator Carper went a little long. So I would be pleased to yield to her.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to the nomination of Sarah Saldana. She has been nominated to head the Nation's top immigration law enforcement agency which has been at the epicenter of this administration's refusal to enforce our Nation's immigration laws. I am sure she is a person of integrity and character and has some experience at least as a U.S. attorney in Texas, but I will share with everyone some of the reasons I think this is not the right nomination at this critical time.

When asked in the Judiciary Committee whether she rejects the President's unlawful action to unilaterally grant legal residence and work permits to 5 million individuals illegally in the country, Ms. Saldana said she supported the President's action. Her answer reflects a remarkable disregard for the rule of law that demonstrates the difficulty she will have being the leader of this important agency. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, are immigration enforcement officials. They are hired to work as enforcement officials. As U.S. attorney I worked with Immigration and Customs officers and prosecuted their cases in Mobile, AL, and the gulf coast with shipping issues and immigration issues. That is what they do. But the President has decided to tell them not to follow their duties. Now he has gone so far as to unilaterally direct that those officers not enforce the law. He has established a new office in Crystal City, across the river in Virginia. That office will begin to process millions of claims for executive amnesty. They are hiring 1,000 new employees to do that work. What we are involved in is a situation in which a law enforcement agency is being instructed not to enforce the law--not only that, but the administration has gone beyond that and is actually providing legal status, work permits, and Social Security numbers and photo IDs, Medicare, and Social Security benefits to all of these people who entered the country illegally--which Congress refused to do.

The President asked for it. Congress said no. The President said: You didn't act, I am going to do it on my own, after saying more than 20 different times he didn't have the legal authority to do so. So I am not going to vote for and I don't think our colleagues should vote for a person to head this agency who believes this action by the President is lawful, because it is not lawful.

One would say: Somebody said it is lawful, Jeff, and that is your opinion. I served 15 years in the Department of Justice. I have been on the Judiciary Committee for 18 years. In my opinion it is not lawful, it is not constitutional, it is not a legitimate use of prosecutorial discretion. It goes beyond anything I have ever seen--perhaps this Nation has ever seen--in terms of violating the laws passed by Congress. That is the problem we have, and I think we should take a moment to listen to some excellent legal scholars on the question in play.

I would just add parenthetically that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have the lowest morale of any of the subcomponent agencies in the government. It got so bad and they were so frustrated at not being able to do their jobs, the ICE association--representing some 7,000 agents and officers--sued their own director, John Morton, who held this position previously. This is the job Ms. Saldana has been nominated for. They said: Our supervisor is violating the law. He is directing us not to do our duties that the law says plainly we must do and shall do, and they filed a lawsuit in Federal court. I have never heard of any group of law officers filing a lawsuit saying they are being denied the right to fulfill their oath to see that the laws are being enforced, and that is what happened.

The judge was very sympathetic. He said this President is not above the law, but he found technically that the court did not have jurisdiction to hear the suit, and that is now on appeal. It has been on appeal for some time. It goes to show how demoralized this agency is, and the fundamental reason is that every officer out there knows what is happening. They are being directed not to do their duty, and it is up to Congress to pass laws and Congress has passed laws and the President cannot do away with that.

Let's examine some of the comments we have seen from professors. Professor Jan Ting of Temple University, a law professor, he was also one of the top officials--Assistant Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He has experience in that. He testified before the Judiciary Committee just last week. He said:

. . . the most comprehensive analysis of the

administration's deferred action policies that has been

produced to date is a 77-page law journal article published

last year by Berkeley law professor John Yoo and St. Thomas

law professor Robert Delahunty. In that article the

professors catalogued and reviewed ``the most commonly

offered and generally accepted excuses or justifications

for the breach of [the president's] duty to execute the

laws'' and concluded that the DACA program ``does not fall

within any of them.''

So basically he agrees with the professor who has written this comprehensive article saying this isn't a prosecutorial discretion question. Professor Ting continues:

The conclusions of Professors Yoo and Delahunty have been repeatedly endorsed during the past three years by a well-regarded former professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, Barack H. Obama II. President Obama--then-Professor Obama-- himself.

Indeed, President Obama said over 20 times that he does not have the authority to do what he has done. For example, on March 28, 2011, he said:

With respect to the notion that I can just suspend

deportations through executive order, that's just not the

case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has

passed . . . we've got three branches of government. Congress

passes the law. The executive branch's job is to enforce and

implement those laws. . . .

There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are

very clear in terms of how we have to enforce immigration

system that for me to simply through executive order ignore

those congressional mandates would not conform with my

appropriate role as President.

That is the President himself, in detail. He considered it at this time, from the detail in that answer. These are people saying, just give the people amnesty yourself, Mr. President, and he said no.

Later, on September 17, 2013, he said with regard to his unlawful deferred action for childhood arrivals program--the same principle, same program:

If we start broadening that . . . I would be ignoring the

law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend

legally. So that's not an option . . . What I've said is

there is a path to get this done, and that's through

Congress.

On March 6 of this year, he stated that the DACA Program ``already stretched my administrative capacity very far . . . But at a certain point the reason that these deportations are taking place is, Congress said `you have to enforce these laws.' They fund the hiring of officials at the department that's charged with enforcing. And I cannot ignore those laws any more than I could ignore, you know, any of the other laws that are on the books.''

In August of this year, just a few months before announcing his Executive amnesty--just a few months ago, he said:

I think that I never have a green light [to push the limits

of executive power]. I'm bound by the Constitution; I'm bound

by separation of powers. There are some things we can't do.

Congress has the power of the purse, for example. . . .

Congress has to pass a budget and authorize spending. So I

don't have a green light.

That is true. Congress does have the power of the purse and Congress has not authorized the President to set up an office in Crystal City and hire 1,000 people to provide legal status and work authorization, Social Security numbers, and other such documents allowing them to take any jobs in America, and has not authorized that and hasn't provided money for that.

Congress should explicitly and directly--and I am disappointed that it hasn't this year--blocked that, which it can easily do.

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution is clear that Congress is vested with the plenary power over naturalization law. In 1954 the Supreme Court stated ``that the formulation of these policies is entrusted exclusively to Congress has become about as firmly embedded in the legislative and judicial tissue of our body politic as any aspect of our government.''

In exercising its plenary authority, Congress has declined to pass an immigration bill bestowing legal status and work authorization upon illegal immigrants. Congress has recognized the need to control the number of individuals who can come to this country to live and to work. It has passed laws to establish rules to protect the interests of American citizens. It is a fair system in which people apply to come to the United States, they are properly evaluated, and a certain number each year are admitted. We admit 1 million a year lawfully on a permanent resident status. Those are the most generous numbers in the entire world. In addition to that, we have 700,000 guest workers here and in addition to that it appears we have another 11 million illegal immigrants who have gotten into the country.

Now what about what is happening today, that Ms. Saldana said she supports, but I believe it is absolutely wrong. President Obama's recent unlawful Executive amnesty and work authorization actions have essentially started another system of immigration apart from the one that is in law. He has created another system of law to process people who want to come to America. In so doing he has violated the constitutional structure that gives Congress the power to set the laws for immigration.

In a recent paper, Professor Jan Ting, whom I noted before, said this:

In effect, the president's deferred-action program

constitutes an alternate immigration system authorized by a

cabinet secretary's memoranda. While the statutory system

limits the number of employment-based visas to several

hundred thousand per year, the presidential immigration

system in a single year allots comparable privileges to

several million illegal aliens. In light of the Supreme Court

rulings on the ``plenary,'' ``complete,'' and ``exclusive''

authority of Congress to fashion immigration policy, an

alternative presidential immigration system that nullifies

the limits of the statutory immigration system is plainly

unconstitutional.

That is what Professor Ting, who spent years working in the immigration system, described. Professor Ting further argues that the administration's assertions of authority to justify its ``alternative presidential immigration system''--that is a pretty good way to describe it--through prosecutorial discretion to ``defer action,'' ``parole'' authority, and the issuance of work authorization--directly violate constitutionally enacted immigration laws in the following ways:

Ordering ICE agents not to inspect and place into removal

proceedings illegal aliens they encounter violates 8 U.S.C.

Section 1225, which expressly curtails the President's

discretion concerning inspection and detention of aliens not

lawfully admitted to the United States.

It goes on to say:

Granting ``advance parole'' to ``deferred action''

recipients so they may travel back and forth between the

United States and their native countries violates 8 U.S.C.

section 1182(d)(5), amended in 1996 specifically to prevent

the use of ``parole'' to ``admit aliens who do not qualify

for admission under established legal immigration

categories.''

Another quote:

Granting [work permits] to millions of illegal aliens

ignores a century of case law, including Supreme Court

decisions, holding that the Executive Branch may not

circumvent the statutory employment-based visa system by

opening the labor market to aliens not eligible for such

visas, thereby defeating ``Congress' purpose of protecting

American laborers from an influx of skilled and unskilled

labor.''

Those are some of the things Professor Ting laid out that are directly violating law that the President has carried out in this scheme. He concludes: ``In other words, the president's deferred-action program sits on a plainly unconstitutional stool, which itself rests upon three plainly illegal legs.''

I think that is a fair analysis.

Chapman University Law Professor John Eastman also testified before the Judiciary Committee that ``the President has not just declined to prosecute (or deport) those who have violated our Nation's immigration laws. He has given to millions of illegal aliens a `lawful' permission to remain in the United States as well, and with that the ability to seek work authorization, driver's licenses, and countless other benefits that are specifically barred to illegal immigrants by U.S. law. In other words, he has taken it upon himself to drastically rewrite our immigration policy, the terms of which by constitutional design are expressly set by Congress.''

I think that is indisputable. Somebody could say that is just your opinion. Well, I am here to decide the question. All of us are here to decide the question. Did the President act responsibly, lawfully or unlawfully in this action? It is not a close question, colleagues. You can find excuses, you can find some professor who says this or

that, but it is not accurate. At some point in our Nation's life we need to be able to ascertain and speak with clarity: Congress has the power to write immigration laws. Congress rejected the President's request to provide this power, and Congress should not allow this to continue because it is unlawful and in fact violates the Constitution.

Additionally, George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley, a nationally recognized constitutional scholar, who describes himself as a supporter of President Obama and his policies, testified before the House Judiciary Committee recently regarding the President's unilateral actions on immigration. He testified many times before Congress and frequently most usually, I believe, as a Democratic witness. He said this:

It's not prosecutorial discretion to go into a law and say

an entire category of people will no longer be subject to the

law. That's a legislative decision. Prosecutorial discretion

is a case-by-case decision that is made by the Department of

Justice. When the Department of Justice starts to say, we're

going to extend that to whole sections of laws, then they are

engaging in a legislative act, not an act of prosecutorial

discretion. Wherever the line is drawn, it's got to be drawn

somewhere from here. It can't include categorical rejections

of the application of the law to millions of people.

I think he is exactly right. He goes on to say:

Many of these questions are not close, in my view. The

President is outside the line. . . . And that's where we have

the most serious constitutional crisis, I view, in my

lifetime, and that is, [Congress] is becoming less and less

relevant.

Professor Turley further testified:

I believe the president has exceeded his brief. The

president is required to faithfully execute the laws. He's

not required to enforce all laws equally or commit the same

resources to them. But I believe the president has crossed a

constitutional line in some of these areas. . . . The problem

of what the President is doing is that he is not simply

posing a danger to the constitutional system; he is becoming

the very danger that the Constitution was designed to avoid:

that is, the concentration of power in any single branch.

That is exactly what Madison and the Founders of our country wanted to create, was a system where there is separation of power, and the power to make law is in Congress's hands.

According to ICE officers and agents, they are already being ordered to implement the President's unlawful directives. One ICE supervisor told my office:

If you sneak in through the border, get past Border Patrol,

stay under the radar for a few years, have kids, you will be

rewarded with protection from deportation. This is not merely

[prosecutorial discretion], this is a flagrant disregard for

the rule of law and our sovereignty as a nation. Even if you

come to the [port of entry] and claim credible fear, you will

eventually be released from custody because you are not a

priority.

According to the Partnership for Public Service's ``Best Places to Work in the Federal Government'' rankings released on December 9 of this year--just a few days ago--the Department of Homeland Security is the lowest of all the Federal agencies. That is a tragedy--that great agency. Of all Federal agencies----

I didn't know we had a time limit.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I ask unanimous consent for 30 seconds and I will wrap up.

Of all federal agency subcomponents, ICE is ranked dead last by its employees.

In June 2010, the National ICE Council, the union that represents more than 7,000 agents within ICE, cast a unanimous vote of ``No Confidence'' in former ICE Director John Morton. That vote stemmed from the fact that the agents were prevented by senior leadership from carrying out their lawful duty to enforce immigration laws. Several ICE agents later sued Secretary Napolitano, Director Morton, and former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Mayorkas, arguing that the administration's amnesty policies caused the ICE agents to violate their oath of office and Federal law by commanding them to refrain from detaining certain illegal aliens. The court held that ``DHS does not have discretion to refuse to initiate removal proceedings [where the law requires it to do so].'' The court also reaffirmed that Congress, and not the President, has the plenary power to set immigration law and that the administration's prosecutorial discretion and DACA policies violate Federal law.

Congress cannot further capitulate to this President's overreach. I would ask my colleagues to heed Professor Jonathan Turley's warning:

I believe that [Congress] is facing a critical crossroads

in terms of its continued relevance in this process. What

this body cannot become is a debating society where it can

issue rules and laws that are either complied with or not

complied with by the president. I think that's where we are.

. . [A] president cannot ignore an express statement on

policy grounds. . . [I]n terms of the institutional issue . .

. look around you. Is this truly the body that existed when

it was formed? Does it have the same gravitational pull and

authority that was given to it by its framers? You're the

keepers of this authority. You took an oath to uphold it. And

the framers assumed that you would have the institutional

wherewithal and, frankly, ambition to defend the turf that is

the legislative branch.

The first priority of Congress must be to restore the rule of law, secure the border, and bring the administration into compliance with the laws of the United States. Congress cannot and must not confirm anyone to lead an agency in DHS or other law enforcement agency who supports Executive amnesty. Congress cannot vote to accelerate its own demise. It would be unthinkable to yield to the confirmation of such nominees in the face of so grave a threat to our constitutional order.

This individual is going to take this law enforcement office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and she is going to execute at her direction to all those officers a policy that violates law and violates the Constitution of the United States as a bipartisan group of professors have so declared, and therefore I think none of us should support such an action, and therefore I would urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank Senator McCaskill for her comments. We are talking about a Senator's Senator, a man who reads the language of the legislation and knows how to legislate.

I came here 18 years ago and have served on the Armed Services Committee that entire time, and my admiration and respect for Carl Levin has grown every year. It has grown because it is deserved. He is a remarkable leader. He never showboats and always wants to do the right thing. He serves his country first, and he runs a committee that is, in my mind, the best-run committee--according to the ideals of the Republic of which we are a part--that exists in either House today. It just works the way it is supposed to.

His subcommittees work. We have amendments in subcommittees that are disputed. If you don't like the result, you bring it to the full committee, and the full committee meets, and if it takes 2 full days, it takes 2 full days; everybody gets to bring up their amendments.

Senator Levin is always brilliantly able to solve differences through proper wording of the committee's legislation. As Claire suggested, he has an extraordinary lawyer's ability to get the right words and make the bill say what the committee wants it to say. I think that is special, and I am pleased to have been a part of it.

The Armed Services Committee authorizes one-half of the discretionary budget of the United States. It impacts the lives of men and women in harm's way right now. We need to get it right. It involves a lot of money and a lot of responsibility. It is a well-run committee that sets an example for what we ought to see more of in the Senate.

There is a fairness about his work. Somehow we have always passed an authorization bill, and somehow it is almost always unanimous or very close to unanimous. There may be one or two issues that maybe should not have been tacked on to the bill that causes someone not to vote for it, but when it is over, normally every Member--Republican and Democrat--is satisfied with the ability to have their voice heard and their ideas put into the bill, if possible. But if you lose in subcommittee and you lose on the floor and you have had your say in both places, it kind of makes you feel like, what more can I do? If the rest of the bill is OK, I will try to support it. These markups take time because we are dealing with a large portion of federal funding.

Finally, I would like to say how much I appreciated his wisdom he shared with us as we dealt with the nuclear option--the so-called nuclear option that changed the rules of the Senate. Senator Levin, who is a lawyer's lawyer, said something that was very profound, and it was reflected again in his remarks today, and that is, if a majority can change the rules, there are no rules. If a majority can change the rules of the Senate at a given moment to overcome objections from the minority, then there are virtually no minority rights--you have a pure majoritarian body. I think that is what Carl was sharing with us in his brilliant speech that all of us ought to read.

I thank our chairman for the leadership he has given and for the courtesy he has shown to me and all our Members. I wish him great success in his future endeavors, and I hope he will continue to contribute his wisdom to the body politic.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will not be voting for the bill.

I am frustrated that we have gone through now 8 years of domination by the majority leader in the Senate, denying votes on even simple amendments as part of the entire funding of the discretionary accounts of the United States of America. There is over $1 trillion in spending, not one amendment, refusing to bring up the bills individually as they should have been, refusing to pass the bill by September 30 when the fiscal year ends, and appropriations should be done before that date to fund the next fiscal year.

So what do we do? Well, they didn't want to vote because an election was coming up. They didn't want to vote the previous year when an election was coming up, I guess 18 months later, so there is always some excuse. But the fundamental thing that has occurred in this Senate is the majority leader, through the device of filling the tree, places himself in control, places himself in a position to block amendments to any bill. That is what he has done, to a degree that has never before been done in the U.S. Senate.

Chairman Mikulski says she looks forward to getting on a better path next year under Republican leadership, so we will have a more regular process. Maybe the Republicans will allow the minority Democratic Party next time to have rights that have been denied us for all of these years. This is a fact. People can spin it any way they want to. I have been here for 18 years, and I know what is happening. We have demolished the collegiality in the Senate. It has caused the kind of frustration and tension that has resulted in these failures to pass bills.

So what do they do? They cobble the entire funding of the United States together in one omnibus bill, bring it up at the last minute, and say, If you don't agree to vote it out without getting any amendments, we will accuse you of shutting the government down. We will accuse you of shutting the government down. It is all your fault. For some reason, our friends in the media seem to think that is true. And if anybody has the gumption to stand up and object to this abusive process, they are shutting the government down. What planet are we on? Don't we know what really has happened?

So I have an amendment and I wanted to offer it to this bill. It would simply say that Congress is going to fund the United States government; we are going to fund the entire discretionary account in this country, but we are not going to provide money to allow the President of the United States to execute an unlawful, illegal amnesty. He has already established a building across the river in Crystal City, and they have ads out to hire 1,000 people, salaries up to $150,000. And they are going to process people who are here unlawfully, give them a photo ID, a Social Security number, and a work authorization, and allow them to participate in Social Security and Medicare. They will allow them, if their incomes are low--and statistics tell us their incomes are lower--they are entitled to child tax credits of $1,000 per child and they are entitled to the earned income tax credit. Combined, according to the recent article by David Frum in ``The Atlantic'', that is almost $5,000 if you are a working person with a family of four earning up to $40,000 a year--you will be entitled to a direct check. A tax credit is not a tax deduction. It is a direct check from the Treasury for an average of nearly $5,000. It is a stunning situation that should not be happening.

So I just wanted to have an amendment that funds the government, allows the country to go forward, but just say to the President: Mr. President, we don't authorize any funding for this project. It can easily be done. It has been done hundreds of times. In fact, that is why Guantanamo prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, where the terrorists are being held--that is why it has not been closed, because Congress has told the President, who wants to close it, we are not going to allow you to spend a dime to close that prison. It has been successful. Because Presidents can't spend money not authorized by Congress, not appropriated by Congress. He cannot spend that money. It is wrong. It is actually a criminal offense to spend money. The Antideficiency Act says that anyone who pretends to represent the U.S. Government and spends money not appropriated by the Congress of the United States--not authorized by the Congress to be spent--violates a law, because the Congress has the power of the purse.

We don't have to fund everything the President asks for. We don't have to

fund programs we think are bad, that are unworthy of funding. What is Congress for? Otherwise, it is a rubberstamp that cannot make an independent judgment. We absolutely have a duty, a responsibility to not fund a program that violates the law, violates the Constitution; to allow the President to eviscerate and fail to enforce huge chunks of our immigration law and, at the same time, allow him to create an entirely new scheme of immigration law.

So the President's Executive amnesty say: I am not going to enforce the law with regard to 5 million people. And not only that, the law says if a person is here unlawfully, they can't work; and the law says if a person is a businessperson, they can't hire somebody who is here unlawfully--I am not going to enforce that, either. In fact, I am going to go even further. I am going to get an office in Crystal City and I am going to bring in 1,000 people and we are going to give the people who are here unlawfully, as defined by the American people through their Congress--I am going to give them a certificate, a photo ID that says they are here lawfully. And I am going to say despite the fact that a person is not supposed to work here if they are here unlawfully, I am going to give them the right to work. And, by the way, they are not entitled to Social Security or Medicare, and I am going to give that to them, too. By the way, when they filed their tax return using that Social Security number, if their income falls in this range--up to $40,000--they can get a tax credit and a child tax credit. And for people making, say--a typical family making $40,000 and with 2 children will not owe any income tax.

They are not going to owe any income tax. What they are going to do is file their return and wait for their $5,000 check from Uncle Sam. At this time I am on the Budget Committee, ranking Republican, and I can tell you: we are going broke. The last thing we need to do is put Social Security and Medicare in a worse condition. The last thing we need the country to do is for our Treasury Department to be sending out billions of dollars in tax credits to people who have come to the country unlawfully. We have to borrow money. Do we not know?

We borrow money every day in huge amounts to keep this government afloat, and all this is going to do is add more. I am not happy about it. I don't think the American people are happy about it. Poll after poll, election after election--in November people said they were going to come to Washington and do better. People who have been complicit in this kind of activity are not going to be here next year, many of them.

I think Congress needs to listen to the American people. What is wrong with what they are telling us? What is wrong with them saying we want a lawful system of immigration? We don't care what Big Business wants. We don't care what the special activist groups want. We want a lawful system of immigration that is fairly applied and we can be proud of and that serves our interests; that helps my child, my husband, and me have a job. We would like to see wages rise. We expect the people in Congress to look after us, not people who violate our laws.

Let me share some further thoughts that I believe are important. A lot of people are ignoring this. They don't want to hear about it. They don't believe it. They have taken the view they are going to dismiss it. I want my colleagues to be aware of this, and I intend to continue to press this issue:

The U.S. Department of Commerce informs us that ``today's typical 18- to 34-year-old earns about $2,000 less per year, (adjusted for inflation), than their counterpart in 1980.''

It is a painful and a sharp decline for young Americans.

What has happened to the labor markets since 1980? Data from the U.S. Census Bureau offers this insight:

From 1930 to 1950, the foreign-born population of the

United States declined from 14.2 million to 10.3 million . .

. [but] Since 1970, the foreign-born population of the United

States has increased rapidly due to large-scale immigration.

Let me just stop here and say America has been generous in this immigration policy. We have the largest number of people entering our country on a lawful immigrant status than any country in the world by far.

What I want us to do is to understand that we need to ask ourselves how many people the United States can absorb without damaging the wages and job prospects of unemployed, underemployed Americans.

The U.S. Census Bureau statistics report that in 1980, the foreign- born population stood at 14.1 million. But from 1980 through 2013, the immigrant population tripled from 14 million to more than 41 million. The large increase in the size of the immigrant population is the direct product of policies in Washington, creating both an expanded lawful system and an expanded unlawful system.

Legal immigration during the 1980s averaged around 600,000 people a year. But since 1990 through today, it has averaged about 1 million annually--meaning the annual rate almost doubled. The sustained large- scale flow of legal immigration--overwhelmingly, this group are lower- wage and lower-skilled--has placed a substantial downward pressure on wages.

I don't think there is any doubt about that. Some try to ignore it and talk around it, but I think the facts are clear. We have right now a very slack labor market with more jobseekers than jobs. The White House has itself estimated that there are three unemployed Americans today for each one job opening. We don't have a shortage of workers. We have a shortage of jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that in the construction industry there are seven unemployed persons for each available job opening.

This is huge. Some in the construction industry said they need more foreign workers, even as these statistics shows large numbers of unemployed American construction workers.

This large-scale immigration flow, paired with the forces of globalization and automation and robotics, has made it ever more difficult for American workers to earn a wage that can actually support a family.

Consider this report just published in The New York Times.

Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age

men--those 25 to 54 years old--who are not working has more

than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More

recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women

without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States,

which had one of the highest employment rates among developed

nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of

the list.

Continuing the quote from the New York Times--

At the same time, it has become harder for men to find

higher-paying jobs. Foreign competition and technological

advances have eliminated many of the jobs in which high

school graduates . . . once could earn $40 an hour, or more.

That is what the New York Times is telling us. It is not just a recent development. It is a development of some years. Since the end of the 1960s--the timeframe identified by the article, during this period we have seen this decline in employment--the share of the U.S. population that is foreign born increased from less than 5 percent to more than 13 percent. As a total number, the size of the foreign-born population has quadrupled over the last four decades.

Due to current Washington policy, these figures are only going to rise. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the foreign-born population could reach as high as 58 million within a decade based on recent trends.

Again, let's be frank and talk honestly. Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom recently said it is not wrong to talk about this. Our Nation needs to talk about the wages of its people, the financial status of its people, and it is all right and proper to ask the question of whether immigration can impact that in an adverse way.

I just want to say I am not being anti-immigrant. There are many good people who want to come be a part of America. I am not denying that. What I am saying is that we are hurting, not helping, those who come to America when we bring in more people than there are jobs. We also don't have jobs for those who are American-born. Now we are bringing in millions more. We need to ask ourselves honestly: Is this a good policy for the Republic which we are supposed to serve? Only an adjustment in policy, I suggest, will change this trajectory--just as policy

has changed early in the 20th century to allow labor markets to be tightened and wages go up. This is an issue that affects all residents, our foreign born who are here wanting to work and the U.S. born. Among those most affected by the size of these large immigrant flows are the new immigrants themselves who want to get a good job that pays a good salary.

By continuing to admit these large numbers over such a sustained period of time, many immigrants themselves are unable to find jobs. For instance, less than half of the immigrants who entered California since 2010 are participating in the labor force. They are not finding jobs. There are not enough jobs for them. Half the entire number of immigrants who entered California since 2010 are not working. In Los Angeles, where 4 in 10 residents are immigrants, one-third of those who recently arrived are living in poverty.

We have an obligation to those whom we lawfully admit not to create a circumstance where, by admitting continuing to admit many more, we are diminishing their job prospects. A sound immigration policy must serve the needs of people who are lawfully here and who are native-born. That has to be the primary focus of what we are doing. This discussion has to be had. We can't ignore this. We can't make like we can absorb an unlimited number of workers; we don't have jobs for the workers we have.

Immigrants and native-born workers are also competing with a large flow of temporary guest workers. Temporary guest workers are brought into the United States from abroad for the explicit purpose of taking a job, not on a path to green card and citizenship. They come just to work for a limited period of time. Each year the United States admits roughly 700,000 guest workers. They fill jobs that otherwise might go to people here. Of those 700,000 guest workers, roughly about 10 percent are in agricultural work. A lot of people think the guest workers are working on a farm somewhere. That is not so. Only about 10 percent are. Ninety percent take jobs in almost every industry in America, from good-paying construction jobs to coveted positions at technology firms in Silicon Valley.

The pressures on the middle-class are great. We have a large flow of permanent immigration and temporary workers. The elimination of many good-paying jobs at factories and plants due to advances in robotics, the shedding of manufacturing jobs due to overseas competition, a sluggish and overregulated economy that is growing too slow to keep pace with the population growth and the high costs of energy, health care, income and household goods. Policymakers in Washington need to be reducing the burdens on working families, not making their lives more difficult--but that is exactly what we have been doing.

Professor George Borjas--an top expert on these matters who has worked on them for decades--estimates that high immigration flows from 1980 to 2000 reduced the wages of lower skilled American workers by 7.4 percent--about $260 per month--as a direct result of the size and flow of immigration from 1980 to 2000. I don't think it is defensible for colleagues to say it will help wages to bring in more people. That's why the Congressional Budget office said the Senate immigration bill, rejected by the House, would have reduced wages for the next dozen years.

Professor Borjas estimates a current net loss of $402 billion for American workers who compete with foreign labor.

Mr. President, $402 billion. Furthermore, as documented for the Center for Immigration Studies, relying exclusively on government data, all net employment gains among the working-age since the year 2000 have gone to immigrant workers--net gains.

This remarkable trend occurred even as the number of working-age native-born Americans increased by nearly 17 million. So the 17 million is a dramatic figure. There is not a decline in native workers, as some businesses try to say. Oh, we have a demographic decline. We have to deal with it. The figures show we are still growing in the working- ages, a nearly 17 million increase in the age group since 2000.

Here are a few more statistics. There are not temporary trends but prolonged trends. Nearly one in four Americans in their prime working years--25 to 54--is not working. This includes 10 million American men and 18 million American women.

Real, median weekly earnings are lower today than in the year 2000. Median family income is down $4,000 since November of 2007. Our wages and earnings for families have declined dramatically--$4,000 is almost 350 a month.

So it is in this context that we must consider the economic fallout from the President's unconstitutional Executive amnesty.

In plain violation of law and the express will of the American people, the President has ordered 5 million work permits to be issued to those illegally here. Those illegal workers will now be able to compete for any job in America. They can now compete for jobs with the power company, the county commission, city hall, working at construction companies--good-paying jobs for which they are not now eligible to compete.

The President's order will give illegal immigrants unfettered access to compete for any job in America. If they are not hired at city hall because the mayor thinks he should not hire someone who entered the country illegally, they can file a lawsuit and demand to be hired. They have been given lawful status ordered by the President of the Unite States, an ID card with a Social Security number and a worker authorization. They will be participating in Social Security and Medicare, weakening those programs which are already in deep financial trouble.

So this illegal amnesty is part of a broader immigration vision from the President, legislation he endlessly champions, a bill written behind closed doors with billionaire activists and open-borders enthusiasts and immigration lobbyists. This legislation surges immigration levels every year. That is his vision.

After four decades of record immigration, the President's bill, supported unanimously by Senate Democrats, stopped in the Republican House, tripled the issuance of permanent residency cards over 10 years. In the next 10 years, had that bill passed, it would have tripled the number of people given permanent legal status in America.

The Center For Immigration Studies explains that this legislation would, in a mere 6 years from today, increase the percentage of the U.S. population born abroad to a level never before reached in American history. And by 2033 nearly one in six residents, under this plan, would be foreign-born. This is a dramatic and historic change in our immigration policy. Unsurprisingly, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the results of such legislation would be lower wages, higher unemployment, and reduced per capita GNP.

All of this begs a simple question: Who is looking out for Americans? Who is looking out for their interests, fighting to help them get a better job and better pay, or working to help their communities climb out of poverty? Who is looking out for their interests?

The immigration debate in our Nation's Capital is always centered, it seems to me, on the needs of illegal immigrants, foreign workers, or large employers. Is it not time, after decades of open immigration, that we focus on what we can do to help Americans? Is not time to focus on how we can grow their wages and improve their job prospects?

We have seen declining wages and higher unemployment. Is it not the sensible and rational thing to just slow down a little bit, allow wages to begin to rise some, assimilation to occur more effectively, and help those who are already here today, including foreign immigrants who have come to America, who are struggling to rise into the middle class? Will this not help them be more successful, more prosperous, and flourish better in America?

The American people have begged and pleaded for a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest--not special interests. But the politicians have refused, refused, refused. This summer alone the White House met 20 times, it was reported, with business executives, amnesty lobbyists, and immigration activists to craft their executive orders legalize people who are here unlawfully. They have been meeting for years with those

groups. They have spent $1.5 billion, according to one independent group, to promote their rejected amnesty legislation since 2007. But you know who was not invited into that room? You were not invited into that room. You, the American citizen, were not there. Do you not get a say in these secret meetings?

We just had a meeting 2 days ago with sheriffs from all over America. They said: Do not allow this unlawful amnesty to occur. They weren't invited to these secret meetings either.

So the super-elites in Washington and on Wall Street dream of a world without borders, a paradise, I guess, where little things like law and rules and national boundaries are not a problem. Do not get in the way of their wild chimera, their vision.

The only challenge these great global citizens face are these pesky people called the voters who cling to the old-fashioned idea of a nation as a home and a border as something real and worth protecting. These elites, you see, know better.

If you are worried about your jobs or wages; if you are concerned that the pace of immigration into your community is too fast and too large; if you feel as though your needs are not being considered, well, you are just a nativist, you see. You are selfish.

So when an election happens and the people rebel against this open- borders agenda, there is really one thing for these wise elites to do: They just impose their own law.

How Congress answers this challenge will shape the future of this Republic. Will we defend and protect the people who sent us here, their laws duly passed, their Constitution, and their communities, or do we once again abandon them, give them lip service but no real action? I pose that question to the body.

I suggest there is no purpose to our being here if it is not to serve and protect and defend the loyal people who sent us here on their behalf.

It is time for us to get busy.

I am deeply disappointed that the majority leader is blocking an amendment that would deal with this matter. In the Senate, a Senator from any State should be able to have an amendment that deals with the crises of our time. We are being blocked once again. It denies accountability. It is wrong. It is improper. The American people are tired of it. And those who facilitate this conduct in the future will hear that message clearly from the American people.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

tribute to departing senators

Tom Coburn

Mr. President, I would like to make some remarks about Senator Coburn.

Tom Coburn is one of the more remarkable Senators who have served in this body--certainly since I have been here. He is a man with absolute courage, conviction, and dedication to make this country better. He didn't come here to go through the job and go through the motions; he came here to invest his great skills and his great intellectual ability and to pour his drive and effort into making America a better place. It is very special. It is unusual. I have not seen anything like it, as I said, since I have been here.

I always had great reluctance to disagree or oppose anything Tom offered. They were not always perfect, but basically I opposed them so seldom because I agreed with him time and time again. I always hated to vote no because I knew he had studied the issue, understood it, and was doing what he believed was right.

His whole philosophy and approach to government, had it been more effectively followed by other Members of this body, would have led us to a better country. To support what he said, I think in a way, was supporting high ideals for America.

I want to say I am going to miss him. People have no idea how many times he has stopped or altered bad legislation to make it better and less problematic and more principled. He believes that ours is a constitutionally limited government. He didn't just believe that, he acted on it and has acted on it consistently.

I understand, and I have no doubt of this--we don't need to run a test--but I understand and have no doubt that he has offered more amendments since I have been in the Senate than any other Senator. They have been amendments to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, to make the government more efficient, leaner, to consolidate multiple programs that should be consolidated for efficiency.

He has worked across the aisle on a host of issues. He has sought bipartisan support for matters that are small and large. It is remarkable. I have to say that we are going to lose someone who is of great value. He would easily have been reelected had he run again.

I remember him saying one time--and this is his philosophy--if you want to be reelected, don't worry about being reelected, just do the right thing, and you won't have any difficulties. He never had any difficulties in his election, because people trusted him. They

knew every day, night and day, long hours, whatever, he was working to advance the common interest of our country. They trusted that he was not seduced, bought out, compromised by the powers that be in Washington, DC, and he remained true to those who sent him here.

I would say this: Part of the strength he has--as a matter of fact, maybe the greatest part of his strength he has is his faith. He is intelligent, sophisticated, knowledgeable, a scientist, a doctor, but a man of simple Christian faith which impacts his life as much as anybody in this body. He understands the true meaning of life, and he gives himself to others in a most remarkable way.

Thank you and colleagues for the opportunity for me to share these remarks. We are going to miss our friend Tom Coburn, who is going to object to those bills that require a lot of effort to make them better or stop some that are so bad they cannot be passed. A lot of us are going to have to pick up the slack.

Maybe Tom would say, ``What are you doing down here, Jeff, wasting time talking about me when you ought to be studying this bill and finding some of the bogus spending that is in it? You should be spending your time fixing it.''

But every now and then I think we should stop and recognize an extraordinary life and an extraordinary Senator.

I wanted to share these remarks.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I wish to share a few remarks as we mark the end of the long tenure of Senator Jay Rockefeller and his service to his country and to the Senate. He has served in the Senate for 30 years. He served two terms as Governor of West Virginia, and served as Secretary of State, and in the House of Delegates.

He came to the State of West Virginia as a young VISTA volunteer. I have heard him tell the story about that, how he really wanted to participate and reach out and help others. He came to West Virginia as a young man and stayed. He worked with people in a small mining community. His heart was right to try to be helpful. He came from a prestigious family, but he wanted to help others.

He has been a remarkable Member of the Senate for now 30 years. He has a brilliant mind, capable of grasping all sorts of thoughts, but he also has the ability to delight in little things. One of those is sports. He has a tremendous capacity to have in that brain of his sports trivia. He likes the Atlanta Braves. He knows Southeastern Conference football. I have been pleased to be able to chat with him on occasion on the floor.

It just goes to show a lot of times people don't realize that we get along pretty well in this body personally. We may disagree on issues, but we care about one another. Jay Rockefeller has always been nice to me. He has always been a friend. He has always been courteous. He has always been collegial to me, and I have appreciated that over the years. So I wish to thank him for his service to his country, his commitment to others, and I wish him Godspeed in his further endeavors.

I thank the Chair, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I wish to share a few thoughts about the service in the Senate of our good friend and colleague Saxby Chambliss.

Saxby is one of the best liked and most respected Senators in this body. Every Member knows him. Every Member likes him. Every Member respects him. I truly share that view. And on matters particularly related to national security, intelligence issues, and terrorism, I consistently want to know what Saxby has to say about it.

He has done a whole lot of things in this Senate. He has been a participant and a contributor on many issues. He worked really hard to try to create a bipartisan solution to our debt crisis. That didn't quite develop, but it was a positive part of the discussion this Senate went through.

What I really want to say is that as Chairman or Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and having been a longtime Member of the House Intelligence Committee, and here in the Senate, he has become the go-to person with regard to the sensitive issues relating to the security of our country. I consistently have looked to him because I trust his judgment, trust his integrity, and trust his wisdom to help sort through all the political news articles and debates and hot issues, and to distill down to the bottom of what is important, what we should be focused on, and what the right thing is for America.

Truly, he has been a remarkable Senator. We are going to miss Saxby. I am going to miss Saxby, as so many of us will. He is the son of an Episcopalian minister. He is a man of faith.

He has a delightful wife, Julianne. My wife is a good judge of character and she thinks Julianne hung the Moon, and that is so true. They are a great family and great partners.

Saxby has given so much to the Senate. Georgia has produced some great Senators, particularly Senators known for their commitment to national security and the defense of America: Richard Russell, for whom the Russell Senate Office Building is named; Sam Nunn, who was so long a leader in the Congress with regard to national defense.

Saxby Chambliss is in that category. That is the kind of Senator he has been--from defending America to helping his colleagues sift through difficult issues and make good, wise decisions. It has been a great pleasure for me to serve with him. I wish him every success in his future endeavors and look forward to seeing him back in this area many times.

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

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

Mr. President, I would also just say that we will be losing a good friend, Mark Begich. Mark and I served on the Armed Services Committee together for a number of years. We were very active. I was Ranking Member and he was Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, dealing with missile defense, which Alaska was deeply involved with as a state.

Mark was an expert on those issues. We dealt with nuclear issues and outer space and satellite issues. That was a particularly good time together. I believe every committee--every decision we reached--was a bipartisan decision that came out of committee. We supported the Subcommittee report that was made a part of the Armed Services bill and then became law. For the most part I think not too many changes were made in it.

I think a lot of people may not appreciate that Senators do get along. We do work together on issues important to the country, such as space and military space necessities that are so valuable to our men and women as they are in harm's way, to be able to produce a missile defense system that ensures that this country is not vulnerable to attack by a missile from an adversary.

That system is up, standing, and operating today. It was great to work with Mark in establishing it. He is a delightful person to work with, always with a positive attitude. I know he will be successful in whatever future endeavors he undertakes. He was mayor of Anchorage. Anybody who has been a mayor has learned some things and has had to deal with constituents face-to-face. He loved actually meeting his constituents and talking with them.

I wish Mark every success in his future endeavors and would like to express my appreciation to him for the courtesies he has shown me and the effort we made together to improve the defense of the United States.

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

Mr. President, I voted to confirm Virginia Lodge and Ron Walter to be members of the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority. I believe that these nominees are qualified and have demonstrated the characteristics that will enable them to fulfill their duties in supporting the mission of the TVA.

According to the TVA Act, the Board sets the broad strategies and goals of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Given the many changes facing our electricity system, those strategies for TVA--one of the Nation's biggest utilities--are critical. As technology changes the future of energy production and energy use, the administration is busy unleashing costly regulations that risk damaging our economy for little environmental gain.

Navigating these crosscurrents, TVA's Board must strive to keep electricity costs low through prudential and nonideological decisionmaking. They must continue the work of TVA's current management to cut costs without impacting service. Only through demanding decisions based on data and through questioning assumptions will they successfully lead TVA through today's challenges.

Also of importance is TVA's continued maintenance and eventual completion of the Bellefonte nuclear power plant. In the 1970s, TVA made plans to build a large number of nuclear reactors, but it abandoned those plans after completing several plants while others-- including two units at Bellefonte--were only partially completed. TVA continues to maintain its assets at Bellefonte, where it has invested $6 billion. I know that these nominees will examine the cost to complete Bellefonte and the baseload demand forecasts for TVA to best determine when the plant should be completed.

I believe the nominees have demonstrated the ability to serve effectively and I look forward to their service on the Board and to working with them for the betterment of the region in the years to come.