Floor Statements

Madam President, how much time is remaining?

Madam President, the problem we have at the border today is a direct result of the actions of the President of the United States. In 2011 we had 6,000 young people coming to America unlawfully. They were apprehended. Now we have 60,000. It was because of his DACA program and his open statement that was heard throughout the world as: If you come to America as a young person, you will be able to stay.

That was exactly and I think to some degree remains the situation.

If you come to America as a young person from Central America, not Mexico, and you turn yourself in, you will be released on a permiso or bond or promise to reappear.

People come and pick up the children and they stay.

This is no way to run a lawful system of immigration. You know, it was said: Well, we offered a comprehensive bill to fix it.

That bill was flawed. I opposed that bill. It was rejected by the House of Representatives.

I would say with great confidence that because the House of Representatives rejected the bill that Members of this Senate supported and that the President of the United States supported does not thereby mean the President of the United States can do what the bill says when it was rejected and did not become law. It takes both Houses to pass a piece of legislation.

The bill would not have worked. It would not have been effective. The people of the United States, through their elected representatives, did not allow it to become law.

I would point out that this administration amazingly has announced its intention to bypass Congress and to implement an executive amnesty by fiat. This would include, as has been widely reported, 5 million to 6 million work permits and legal status for illegal immigrants into America.

This is contrary to Congress's decision. Congress has not approved that. But Congress has approved a law that says it is unlawful for somebody in the country, for example, to work if they are not here lawfully. They can't work in the United States. They are not approved for work.

The President is saying he is going to give them legal status and permission to work contrary to plain law. This is

very serious. This action would be in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It would be an executive nullification of our laws and the protections that American workers are entitled to. Congress must not surrender to such lawlessness.

It has been in half a dozen papers. The Wall Street Journal 2 days ago: Millions of people by executive action of the President--it is unbelievable to be so open and bold about this, as if he thinks maybe this would intimidate Congress to force us to adopt legislation Congress has rejected.

We have the power--the power of the purse--to stop it. That is the appropriate response of Congress. When the President proposes something that is improper and outside of law, when we have powers as coequal branches of government, we can respond, and we should use the power of the purse.

Senator Cruz has filed an amendment to this bill that would prohibit the executive expenditures by the President of any funds for administrative amnesty or work authorization for unlawful immigrants. However, the majority leader, with the support of his conference, has blocked all amendments to this border supplemental. If we do not stop this Presidential action, we will ensure that the border crisis continues a catastrophe.

The President's planned action would also represent a total breach of our constitutional system, and it would be a hammer blow to millions of unemployed American citizens. We do have the power to stop this. We ought to stop it. We have a duty to Congress, we have a duty to the rule of law, and we have a duty to the Constitution.

What we can do today by voting yes on my motion to clear the amendment tree and to consider and pass Senator Cruz's amendment would fix this problem. It would say: Mr. President, you are not authorized to utilize any money of the U.S. Government to spend on a program to grant amnesty and work permits to millions.

The vote we are about to have will be a vote on whether to support the President's illegal amnesty or to block it. It will be a vote to allow us to vote on it, because right now the tree is filled and we can't vote.

I am going to be asking to table what is on the tree and clear that amendment out so we can vote on this amendment, and we will have a vote on it. Everyone in this Chamber will cast a vote before this whole Nation and reveal whether they stand for our laws, for our border sovereignty or whether they stand in support of the President's illegal activities, in truth.

A number of cosponsors support this amendment. I think it is the right thing to do, and we will be asking for that later today.

Colleagues, in addition, the administration has announced its intention to bypass Congress, according to the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and others, with as many as 5 million to 6 million of these work permits.

Unfortunately, the bill before us is merely a blank check to perpetuate the failure of this administration to fix the problems at the border. This can be done, colleagues. It is not impossible. It is not hopeless. We simply need a President who wants it to happen.

He has been sued by his own ICE officers, saying that they are being blocked from doing their duty. They asked a court to give them relief and tell their supervisors to quit telling them to violate the law and not enforce the law. That is amazing. Their morale is in the tank.

The current crisis on the border can be attributed to specific actions taken unilaterally by the President. After his 2012 Executive order, the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border jumped from 7,100 in 2011 to nearly 15,000 in 2012, and now we have already hit more than 57,000 heading to 90,000. Estimates suggest approximately 32,000 unaccompanied minors are projected to cross the border in the remaining months of this fiscal year.

We have this egregious funding supplemental before us that would equal more than $110,000 per child who is coming into the country.

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

I thank my colleagues. We do have good colleagues here, and we have great robust debate, and I appreciate the chairman of the committee, Senator Mikulski.

Moreover, this border supplemental provides the Department with unlimited transfer authority of $1.1 billion--an unlimited ability of up to $1 billion. It becomes, really, a slush fund in that sense. They can use it for anything. Finally, the border supplemental would provide an additional $1.2 billion to the Department of Homeland Security.

So I am raising a point of order. And I am sure a motion to waive will be heard. But make no mistake. A vote to suspend the budget rules and to block our point of order is a vote for the President's amnesty; it is a vote for continued chaos. I urge my colleagues to sustain it.

The bill before us today is in clear violation of the budget. All the money is borrowed money, it violates the budget, and I raise that point of order.

Madam President, I have not raised it at this point, but I do intend to. I thought we had an understanding so we could make the votes occur at the agreed-upon time.

I would raise it later.

Mr. President, this is a $2 billion bill, all the money borrowed as a result of a crisis the President has created at the border, money this country does not have, and there are zero policy changes in it.

Republicans on the floor today have filed and argued for a number of amendments and attempted to offer those that are focused on critical policy changes to strengthen this legislation and make it more effective.

Unfortunately, the parliamentary maneuvering has been executed, the amendment tree is filled, and we have been prevented from offering any amendments at all that are necessary to establish a lawful system of immigration that works and that we can be proud of.

So I move to table the Reid amendment on the tree, 3751, for the purpose of offering the Cruz amendment. That amendment would prohibit the President of the United States from expending any funds to unilaterally provide amnesty and work authorizations for millions of people as has been reported in the press. The Cruz amendment is No. 3720.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, the pending measure, S. 2648--a bill providing emergency supplemental appropriations for fiscal year 2014-- contains a number of provisions in violation of the Budget Act and spends in violation of the Budget Act. Specifically, it contains matter within the jurisdiction of the Budget Committee that was not reported or discharged from the Budget Committee. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the measure pursuant to section 306 of the Congressional Budget Act.

I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

I respect the remarks of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, but I would note that every penny of this bill is borrowed. None of it is funded through any offsets or other sources of income. This country has to be more careful. The bill needs to go through the Budget Committee. It did not get approved properly there. I would note, again, it is all borrowed. It does not make any policy changes. I think we all should stand firm to reject this bill, and to sustain the point of order.

Mr. President, today's Wall Street Journal has an article that should send shivers through every Member of this body. The article reports on what the President is planning to do with regard to executive amnesty, using Executive orders to do that which Congress has refused to do.

The article says this:

For months, President Barack Obama said there were limits

to his power to protect people living illegally in the U.S.

from deportation. Now, he is considering broad action to

scale back deportations that could include work permits for

millions of people, according to lawmakers and immigration

advocates who have consulted with the White House.

The President has been meeting regularly with immigration activists and he has been promising them things that he has no power to promise. He has promised them things that constitutionally he is not able to do, and this Congress needs to say no to that. We can do that by simply barring the expenditure of money in the future to execute such a scheme.

Congressman Blackburn in the House has offered legislation, and Senator Cruz in the Senate has offered legislation, which would do just that. But it is not in the bill we are being asked to provide cloture on that will come up in a few minutes.

The article goes on to say--just to stress the stark nature of what is being considered--

The shift in White House thinking came after House

Republicans said they wouldn't take up immigration

legislation. . . .

So the President is saying: I have legislation and the House will not pass it, therefore, I am going to do it myself. It is one of the most pathetic excuses for abuse of power by a court or a President that you can imagine. Congress considered his legislation. He promoted it strongly. Members of both parties have advocated for it. But the House considered it and rejected it. That is an action. That is a decision by the House of Representatives. The President has no power to go beyond that, and I think this Congress--this Senate--has a responsibility to speak to that question and to avoid an issue. The Wall Street Journal goes on to say:

An announcement is expected soon after Labor Day, an

administration official said.

They are going to announce this within weeks. The article goes on to say that it could involve 5 million people or more, and the President said himself he would ``fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress''--without Congress. I will just use my pen. I will just order my officers, who work for me, you know. The Border Patrol, the ICE officers, they work for me. I will just tell them to do A, B, and C. We will just not pay any attention to the fact that plain law, section 274 of the INA, says that a person in the country unlawfully is not entitled to work.

Mr. President, how much time do I have?

He will just do that on his own.

So we are now being asked to move forward on legislation that provides no opportunity to even get a vote on this issue. Certainly its text does not fix this problem.

Let me be plain, colleagues. There are times when we have to rise above politics. Maybe somebody believes in amnesty, and they would like to see this happen, but we cannot acquiesce in having the President unilaterally do so in an unlawful fashion.

The truth is that the people who are refusing to bring language up of this kind and fix it--what they want is to see the President do this. They are for it, they are supporting it, and they have rejected any action, so far at least, to defend the rule of law, defend the Senate, defend the entire Congress's legitimate powers. It is just breathtaking to me.

So let me again say, colleagues, we need to take action. This Congress needs to speak. We cannot allow Executive orders to be issued by a President who eradicates plain law. To do so is wrong. The American people are watching this. They are not going to be happy that the Congress did not take action. Expressions of concern among Senators are not enough. We need to bring this up.

But Senator Reid, I predict, is not going to allow that to happen, and he is going to be supported by every Member of his Democratic Conference. And every Member of the Democratic Conference, every Member who supports him in this plan, will be, in fact, involved and supportive of the President's plan.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is proper that we note the death of an American patriot who served the U.S. government with dedication for many years. The Nation lost Wayman Gray Sherrer, 86, on March 12, 2014. He graduated from the fine Howard College, now Samford University, where he was senior class president, and the University of Alabama School of Law in the class of 1956. Before college, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Following law school, he served 6 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after which he was elected county solicitor (district attorney) for Blount County, AL. In 1969, he was appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and served ably in that position for 8 years. During that time, I served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and came to know him. We maintained contact over the years and were able to talk over those special times. He served his county and country with distinction, was active in community and civic affairs, and as a member of the Lester Memorial United Methodist Church.

Wayman loved his country and served her with fidelity. I was proud to know him.

Mr. President, we are entering a momentous week. Congress must face the reality that President Obama is moving towards a decision whereby he would issue Executive orders in direct contravention of long-established American law that would grant administrative amnesty and work permits to 5 to 6 million persons who are unlawfully in this country. This is after Congress has explicitly refused demands to change the law to suit his desire.

The current law is plain. Those who enter this great Nation by unlawful means, or who overstay their visa, are subject to removal and are ineligible to work. Indeed, I will read one portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 274, which makes employment of unauthorized aliens unlawful. ``In general, it is unlawful for any person or other entity to hire or to recruit or refer for a fee for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien.'' That is the law of the United States.

It is plain. Those who enter by unlawful entry are subject to removal and ineligible to work. That is just one of the provisions, and it is our law. Our law is right and just, and it comports with the laws of civilized nations the world over, and if followed, will serve the honorable and legitimate interests of this Nation and her people.

The National Journal, Time magazine, The Hill, and others, are reporting that by the end of summer President Obama--sore at Congress, and by implication at the American people--plans, by the stroke of a pen, to do what the law expressly forbids: to provide amnesty and work permits for millions. This would be in the contravention of his duty and his oath to see that the laws of the United States are faithfully enforced, and it would be a direct challenge to the clear powers of Congress to make laws.

Congress makes law and the executive branch executes those laws. It is that simple. The President's actions are astonishing and are taking our Nation into exceedingly dangerous waters. Such calculated action strains the constitutional structure of our Republic. Such unlawful and unconstitutional action, if taken, cannot stand. No Congress--with Republicans or Democrats in the majority--can allow such action to occur or to be maintained. The people will not stand for it. They must not stand for it.

Mr. President: My petition is that you pull back. It is utterly unacceptable for you to meet with special interest groups, such as the National Council of La Raza and others, and then promise an action to them that is contrary to law. Such actions would be wrong. It would be an affront to the people of this country which they will never forget. It would be a permanent stain on your Presidency. I urge you to make clear you will not do this.

I am not suggesting negotiations or any parley or any compromise. There is no middle ground on nullifying immigration law by the President. Some of your people--maybe bright, young staffers--think the President can intimidate Congress, that the Chief Executive can make such a threat and the lawmakers will just cower under their desks. That is wrong, sir. You cannot intimidate Congress--or the American people who sent them here, for that matter. Simply put, that which you desire is beyond your lawful reach. This is the time for administration officials to urge restraint within the White House. It is critical that the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House legal counsel do their duty and give the only advice they can give: ``Do not do this, Mr. President.'' ``You cannot do this, Mr. President.'' That is what they need

to say. They know that is the right answer, and they should stand up and say no.

Some of the best work advisers can do is to head off a disaster before it happens. CEOs, business types, politicians, Governors, and mayors get headstrong sometimes. In those instances, to avoid disaster, their advisers need to stand up and be counted.

Just as the unlawful DACA amnesty for young people created an unprecedented and unlawful flow of more young people, that initiative has now, it seems, encouraged the President to take even more unlawful action for millions of adults this time, the papers say, by a 10-fold increase. If millions are given amnesty by Executive order, we can be sure that the result will be that even more adults--by the millions-- will be coming here unlawfully in the future.

It will collapse any remaining moral authority of our immigration law and undermine the sovereignty of our Nation. If you don't have a legitimate, lawful system of immigration that you can enforce and abide by, then you have undermined the very sovereignty of your Nation. It amounts, in effect, to an open borders policy that has never been the policy of any developed Nation that I am aware of and has been rejected by Congress and the American people repeatedly.

In effect, the President is preparing to assume for himself the absolute power to set immigration law in America: Well, I'll just enforce what I wish to enforce, with the absolute power to determine who may enter and who may work, no matter what the law says--by the millions.

Our response now is of great import. It will define the scope of executive and congressional powers for years to come. If President Obama is not stopped in this action and exceeds his powers by attempting to execute such a massive amnesty contrary to law, the moral authority for any immigration enforcement henceforth will be eviscerated. Anyone the world over will get the message: Get into America by any method you can and you will never have to leave.

We are almost there, but it is not too late. I have studied this issue. It is absolutely not too late for us to restore a lawful system that treats applicants who come to America fairly and serves the national interest. This can be done; we just need a Chief Executive who leads.

Let me state a warning.

For the more purely political in Washington, the results of the recent primary elections show that the American people are being roused to action and, once activated, their power will be felt. They will not be mocked. They have begged and pleaded for our Nation's immigration laws to be enforced for 30 or 40 years. The politicians have refused-- refused, refused, refused. They have defeated amnesty after amnesty after amnesty, and they will not sit back and allow the President to implement through unlawful fiat what they have defeated through the democratic process. They must not yield to this.

There is one thing that powers in Washington fear, and that is being voted out of office. Before a Member of Congress acquiesces to any action of this kind, they should consider their responsibility to their constituents.

No Member in either party--Republican or Democrat--should support any border legislation that moves through this Senate that does not expressly prohibit these planned executive actions by the President, and that prohibits any expenditure of funds to implement them. There can be no retreat on this point. We simply need to say the Chief Executive of these United States cannot expend any money to execute a plan of amnesty. Surely that would end it.

All of this is grim talk, but the situation is stark. Congressional action this week to bar unilateral, imperial action by the President is surely the best course to head off what could be a constitutional crisis. It will be good for the President because it will stop him from taking a step that will permanently mar his Presidency and the office of the President. It will avoid a major governmental disruption at a time when the Nation faces many threats. It will protect the rule of law and the constitutional order whereby Congress makes laws and the President executes them, whether he likes them or not.

We have heard it said the President must act because Congress refused to act. Well, that is not so. Congress considered his proposal, they looked at existing law today, and Congress made a decision. They did not pass what the President proposed. They decided to stay with current law. So I would say that is a decision and a clear action by Congress. And his statement that Congress doesn't act; therefore, I can use my pen to act--it is not correct. It is absolutely false and contrary to our constitutional traditions.

Pulling back at this time will avoid a major governmental disruption at a time when we are facing threats all over the world. There is much instability. As someone said, the wheels seem to be coming off in every area of the globe and at home. The last thing we need is a major, intense, internal battle with the President over illegal actions he would like to take.

It will also help reestablish the constitutional power of Congress to make laws and perhaps mark the end of this Congress's acquiescence to executive overreach.

Professor Jonathan Turley has expressed amazement that Congress has been silent in the face of some of the most imperial Presidential actions ever, and he explicitly considers President Obama's actions on immigration to be one of those. But there are a host of others.

It will stop millions of work authorizations for those who would then be able to take any job in America at a time of high unemployment and falling wages. In this way, standing up to the President's action would protect American workers. We have the largest percentage of working-age Americans who are unemployed since the 1970s, and people need to know that a lot of the recent job numbers that are cited with such positive spin include unprecedented numbers of individuals on part-time work. These are not full-time jobs, many of them. An unprecedentedly high number of those jobs are part-time jobs. We are not doing well. This country does not have a shortage of labor. It just does not. It has a shortage of jobs. And recent immigrants--Hispanics and others who are coming to America--are having a hard time getting jobs too. Would it help them to have millions more competing for the limited number of jobs out there? Would it help poor working people all over America? Would it help African Americans? The experts tell us absolutely not. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has told us that if this kind of mass amnesty were to be adopted, wages in America would fall for a decade.

So let this clearly be known: The Congress of the United States and the President of the United States are given only limited powers by our Constitution. They are not unlimited. Neither the President nor Congress can do anything it wants to do. It was set up that way from the very beginning.

Mr. President: You work for the American people. They don't work for you, and they will not accept nullification of their law passed by their elected representatives. The American people are not going to accept it. They are going to fight this. I am confident they will. They will resist.

Every Member of this Congress--Republican or Democrat--will face a time of choosing this week. Directly or indirectly, every Member will be asked to support and cosponsor legislation that would stop these actions by the President. It is not hard to do. It will be a simple choice that people will remember: Do you support and approve the President's proposed actions? For those who cosponsor legislation to stop this illegality, their answer will be clear. For those who refuse to take simple action to stop it, they will have voted to enable what the National Journal has rightly called ``explosive action'' by the President. ``Explosive action.'' And, indeed it is. This immigration debate is important. People have invested time and energy and heart and soul into it, on both sides. Good people have debated it. Congress has made a decision. The President is not now entitled unilaterally to assert his position. Indeed, he told some of these activist groups not long ago that he did not have the power to do what they were asking him to do. Now he suggests he does before the end of the summer.

So I am calling on all Members of Congress today to stand up to these

lawless actions and sponsor legislation that will block them. I am calling on all Members of Congress today to oppose any border supplemental that does not include such language. I am calling on every person in this body, and in the House of Representatives, to stand and be counted at this perilous hour.

I am calling on the American people to ask their representatives: Where do you stand on this, Senator? Where do you stand on this, Congressman? All of us were elected by American citizens to serve them and to serve and honor their Constitution that is our birthright. Will we answer that call? Where will history record that each of us stood at this important time? I believe the answer should be clear: We stand for law. We stand for the Constitution. We stand for an honorable, lawful immigration system that treats everyone fairly and serves the national interests of the people of the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to

the limit. He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La

Raza and other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6

million adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation

under a similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for

the so-called Dreamers in June 2012.

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

The article goes on to say:

Obama has now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice

departments to find executive authorities that could enlarge

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

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

with Executive power to provide temporary legal status to

undocumented adults.

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

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

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

These policies have operated as an effective repeal of duly

enacted federal immigration law and exceed the bounds of the

Executive Branch's prosecutorial discretion. It is not the

province of the Executive to nullify the laws that the people

of the United States, through their elected representatives,

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

Executive to take care that these laws are faithfully

executed. Congress has not passed laws permitting people to

illegally enter the country or to ignore their visa

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

conviction or other severe offense on their record. Your

actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the

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

citizens and legal residents.

Our entire constitutional system--

The letter goes on to say--

is threatened when the Executive Branch suspends the law at

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

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

borders.

You swore an oath--

The letter says to the President--

to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the

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

to carry out the duties required by the Constitution and

entrusted to you by the American people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raza and other activist groups that are demanding amnesty

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

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

executive actions because that would make legislating more

difficult next year.''

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

Obama told the group, according to those present, his

response to Boehner was: `Sorry

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

with executive action soon.'

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

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

gasp. The assembled immigration-rights groups had been

leaning hard on Obama for months to use executive action to

sidestep Congress and privately mocked what they regarded as

Pollyanna hopes that House Republicans would budge . . .

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

he was going to condemn House Republicans for inaction and .

. . provide legal status to millions of undocumented

workers--all by himself.

I would be pleased.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The President's pledge to effectively govern alone is

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

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

a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the

framers sought to avoid . . .

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

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

constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental

change in how our country is governed.

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

I thank the Senator from Texas.

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

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

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

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

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

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, a few weeks ago I wrote my colleagues a letter that had a serious front line about policies being executed, we are told, by the President that would seriously undermine the constitutional structure of our Republic and give to the President powers that would allow him to take powers he had never been given.

Subsequent to that, a George Washington law professor, Mr. Jonathan Turley, remarked during recent congressional testimony:

When President Obama pledged to circumvent Congress [he was

referring to his State of the Union Address] he received

rapturous applause from the very body that he was proposing

to make practically irrelevant.

Professor Turley emphasized that the ``most serious violations, in my view, are various cases where he went to Congress, as in the immigration field, as in the health care field, asked for very specific things and was rejected and then decided just to order those on his own.''

He testified before a House committee. Professor Turley I think has been known as a Democrat. I think he said he supported President Obama's election. He is not a partisan person. He is an observer who has testified before Congress many times and is well respected, and that statement should cause concern on the part of every Member of Congress.

Is it so? Is it so that he asked for the very specific things that were rejected by Congress and he decided to just order them with his pen on his own?

The primary immigration action Professor Turley was referring to was the President's decision to implement the DREAM Act by fiat, providing administrative amnesty and work permits to an entire class of illegal immigrants.

Professor Turley described it as `` . . . the clear circumvention of Congress. And for Congress not to act in my view borders on self- loathing.''

Is that a serious comment? I think it is exactly right. He is exactly right on this. Has Congress no gumption at all?

Multiple news reports have now made it clear that the President is now considering an Executive immigration action on a scale so far and indeed beyond our own imagination. Here is how that action was described by the National Journal, a prestigious publication in our country. This is the poster. This is what the National Journal reported: ``President Plans To Expand Unilateral Executive Amnesty.''

Executive amnesty means the Chief Executive, the President, expanding Executive amnesty including work permits for illegal immigrants and visa overstays.

Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to

the limit.

I would say well beyond the limit, according to Professor Turley. The article continues:

He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La Raza and

other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6 million

adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation under a

similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for the so-

called Dreamers in June 2012.

The article is referring to the DREAM Act that the President executed. One of the things that I think is extremely important, colleagues, is that what they are suggesting is that 5

million to 6 million people will be given a document that basically provides them legal status in America. The article continues:

Obama has now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice

departments to find--

Ordered them to find--

Executive authorities that could enlarge that non-

prosecutorial umbrella by a factor of 10.

That is all with the DREAM Act. 10 times that which was done. Continuing:

Senior officials also tell me Obama wants to see what he

can do with executive power to provide temporary legal status

to undocumented adults.

This is 5 million to 6 million. That is what a factor of 10 means. That is maybe more than half of the people who are illegally in the country today. Congress has considered these matters at great length and Congress set the law as to how someone enters the country lawfully and how someone enters the country, in effect, unlawfully and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

The President is the chief law enforcement officer in America. The FBI, DEA, Border Patrol officers, ICE officers, Attorney General all work for him, and the leaders of those organizations serve at his pleasure. He can remove them at will if they don't carry out his policies.

He has ordered the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, to find Executive authorities--not to see if they could find them but to find them--because he has a policy he wants to carry out and Congress doesn't agree with him.

I will read another poster quoting Professor Turley. He talks about the danger, colleagues. This is dangerous.

Does anybody not respect this institution? Do we not respect the House of Representatives, the Senate? Have we become so partisan that we don't care what the President does to diminish Congress? Don't we have an institutional responsibility, a constitutional responsibility to defend the legitimate powers of Congress?

Sure, we can disagree sometimes, but this one is not a matter of disagreement, it seems to me. This is an overreach of dramatic proportions.

Professor Turley said:

The President's pledge to effectively govern alone is

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

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

a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the

framers sought to avoid.

Certainly they sought to avoid that. They were very suspicious and aware that the tendency of chief executive officers is to assume more power than they are given. So they created a strong Congress and they gave certain powers to Congress that could not be delegated to the executive branch.

Professor Turley, in his most recent testimony before the House Rules Committee--I believe last week--said:

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

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

constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental

change in how our country is governed.

No matter what somebody thinks about immigration issues or health care issues, there are limits on what the President can do without Congress.

So the President says: Congress will not act; therefore, I have to act.

Have you ever heard that? They used to say Federal judges would say that. They would say: The legislature will not act. Governor King will not act. The court has to act.

That is not so. That is so bogus. If a Governor decides not to act, if a Congress decides not to act, if a State legislature decides not to act and do what some President would like to see done, that is a decision. It is every bit as real and firm a decision as if they had passed a law. If they are asked to pass a law and they say no, that is a decision reached through the legislative branch by people duly elected from all over this country who come to this Congress to pass laws.

I am very frustrated that my Democratic colleagues are not sufficiently concerned about it, and we certainly need more discussion from the loyal opposition, the Republicans on this question.

Do my Democratic colleagues express concern about it? Not that I have seen. They seem to celebrate it.

The newspaper, El Diario, quotes New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, saying:

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said Friday that he has ``no

doubt'' that President Barack Obama will deliver on his

promise to take executive action on immigration despite the

current attention on the unaccompanied minors crisis.

It goes on to be quoted there as saying:

One executive action that Senator Menendez and other

Democrats are pushing for is the expansion of Deferred Action

for Childhood Arrivals program, which provides deportation

reprieve and work permits to undocumented youth.

Colleagues, it is one thing to be less than vigorous in carrying out deportations as the law requires; it is quite another class of action to give people who are unlawfully in the country a document from the President that says you can work and stay in the country--to give them legal status when Congress has considered this and rejected it. It is beyond the power of the President.

I wrote a letter to my colleagues, Democrat and Republican, before this testimony about these planned executive actions that I had been reading about. I said they would amount to an--

. . . executive nullification of our borders as an

enforceable national boundary, [guaranteeing] that the

current illegal immigration disaster would only further

worsen and destabilize.

We cannot provide continuous amnesty on a regular basis and ever expect everybody not to attempt to come to the country if they believe they, too, in a manner of years--maybe now even fewer years--will be rewarded for their unlawful act by being put on a path to citizenship or permanent status.

So I therefore make two requests today:

I believe any border legislation that is sent to the Senate by the House of Representatives should include specific language denying the President any funds to execute his planned work permits. Congress clearly has that power. We can appropriate or not appropriate money. We can say that money cannot be spent for this or that thing. So we have every right to say the President should not spend money delivering work permits to people whom Congress has declared to not be lawfully able to work in America. I believe the President's actions are in clear contravention of the law, and I feel strongly about that.

Second, I am calling on every Senate Democratic colleague to stand up and be counted. Senator Cruz has a bill that would stop this Presidential overreach. It is very simple. It lays out that we won't spend money providing legal documents to people unlawfully in the country as defined by the law of America and as defined by the Congress of the United States.

So I ask: Will you cosponsor Senator Cruz's bill, and let us defend our constituents? Or, will our congressional colleagues remain complicit in the nullification of our laws and basically the nullification of border enforcement?

I would make a final note on what we owe to the citizens of this country. President Obama's illegal work permits add to the already huge flow of lawful work permits issued by the Federal Government. Between 2000 and 2013, we lawfully issued almost 30 million work and immigration visas. To put that number in perspective, 30 million is about the entire population of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala combined.

This matter and our situation today are in disarray as a result of confused and politically driven thinking by this administration. It just is. I wish it weren't so, but it is. Obama administration officials have gone so far as to describe amnesty as a civil right. That is an argument against the very idea of a nation-state and the idea of a nation's borders. Of course there is, and can be, no civil right to enter a country unlawfully and then to demand lawful status and even citizenship. Of course there is not. How could this possibly be, that the Attorney General of the United States of America would assert that people have a constitutional right to enter unlawfully and be given amnesty? That is the kind of thinking which has got us into this fix, and it has encouraged the flow of unlawful immigration.

The actual legal rights that are being violated here today I suggest are the rights of the American citizens.

As Civil Rights Commission Member Peter Kirsanow warned, our African- American citizens often are the ones who are hurt the most, as well as recent immigrant arrivals and working Americans. What about their rights? They have sweat and bled and died for this country, been called on to serve and responded, paid their taxes, raised their children, tried to do the right thing day after day. What about their rights? What about the right of every citizen to the protections our immigration laws afford? Will no one rise to their defense?

We need an immigration policy that helps all residents--including millions of immigrants who have come to America. We want to help them rise into the middle class and above. We need rising wages, not falling wages. We can't help those living here today if we keep bringing in record numbers of new workers to compete for their jobs, to drive up unemployment, and then pull down wages. That is just a fact.

After decades of large-scale immigration, and with large illegal immigration flows in addition, we need to get serious and establish a principled policy of immigration and consistently enforce it, a policy that is honorable, that we can be proud of, and that serves the interests of all Americans--especially working Americans. These are the people who have made our country great. They deserve our attention and compassion, too. Middle America has been decent and right on this issue from the beginning.

For 40 years American people have called on Congress and called on their Presidents to create a lawful immigration system they can be proud of that serves the national interests and serves their interests. But what have they gotten? Nothing but more illegality and more demands for amnesty. The leaders of their country have not listened to them, and they aren't listening now. It appears to me the leaders of this country are not very interested in what the American people think.

The President plans to dramatically exceed his powers. It is the latest example of rejecting what the American people have asked for and it is a breathtaking violation of congressional power. It cannot be allowed to happen. We need to defend our Constitution, we need to defend the rule of law, and we need to defend the powers of Congress-- and, at bottom, to defend legitimate rights, interests, and desires of the people who sent us here.

Mr. President, 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 know the Chair serves as a member of the Budget Committee, as I am the ranking Republican on that committee. We have gotten a CBO, Congressional Budget Office, analysis--our official scorekeeper of spending--on the part of the proposal the President has presented to spend $4.346 billion to deal with the Southwest border crisis. What CBO has done is provided its cost estimates of the President's recent supplemental request for the Southwest border.

Significantly, CBO's analysis suggests that only $25 million of the $4.346 billion request will be spent this year. This indicates clearly that the agencies are not in dire need of supplemental funding from this Congress, certainly not in the degree asked for.

Again, CBO's analysis suggests that only $25 million out of the $4.3 billion request will be spent this year. What does that mean? It means we ought to slow down. There is no basis to demand a $4.3 billion increase in emergency spending. Every dollar borrowed--because we are already in debt. To spend $4 billion more is to borrow every penny of it. We should not do that until we find out more about what is happening at our border.

Twenty-five million dollars is a lot of money in itself. The Homeland Security and other agencies, Health and Human Services, have monies they can apply to these problems.

I am not saying no money is needed now, because we want to treat children and be helpful and treat them in a humanitarian way and a compassionate way. But we don't need $4 billion. That is clear. And we are not to be doing that. Thank goodness, the House of Representatives is looking at it carefully. They need to reject this request out of hand.

Colleagues, the fundamental problem here is that when the President of the United States did his DACA bill, when he did his DREAM Act Executive order, what did he do? He basically said: We are not going to deport young people. Then we began to see this surge of young people coming to America, and we are not deporting them effectively. They are being taken in, turned over to HHS, found housing, turned over to whoever comes and picks them up even if they are not citizens and not lawfully here. They are not being deported. So more have come in record numbers.

I guess, first of all, the very idea that we would spend--I guess for that project--$3.7 billion is a stunning amount of money. It is a huge amount of money at a time when we don't need to be borrowing money more than we have to. So I believe and would say to our colleagues, this plan does not call for the expenditure of money this year except for $25 million, and therefore we are not in a crisis that demands us to produce billions of dollars in revenue for this President to continue to carry out policies that only encourage more people to come to America and cost us even more in the time to come.

Mr. President, 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, three of our greatest `masters of the universe'--as I like to refer to them--have joined in an op-ed in the New York Times just last week to share their wisdom from on high and to tell us in Congress how to do our business and to conduct immigration reform they think should be pleasing to them. I am sure other super billionaires would be glad to join with these three super billionaires and could agree on legislation that would be acceptable to them.

Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas casino magnet and Republican supporter; Warren Buffett, the master investor; and Bill Gates, the master founder of Microsoft computer systems, all super billionaires, apparently aren't happy. They don't have much respect for Congress and, by indirection, the people who elect people to Congress, it appears from the tone of their article--you know, American people, that great unwashed group; nativists, narrow-minded patriots, possessors of middle-class values. They just don't understand as we know, we great executives and entrepreneurs.

So they declare we need to import more foreign workers in computer science, technology, and engineering, because the country is ``badly in need of their services.'' They say we are badly in need of importing large numbers of STEM graduates. That is something we have all heard and many of us have perhaps assumed is an accurate thing.

These three individuals, all generous men, have contributed to a lot of causes, and I am teasing them a lit bit. They didn't mind sticking it to Congress, so I just tease them and push back a little bit.

They particularly praised the Senate for its elimination of any limits on the number of work visas that could be awarded to immigrants who have a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and have a job offer.

This is the op-ed in the New York Times last Thursday: ``Sheldon Adelson, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates on Immigration Reform.''

What did we see in the newspaper today? News from Microsoft--was it that they are having to raise wages to try to get enough good, quality engineers to do the work? Are they expanding or are they hiring? No, that is not what the news was, unfortunately. Not at all.

This is the headline in USA Today: ``Microsoft to cut up to 18,000 jobs over next year.''

Microsoft confirmed it will cut up to 18,000 jobs over the

next year, part of the tech titan's efforts to streamline its

business under a new CEO . . .

That is a significant action. Indeed, Microsoft employs about 125,000 people, and they are laying off 18,000. The company laid off 5,000 in 2009. Yet their founder and former leader, Mr. Gates, says we have to have more and more people come into our country to take those kinds of jobs.

It is pretty interesting, really. We need to be thinking about what it all means and ask ourselves: What is the situation today for American graduates of STEM degrees and technology degrees? Do we have enough? And do we need to have people come to our country to take those jobs? Or, indeed, do we not have a shortage of workers, and do we have difficulty of people finding jobs?

These are some of the facts I think we should look at. President Obama, Senate Democrats, and House Democrats have endorsed a proposal, a bill that passed the Senate, that would double the H-1B foreign workers that come into America for one reason--not to be a citizen, not to stay indefinitely, but to take a job, double the number, to come to take a job for several years. The great majority of these guest workers are not farm workers. They take jobs throughout the economy.

So how should we think about this? The U.S. Census Bureau reports that three-fourths of American with STEM degrees--science, technology, engineering, mathematics--don't have jobs in STEM fields. According to a recent newspaper from the Economic Policy Institute:

``Guestworkers may be filling as many as half of all new information technology jobs each year.''

It goes on. ``IT workers earn the same today as they did, generally, 14 years ago.'' Wages aren't going up, and in many cases they are going down. That is an absolute refutation, I think--if you believe in the free market--of any contention that we have a shortage of engineering, science, and STEM graduates.

The paper further says: ``Currently, only one of every two STEM college graduates is hired in a STEM job each year.'' So only half of them find a job in the profession they trained for.

Another finding of the paper: ``Policies that expand the supply of guest workers will discourage U.S. students from going into STEM fields, and into IT in particular.''

Get that. Is that not common sense? If anybody would dispute that, I would like to hear it. The policies that expand the supply of eligible workers in any field will tend to discourage people, particularly in science and engineering, if they feel like they are going to have a difficult time finding a job. That is common sense, and that is what the paper found.

Now, Mr. Hal Salzman--I am familiar with his work. He is a professor at Rutgers University and a labor specialist. He has done a good bit of work in this area. And what do his findings show? He determined: ``For the 180,000 or so openings annually, U.S. colleges and universities supply 500,000 graduates.''

More than twice as many people graduate in STEM fields as jobs are available in America for them to take.

Bob Charette, at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, writes: ``Wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000.''

That is 14 years ago.

Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at

every stage of the career pipeline, from freshly minted grads

to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find

employment.

In total, Charette reports that there are more than 11 million Americans with STEM degrees who don't have STEM jobs.

Harvard Professor Michael Teitelbaum has recently written a book. He explained:

Far from offering expanding attractive career

opportunities, it seems that many, but not all, science and

engineering careers are headed in the opposite direction:

unstable careers, slow-growing wages, and high risk of jobs

moving offshore or being filled by temporary workers from

abroad.

Michael Anft, with the Johns Hopkins Magazine, observed:

You're a biologist, chemist, electrical engineer,

manufacturing worker, mechanical engineer, or physicist,

you've most likely seen your paycheck remain flat at best. If

you're a recent grad in those fields looking for a job, good

luck. A National Academies report suggests a glut of life

scientists, lab workers, and physical scientists, owing in

part to over-recruitment of science-Ph.D. candidates by

universities. And postdocs, many of whom are waiting longer

for academic spots, are opting out of science careers at

higher rates, according to the National Science Foundation.

This is serious. There is a policy question, and he questions whether Members of Congress who don't pass laws like he wants on immigration are honoring their duty to the 300 million Americans whom we collectively represent.

I feel a deep duty to the millions of Alabamians I represent and the whole country, and I do my best every day to ask what is in their interests. As far as I am concerned, so far as I can see, those three billionaires have three votes. An individual who works stocking the shelves at the grocery store, the barber, the doctor, the lawyer, the cleaners, the operator, and the person who picks up our garbage are every bit as valuable as they are. I know who I represent. I represent the citizens of the United States of America, and I am trying to do what is in their best interests. And just as it is not always true what is good for General Motors is good for America, likewise, what may be good for Mr. Adelson and Mr. Microsoft and Mr. Buffett is not always in accord with what is good for the American people. I know that. They are free to express their opinion, but I am going to push back.

How many people come into our country each year as guest workers? We have discussed that. The Senate bill which Senator Reid maneuvered through the Senate not too many weeks ago would double the number of guest workers. How many is that? The Associated Press wrote:

Although no one tracks exactly how many H-1B guest workers

come to take jobs these are visas for jobs in fields like

computers and technology--how many of these are in the United

States? The AP says ``experts estimate there are at least

600,000 at any one time.''

That is a lot. These are individuals not on a citizenship path. They are in addition to the 1 million who come to America each year lawfully to become citizens of America. They simply come in at the behest of some business to take a job for a limited period of time. That is important. There are other visas these businesses can get too, but H-1B is one of the largest. A paper for the Economic Policy Institute explained the annual inflow of guest workers for the computer industry in particular is massive.

We estimate that during fiscal 2011, 372,516 high-skill

guest workers were issued visas to enter the U.S. labor

market, and, of these workers, between 134,000 and 228,000

were available for IT employment.

That is information technology.

The supply of IT guest workers appears to be growing

dramatically despite stagnant or even declining wages.

But Microsoft and its allies want more.

Here is an excerpt from a report issued by the Partnership for a New American Economy. This is the front group for the pro-immigration crowd. It is co-headed by Steve Ballmer, a recent Microsoft CEO. He left Microsoft in February, but he is the co-head of this group and is lobbying for more H-1B guest workers to come to take jobs. They say: ``In many STEM occupations, unemployment is virtually non-existent.''

This is not so. They declare it to be so. They say:

There is no evidence that foreign-born STEM workers

adversely affect the wages of American workers by providing a

less expensive alternative source of labor.

What planet are they on? Wages are declining. Median income in America today--well, according to the Wall Street Journal, it was approximately $55,000 for a family in 2007. It is now closer to $50,000. It dropped roughly $5,000. Somebody needs to talk about that.

Is unemployment in these industries ``virtually non-existent''? That is what they are telling us. They are spending millions of dollars even running TV ads to promote bringing in more workers than the 600,000 we have today. They want to double that number. I am not talking about the 1 million who already come lawfully every year through immigration in America. We have one of the most generous immigration policies in the world. These guest workers are in addition to the 1 million we let in each year on a permanent basis.

Look at these recent headlines.

Today: ``Microsoft To Cut Workforce By 18,000 This Year, `Moving Now' To Cut First 13,000.''

How about this headline: ``[Google-owned] Motorola To Cut 10% Of Workforce After Laying Off 20% Last Year.''

``Panasonic To Cut 10K More Workers In The Next 5 Months.''

``[Online media and advertising company] CityGrid Lays Off 15% Of Its Employees.''

``Hewlett-Packard: 27,000 Job Cuts to Save Up To $3.5B By 2014.''

I would say things aren't going as well as some would suggest, and the demand out there for workers ought to be met from our current supply.

Byron York, an excellent writer at the Washington Examiner, wrote about this late last year in the Washington Examiner. The headline is: ``Companies lay off thousands, then demand immigration reform for new labor.''

On Tuesday, the chief human resource officers of more than

100 large corporations sent a letter to House Speaker John

Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urging quick passage

of a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Don't read it, don't worry about it, just pass it. It gives us more workers, and we need those workers, is essentially, what they have been saying. ``The officials who signed the letter represent companies with a vast array of business interests: General Electric, Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, McDonald's, Wendy's, The Cheesecake Factory, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, General Mills, and many more.'' All of them ``want to see increases in immigration levels for low-skill as well as high-skill workers in addition to a path to full citizenship for the millions of immigrants in the United States currently illegally.'' That is their agenda.

The article goes on to say: ``a new immigration law, the corporate officers say, `would be a long overdue step toward aligning our nation's immigration policies with its workforce needs at all skill levels . . . ' ''

I would say at a time of high unemployment we need to be careful. The article goes on to say, ``at the . . . time the corporate officers seek higher numbers of immigrants, both low-skill and high-skill, many of their companies are laying off thousands of workers.''

So he did a little research. All these companies in need of workers. What about Hewlett-Packard? They signed the letter demanding more workers. I will quote from the article.

For example, Hewlett-Packard, whose Executive Vice

President for Human Resources Tracy Keogh signed the letter,

laid off 29,000 employees in 2012. In August of this year,

Cisco Systems, whose Senior Vice President and Chief Human

Resources Officer Kathleen Weslock signed the letter,

announced plans to lay off 4,000--in addition to 8,000 cut in

the last two years. United Technologies, whose Senior Vice

President for Human Resources and Organization Elizabeth

B. Amato signed the letter, announced layoffs of 3,000

this year.

American Express, whose Chief Human Resources Officer L.

Kevin Cox signed the letter, cut 5,400 jobs this year.

Proctor & Gamble, whose Chief Human Resources Officer Mark F.

Biegger signed the letter, announced plans to cut 5,700 jobs

in 2012.

Those are a just few of the layoffs at companies, the article said, whose officers signed the letter.

A few more: T-Mobile announced 2,250 layoffs in 2012.

Archer-Daniels-Midland laid off 1,200. Texas Instruments,

nearly 2,000. Cigna 1,300. Verizon sought to cut 1,700 jobs .

. . Marriott announced `hundreds' of layoffs this year.

International Paper has closed plants and laid off dozens.

--including an old, big plant with 1,000 workers or so in north Alabama--

And General Mills, in what the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

called a `rare mass layoff,' laid off 850 people last year.

``There are more still.'' I am quoting here from Mr. Byron York's article:

In all, it's fair to say a large number of corporate

signers of the letter demanding more labor from abroad have

actually laid off workers at home in recent years. Together

their actions have a significant effect on the economy.

According to a recent Reuters report, U.S. employers

announced 50,462 layoffs in August, up 34 percent from the

previous month and up 57 percent from August 2012.

This is last August. I am quoting from the article:

``It is difficult to understand how these companies can

feel justified in demanding the importation of cheap labor

with a straight face at a time when tens of millions of

Americans are unemployed,'' writes the Center for Immigration

Studies, which strongly opposes the Senate Gang of Eight

bill. . . . The companies claim the bill is an ``opportunity

to level the playing field for U.S. employers' but it is more

of an effort to level the wages of American citizens.''

Mr. York goes on to say this in his next article. The next month, he writes another article on the subject.

This week, the pharmaceutical giant Merck announced it

would cut 8,500 jobs in an effort to remain competitive in a

rapidly changing drug industry. Earlier this year Merck

announced plans to cut 7,500 jobs, bringing the total of

workers let go to 16,000. In all, Merck intends to lay off

one out of every five of its employees.

Well, what is Merck, this great corporation, doing politically about the situation?

I will quote from the article. This is what they are doing politically:

At the same time, top Merck officials are urging Congress

to loosen the nation's immigration laws to allow more foreign

workers into the United States. In a Sept. 10 letter--

--this is last September--

--to House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Nancy

Pelosi, Merck Executive Vice President for Human Resources

Mirian Graddick-Weir urged that the U.S. admit more high- and

low-skilled immigrants to ``address the reality that there is

a global war for talent'' and to ``align our nation's

immigration policies with its workforce needs at all skill

levels to ensure U.S. global competitiveness.''

Well, we have too many people unemployed. The number of people unemployed in our country is not accurately reflected by the simple unemployment data we get. When you look at the number of people in the actual workforce, you find we have the lowest workplace participation, the lowest number of workers as a percentage of the population at any time since the 1970s. It has been declining steadily. It is a fact. Everybody knows it. It is not disputed. If anybody wants to dispute that, come to the floor and tell me where I am wrong. And they won't because it is well accepted and Democrats and Republicans are talking openly about it, because it is a serious challenge for America. We don't have enough people working. We have got too many people living off the government and relying on federal aid and assistance. We need to create jobs for Americans first before we bring in foreign workers to take those jobs. We are going to help our people sustain their life. We make sure they have food and housing and aid if they are unable to work and don't have enough to live on, and we provide health care for them and education for their children. But we need to help them find work first before we bring somebody else to the country.

I would say to my free market business friends, I don't think you can win the argument that we have a shortage of labor, because wages are down. I know you believe in free markets. I

know you believe that things will balance out in a competitive world. If wages are down, that indicates we have a loose labor market, not a tight labor market. Wages go up when there are not enough employees, and businesses have to pay more to get good employees. Family income has gone down from 2007, as I said, from approximately $55,000 median household income to $50,000, adjusted for inflation. This is a very unusual decline. I am not sure we have seen anything like quite this before, at least since the Great Depression. This is a matter we need to talk about. ``Watching firms fire American workers while appealing for more immigration is a disheartening spectacle'', Mr. Byron York says. And I think that is true.

This is another Associated Press article: ``Backlash Stirs in US Against Foreign Worker Visas.''

But amid calls for expanding the so-called H-1B visa

program, there is a growing pushback from Americans who argue

that the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that

import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive

U.S. workers--or keep them from being hired in the first

place.

``It's getting pretty frustrating when you can't compete on

salary for a skilled job,'' said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran

computer programmer from the Boston area. ``You hear

references all the time that these big companies . . . can't

find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker.''

How about this? They say there is a STEM crisis--which is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. They say there are not enough STEM graduates to fill vacant jobs.

This article says: ``The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.'' This is a paper by Robert Charette, contributing editor for the Industrial Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers magazine. He says:

Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high

salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the

job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So

having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically

educated or imported, is to their benefit.

That is in part because it helps keep wages in check.

Viewed another way, about 15 million U.S. residents hold at

least a bachelor's degree in a STEM discipline, but three-

fourths of them--11.4 million--work outside of STEM.

If there is in fact a STEM worker shortage, wouldn't you

expect more workers with STEM degrees to be filling those

jobs?''

I think that is correct.

What about the people who immigrate to America? They can't get a job because somebody else was brought in to take that job from them. What are they going to do?

The economy can absorb a certain number, but in this low job-wage low-job creation economy we are in today, and have been in for a number of years, you simply cannot justify these huge increases in the number of workers we have brought into the country, especially when wages are falling.

Here is another article: ``The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage.'' It is an op-ed by Michael Teitelbaum, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School.

A compelling body of research is now available, from many

leading academic researchers and from respected research

organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic

Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute.

No one has been able to find any evidence indicating

current widespread labor market shortages or hiring

difficulties in science and engineering occupations . . .

He goes on to write, as I read before:

From offering expanding attractive career opportunities, it

seems that many, but not all science and engineering careers

are headed in the opposite direction: unstable careers, slow-

growing wages, and high risk of jobs moving offshore or being

filled by temporary workers from abroad.

I am afraid that is the undisputed reality. I wish it were not so. I wish we had a growing economy that would create a lot of jobs and a lot more high-tech workers and that wages were going up. But it is just not so.

Here is an article from July 11, in CNNMoney. The headline is: ``Businesses Want Immigration Reform. Why? Because they can't find enough workers.'' That is what they say the answer is.

This article notes the complaints of various business lobbyists. For instance:

The tech industry faces a backlog of working visas for high

skilled workers. The long wait for green cards at top

universities means the U.S. is losing [talent]. . . .

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others CEOs like Yahoo's

Marissa Mayer and Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg, have all

pressed Washington leaders for an immigration [reform].

CNN also includes this statement from another group demanding Congress provide more workers:

Two-thirds of construction companies have reported labor

shortages according to the Associated General Contractors of

America, who is pushing for immigration reform.

So two-thirds of construction companies reported labor shortages. Well, what do we know about that?

Here is a May 5 article from Economic Policy Institute by Ross Eisenbrey. They cite an in-depth study about the labor market.

The headline says: ``There are Seven Unemployed Construction Workers for Every Job Opening.''

There is a chart showing the drop in wages. This isn't some promoter, some lobbyist or some media consultant putting out a self-serving statement claiming we have a shortage of workers. This is an academic study. Again, what does it say? ``No Sign of Labor Shortages in Construction: There are Seven Unemployed Construction Workers for Every Job Opening.''

That is where we are. What we need, as a Nation, is to construct an immigration policy that serves the interests of the American people.

Professor Borjas at Harvard is perhaps the most astute and renowned expert on labor and immigration of anybody in the entire world and has written a number of books on this. He did an comprehensive study using census data and Department of Labor data and concluded that from 1980 to 2000, as a result of America's high immigration levels, the wages of lower-skilled US workers declined by 7.4 percent.

The impact of this large flow of immigration from 1980 to 2000 reduced wages. We already bring in a million people a year, plus hundreds thousands more guest workers. I am not against immigration. What I am opposed to, however, is an immigration policy that fails to serve the needs of the people living here today. The myth is we have this great shortage of labor. It is just not so. If he allowed the labor market to tighten, wages would increase, more Americans would take some of these jobs and be able to raise a family, buy an automobile, and maybe even buy a house and educate their children.

Today I am going to issue a challenge to Majority Leader Reid, and every single one of our 55 Senate Democrats, who voted unanimously for this Gang of 8 bill.

With Microsoft laying off 18,000 workers, come down to the Senate floor and tell me there is a shortage of qualified Americans to fill STEM jobs. Come down and tell us. Do you stand with Mr. Bill Gates or do you stand with our American constituents?

It is long past time we had an immigration policy that truly served the needs of the American people. That is the group to whom we owe our loyalty and duty and first responsibility. That is who elected us, and that is in our constitutional system, which ultimately judges us on our performance.

The United States let in 40 million new immigrants legal and illegal--since 1970. There are many wonderful people in that group. But Washington actually hurts both our immigrant workers and US-born workers alike when we continue to bring in record numbers of new workers to compete for jobs. The share of the population today that is foreign-born has quadrupled. It has gone up four-fold in forty years. After four decades of large-scale immigration, is it not time, colleagues, that we slow down a bit, allowed wages to rise, assimilation to occur, and the middle class to be restored?

I thank the chair and yield the floor.

Madam President, I first wish to say to the distinguished majority leader that the recent filibuster was supported by a number of Democratic Members, but most importantly it was supported by Members who did, in fact, favor the legislation. The reason they refused to go forward with the bill is because Senator Reid--in a dictatorial manner--has announced that he intends to control amendments. You don't get an amendment unless you grovel to the majority leader.

There is no reference to the majority leader in the Constitution of the United States. He doesn't get to tell an individual Senator they can't have an amendment on a bill. He has been doing that consistently, and it is not right. We have been on this bill long enough to cast 10 or 15 votes. It is not a question of time as to why he will not allow amendments.

The reason the majority leader will not allow amendments is because he wants to protect his Members from actually being held accountable by the voters of the United States of America by having to cast votes and choose sides. That is what it is all about. It has gone on way too long. It is demeaning to this Senate, and he demeans the loyal opposition who are doing the only thing they have as a tool, which is refusing to move forward with a bill because the majority leader is going to use parliamentary maneuvers to block anybody's amendment. I wish it were not true.

I will not go quietly and allow him to come down and blame others for the problem he has caused. We could have already had this bill up for final passage. It is not a question of time. It is a question of control and domination of the Senate, and the majority leader is not entitled to do that. He is not entitled to do that, and it is not going to continue. This will be broken sooner or later.

If the majority leader wants to move important legislation, he is going to

have to agree to a process that allows duly elected representatives of various States in America to be able to at least offer an amendment.

My remarks today are to discuss the nomination of Shaun Donovan to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. This is a very important office.

I voted against Mr. Donovan in the Budget Committee, and I wish to take this opportunity to share with my colleagues my concerns. My concerns are not related to his character or personality or decency but his experience and qualifications to serve as the Nation's chief financial manager--the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 76 why the Senate was assigned a role in the confirmation process:

It would be an excellent check upon the spirit of

favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to

prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State

prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment,

or from a view to popularity.

The President has the right to nominate, and his nominations should be given deference, but as Hamilton made clear, when the President's nominee does not have the fitness necessary for a critical position, the Senate should not provide its consent.

The Director of the Office of Management and Budget is one of the most important positions in the entire government, entrusted to oversee our massive Federal bureaucracy and budget process during a time when the Nation is facing tremendous financial danger.

Only weeks ago the Director of the Congressional Budget Office reaffirmed in testimony before Congress that the debt of this country is on an ``unsustainable path,'' and he meant exactly that. He went on to say that America faces the ``risk of a fiscal crisis.'' He means Greece when he says ``a fiscal crisis.''

Whoever holds the job of budget director must be one of the toughest, strongest, most able, and disciplined managers in America. We ought to be looking for the very best. We need someone who already understands this massive Federal Government, the financial stresses we are under, where the problems arise, and how to manage it.

We need somebody with the capability and credibility to deal with strong-willed cabinet people who, as history shows, always want to spend more and need to be told no by the Office of Management and Budget.

Sadly, what has become clear is that the President did not choose Mr. Donovan because he met those criteria. That was not what he was looking for. Mr. Donovan does not come close to meeting those qualifications. He just does not. I enjoyed meeting with him, but I asked him questions that deal with fundamental issues everybody in Congress understands but he doesn't understand because he hasn't had experience with them. Instead, it would seem Mr. Donovan, as with the President's past Budget Directors, was chosen because he has good people skills and personality and is politically loyal and would defend the administration's goals and priorities even when the result might be unfavorable to the public's fiscal health.

We have seen this time and again in the President's Budget Office. His past Budget Directors have done more to conceal financial problems the Congressional Budget Office has told us we face than to illuminate those problems. They have steadfastly sought to avoid serious discussions about the unsustainable debt course we are on and to lay out any credible policies to fix that problem. They have been unresponsive to congressional inquiry. They make false statements about what their budget would actually do. Indeed, they have repeated--Mr. Lew did when he was Director--that our budget would pay down the debt when, in fact, there was not a single year in his 10-year budget that the deficit was less than $500 billion. They have tried to break spending caps that are agreed to by the President and are in law, and they refused to comply with legal requirements to submit a plan to prevent Medicare's insolvency--an edict the law requires him to do, and President Bush did.

The Office of Management and Budget should be one of the least political departments in government. Instead, the President has made it one of the most political. Shouldn't the American people be able to look to their Budget Director with confidence, knowing their tax dollars have been entrusted to someone with great wisdom and experience and independence? Shouldn't they be able to know their Budget Director will look the American people in the eye and tell them squarely what the true facts are we are facing today, and is someone who could lay out a plan that would actually work to fix the debt course we are on?

The President had the ability to scour the country for the most skilled, talented, disciplined, and gifted manager he could find for this office. Very few people of prominence would turn down a request from the President to fulfill that duty. A renowned manager of great financial acumen and recognized independence is what we are looking for--someone with a track record, a proven record of saving taxpayers' dollars, developing new efficiencies, taking on entrenched interest in the service of the public good, not the special interest good. They have to be capable of meeting with someone such as Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, to meet with members of the Budget Committee such as Senator Rob Portman who was also a former OMB Director; Senator Pat Toomey, Senator Chuck Grassley, Senator Ron Johnson, a businessman and an accountant. They know about these matters. They have been working on them. They have been negotiating and producing plans. Mr. Donovan has no knowledge of them. He cannot discuss it with them intelligently. He has no background in that. He has shown no interest in it. I suspect Mr. Donovan was stunned when he was offered this job. He certainly has not prepared himself for it. I am not criticizing him specifically as a person; I am saying this is not the kind of person we need today. There is nothing in his background to suggest he is up to the task this urgent hour requires.

More troublingly, Mr. Donovan himself has a poor record of financial management at HUD. He is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. During his tenure HUD has received repeated and stark criticism from his own agency's inspector general. They appoint, within these Cabinet positions, an inspector general who analyzes and acts independently to advise the Secretary and the Congress if something is wrong. Well, I would suggest what I am going to say evidences that Mr. Donovan's skill is in spending money and making investments rather than saving dollars and managing money.

His record at HUD shows he spent money illegally, violating the Antideficiency Act--a very important act. On the great financial issue of our time--our Nation's crippling debt burden--I asked Mr. Donovan at the hearing in the Budget Committee about what he would propose to fix the unsustainable debt course. Shouldn't he do that? He offered no serious ideas to get our debt under control. Clearly, he has no intention of providing the leadership needed to reverse our disastrous current debt course.

For instance, the President's most recent 10-year budget plan he submitted would break the in-law spending limits he agreed to and increase our Nation's total debt by an average of $800 billion a year. Over the next 10 years, under his budget plan, we could be expected to average deficits of $800 billion a year, almost $1 trillion. Indeed, in the 10th year, it is virtually $1 trillion.

I asked Mr. Donovan about this and he replied:

The President's . . . budget includes fully-paid for,

fiscally responsible investments that will create jobs, grow

the economy, and expand opportunity for all Americans.

That is the answer we got. I submit that is not responsible. That is not serious. He is not in touch with reality.

When Mr. Donovan was forced to admit in follow-up written questions that the President's budget plan would add $6 trillion to the public debt over the next 10 years, he called the increase ``nominal.'' It is precisely this cavalier attitude from government elites that is leading our Nation to financial catastrophe. CBO says these deficits put us on a path to a fiscal crisis. Last year we paid $220 billion in interest on our $17 billion debt. But the

Congressional Budget Office projects that interest rates are going to return to more normal levels in a few years and we continue to add more deficits every year. They project that in 10 years, interest on the debt will be $800 billion. It will pass the defense budget--interest in 1 year will pass the size of the defense budget by 2019. This is dangerous. We cannot continue on this course.

I would also share that in talking to my colleagues about their discussions with Mr. Donovan, they expressed concern that when he met with them individually, he lacked basic knowledge about the fundamentals of the Federal budget. Consider the written testimony he later provided to the committee about his specific plans for entitlement reform--mandatory spending reform. He said:

I have not . . . written any papers or given any talks or

lectures that specifically lay out a comprehensive plan for

Medicare or Social Security.

So this is the person who is supposed to coordinate the effort to rein in spending and put us on a sound path. I would say not only has he not written any papers or given any lectures, I am not aware he has given any thought at all to fixing Medicare and Social Security, two of the biggest challenges this Nation faces. I don't think he has ever expressed a serious thought about these issues.

In response to one question about Medicare data, Mr. Donovan told me the data did not exist. But the data does, in fact, exist. And his response cited the very report from which the data was found. At his hearing, Mr. Donovan could not answer fundamental questions from Senator Johnson about the Social Security trust fund. That is very important. With only 2 years left in the President's Administration, the Nation needs to have someone at OMB who can hit the ground running, who knows these issues.

I asked him about defense. I am a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. He didn't understand the F-35 program. He is not able to converse intelligently about the troop levels we are talking about having to reduce. He couldn't talk about aircraft carriers--something he has never had any experience with whatsoever. That is why he couldn't talk about it, and he has never given any thought to it.

This lack of basic knowledge and professionalism is evidenced in the inspector general reports about his tenure at Housing and Urban Development. Here, for instance, is a representative example from an IG report issued on February 19 of this year about his multifamily project refinances program. They came up with a plan that supposedly refinanced housing loans and saved money. This is what the inspector general said:

HUD did not have adequate controls to ensure that all

Section 202 refinancing resulted in economical and efficient

outcomes.

They went on to say:

Specifically, (1) HUD did not ensure that at least half the

debt service savings that resulted from refinancing were used

to benefit tenants or reduce housing assistance payments, (2)

consistent accountability for the debt service savings was

not always maintained, and (3) some refinancing were

processed for projects that had negative debt service

savings--

In other words, instead of saving money, the refinancings cost money.

--which resulted in higher debt service costs than before the

refinancing.

It goes on to say:

These deficiencies were due to HUD's lack of adequate

oversight and inconsistent nationwide policy implementation

regarding debt service savings realized from Section 202

refinancing activities. As a result, millions of dollars in

debt service savings were not properly accounted for and

available, the savings may not have been used to benefit

tenants or for the reduction of housing assistance payments,

and some refinanced projects ended up costing HUD additional

housing assistance payments because of the additional cost

for debt service.

That is not the kind of glowing review one would hope to accompany a nominee to an office who would oversee the entire Government of the United States of America.

But the problems get worse. Every year, the HUD inspector general conducts an audit to determine if HUD's financial statements are in order. When an agency's financial statements are in order, that agency is awarded an unqualified or clean audit, meaning there are no material defects in the way the agency is managing its books. For the years 2012 and 2013, under Secretary Donovan's leadership, HUD received failing grades or a qualified audit, which means material problems were found with HUD's financial statements. Twenty-four agencies undergo the audit process every year. Only two failed in 2013: HUD and DOD. And we all know DOD has never yet reached the kind of accounting the government requires in that massive agency. So HUD is the only non-DOD agency that failed last year.

Whereas DOD has historically had problems with financial statements, HUD had, prior to Mr. Donovan, received clean reports. The inspector general, in failing Mr. Donovan, noted that HUD had improper budgetary accounting and lacked proper accounting for cash management. HUD, under Mr. Donovan's watch, was also recently charged with an Antideficiency Act violation by the inspector general--a big problem, in my opinion. It is serious.

The Antideficiency Act essentially prohibits government employees or agencies from spending money that has not been appropriated by Congress. No President, no Cabinet Secretary can spend money under the Constitution that has not been appropriated for that purpose by Congress.

So according to information received from the HUD inspector general, HUD, under Mr. Donovan's watch, has at least seven instances of violating the Antideficiency Act. These violations include overobligation of personnel or payroll funds, making student loan payments in excess of the funds allowed for that purpose, and obligating funds that were no longer available, and some of these were done after clear warnings to stop it.

In one of the most recent violations, HUD paid more than $620,000 to a senior adviser to Secretary Donovan--personally his adviser, his staff--but they paid for it not from Mr. Donovan's budget for that purpose--to hire staff with--they paid for it out of the Office of Public and Indian Housing funds even though Mr. Donovan's adviser in his office was not employed in the Office of Public and Indian Housing section. This adviser's pay was required to come from the funds in the secretary's office, his budget.

The inspector general found that HUD had ignored the advice of its own legal counsel and disregarded concerns that had been previously expressed by the House Appropriations Committee on antideficiency matters at HUD.

I do not see how he could not be aware of this. This is his own adviser. His own lawyer said: You should not pay for it out of the Office of Public and Indian Housing funds. But he did it anyway.

Congress had specifically addressed HUD's salary funding for the Secretary's senior advisers--it had been a subject of House discussion, which is unusual--and previous ADA violations. According to a July 26, 2010, House of Representatives report, ``all senior advisors to the Secretary should be funded directly through the Office of the Secretary.'' Of course. In addition, a HUD appropriations attorney in the HUD staff wrote in a January 13, 2011, email that a special adviser to the Office of the Secretary would need to be paid by that office-- the Secretary's office--and not another office within HUD. Despite the direction in the House report and guidance from his own appropriations attorney, HUD paid this adviser for his services from the Office of Public and Indian Housing program.

Subsequently, in June 2012, Congress again admonished HUD for the lack of staffing data it provided and had available internally. Congress wrote:

This lack of essential information led to multiple Anti-

Deficiency Act violations in fiscal year 2011, in which HUD

hired more people than it had resources to pay. To date, HUD

has not even tried to address these problems and thus the

Committee has no faith in HUD's ability to appropriately

staff its operations.

It is a very serious criticism of the management ability of the man now put in charge of managing an entire government. It is not the kind of activity that warrants a promotion.

Finally, I have to say this. I have to mention this little matter: Mr. Donovan's membership in the Owl Club at Harvard--an item many of our Democratic colleagues found most reprehensible when Justice Alito came up for

confirmation for the Supreme Court. This is a club the late Senator Ted Kennedy, resigned from because it did not admit female members. Indeed, Harvard kicked the club off campus in 1984, but that was the very year Mr. Donovan became a member and remained so until 1987. I have heard no complaints from my colleagues about Mr. Donovan's membership in the Owl Club even after it was kicked off campus, but they howled mightily when Justice Alito was found to be a member of a similar club at Princeton.

So I would ask my colleagues, in conclusion, does this sound like the background of someone who really is the right man for the job at this time? That is my fundamental concern. I do not believe his background, skills, and record indicate he is ready for one of the toughest jobs in government.

This President, even more than most Presidents in their second term-- and they all tend to do this--is surrounding himself closer and closer with a small group of political loyalists--Secretary Lew, Secretary Johnson, Secretary Perez. So do we need another loyalist who protects him better? Wouldn't the American people and the President himself be better off with a strong, capable manager who can see through all the fog and the political falderal and make good decisions, preserving the taxpayers' resources?

We need someone who will act independently on behalf of the President and the American people, who will respect the jurisdiction of Congress and legitimate congressional powers, who will follow the law and submit a Medicare plan, as the law requires, because it is going into default. The law says if it goes into default and the Medicare trustees send a notice--and they have--the President is supposed to submit a plan to fix it. OMB is the place that has always come from. It has come from there previously. And shouldn't he tell the White House no if he is asked to do something that is improper for the financial future of America?

Well, I do not like having to oppose Mr. Donovan. He seems like a nice person. But he is the wrong man for this important job. I think he has been chosen for the wrong reasons, not for the right reasons. I will oppose his nomination. The President himself, I truly believe, and the Nation would benefit from the most capable, strong, and competent nominee the country can produce at this critical time. That's not Mr. Donovan.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the crisis at our border continues unabated. It is a crisis that should never ever have occurred. It occurred as a direct result of the failure of the leadership of the United States, the clarity of our message, and our willingness to enforce simple, plain immigration laws.

Last week, we reached the point where the President of the United States--who is directly responsible for sending messages and effecting policies that encourage the flow of immigration to the United States, announced he would be asking Congress--us--to cooperate with him and provide him with $2 billion in additional funds to deal with the humanitarian crisis--a crisis, as I indicated, that was produced as a result of his activities.

In the same breath at that moment when he asked for more money to take care of the crisis, he announced he will deliberately and openly go around the Congress of the United States and the Constitution and unilaterally change immigration law again through an executive policy.

The President said:

. . . today, I'm beginning a new effort to fix as much of

our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress.

As a first step, I'm directing the Secretary of Homeland

Security and the Attorney General [directing them] to move

available and appropriate resources from our interior to the

border.

He further said:

I have also directed Secretary Johnson and Attorney General

Holder to identify additional actions my administration can

take on our own, within my existing legal authorities, to do

what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our

immigration system as we can. I expect their recommendations

before the end of the summer and I intend to adopt those

recommendations without further delay.

The problem is that we have laws. Congress has established laws. The President wanted to change those laws, and Congress made a decision. The decision was not to change those laws, and those laws remain in effect. As President of the United States of America, he has the highest duty to see that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.

Remember now, the President is the chief law enforcement officer in America. The FBI answers to him, the Drug Enforcement Administration answers to him, the Department of Justice--he appoints the top officials, and they answer to him. So does Border Patrol, and so do Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, immigration officers throughout, and the Secretary of Homeland Security. It is his administration, and he has used powers to go beyond--that I am aware of--what any President has used to basically declare: I will not enforce the laws passed by Congress. I am going to change those laws--I don't have to change them; I am just going to direct my officers not to carry them out, not to enforce them.

Another thing he said was that young people here would not be deported. He invited a number of them to the White House. As a result, the word got out in Central America particularly that if you come to the United States as a young person--a parent could bring them or brother and sister--and you get into the United States, you will not be deported; you will be allowed to stay, and you could get a permiso-- that is, you would be released on bail into some family member's custody and you could show up at some point in the future to have a hearing. I have heard it is maybe as many as 500 days before a hearing occurs. And who is going to go and look for these individuals when they don't show up for court, as is continuously happening in high numbers, not showing up for court?

So to me it is disturbing that we are in this situation. And make no mistake about it--$2 billion is a lot of money. We work hard around here to try to pay for things we need to by saving money here and saving money there, and now the President just sends over a message: I am going to demand $2 billion.

We have to take care of the children. We can't leave them in a circumstance where they are not fed or taken care of or in a safe condition. I guess we will have to find some money to do that. But the question is, How did it happen? Why did it happen? And $2 billion is more than the general fund budget of the State of Alabama, which is where I am from. An extra $2 billion is a lot of money--extra money this year. Why? Because in 2011 we had 6,000 unaccompanied children apprehended at the border, and this year we are projected to have 90,000. That is why the President says we need $2 billion more--because the message got out, the word got out: You can come to America and, as a young person, you won't be deported.

In fact--and Congress doesn't know it fully at this point, but, in fact, that is true. Young people coming to America unlawfully from Central and South America, other than Mexico, are being allowed to stay, and it encourages more.

We have to have a lawful system of immigration, a system that serves the national interests. A lawful system means one that is carried out effectively and efficiently. It is wrong and it is immoral to create a system in which there is no law, where laws are violated willy-nilly and nothing is ever done about it. That is not healthy at all for any nation, and I would submit clearly that any nation must maintain the integrity of its borders. Failing to do so undermines the very sovereignty of that nation. No nation in the world that I am aware of maintains open borders. If you are not going to maintain open borders, then you have to set up standards for application and admission, and then if you establish those standards, you have to carry them out fairly and objectively.

There are millions of people who have applied to come to America who are waiting in line, people with college degrees and relatives here, who have applied lawfully and are waiting their turn. And how is it right, how can it be justified morally, religiously, as a matter of public policy, as a matter of law that we just ignore them and let people come through by the hundreds of thousands?

Indeed, it has been projected that unless something changes--and I think it could change if we have leadership--unless changes occur, we could have as many as 140,000 young people come next year. I guess that would be $4 billion extra that would have to be funded next year to take care of the costs. It is an unbelievable turn of events.

My staff and I did a time line months ago, before this crisis became so imminent, and we documented a series of actions in which the President of the United States has directed his agencies to conduct their operations in such a way that it undermines the laws of the United States. This is 39 pages.

One of the first ones--and I talked about it at the time and the ramifications that would occur from it, and nobody paid much attention. Back in January of 2009 President Obama took office. He had talked to activist groups throughout the country and he had made a promise to them. Not long after he took office, immigration enforcement officers executed a raid--which they had been doing over a period of years and always been able to do--on an engine machine shop in Bellingham, WA, and detained 28 illegal immigrants who were using fake Social Security numbers and identity documents.

Shortly thereafter, pro-amnesty groups--these activist groups-- criticized the administration for enforcing the law. An unidentified official at the Department of Homeland Security was quoted in the Washington Times as saying this about the new Secretary of Homeland Security: ``The secretary is not happy and this is not her policy . . . '' Instead of enforcing the law, the Secretary investigated the ICE officers, who were simply doing their jobs.

Esther Olavarria, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, said on a phone call with employers and pro-amnesty groups that ``we're not doing raids or audits under this administration.'' That was a huge abandonment of a normal and natural law enforcement procedure to create a lawful system of immigration right out of the chute--a direct result, in my opinion, of promises made during the campaign, not for law enforcement reasons, not for the national interests of the United States.

It goes on.

In January 2009 the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, delayed an E-Verify compliance deadline. She delayed the E-Verify deadline a second time. She delayed the E-Verify a third time.

It goes on, page after page of activities in which they took steps to undermine law.

In June 2010 the Obama administration sued Arizona. The State was trying to help enforce Federal immigration law, and they sued the State of Arizona. They sued any other State that attempted to do anything that would enhance law enforcement.

In January 2010 the Obama administration ignored the dangerous ``sanctuary cities'' policy. Amazingly, in this country we have cities that are providing sanctuary to people who are illegally in the country. Law enforcement arrests someone who is here illegally, they convict them of a crime--I was a Federal prosecutor for many years-- they hold them and then turn them over to the Federal law enforcement officers for deportation. But then these cities refuse to do that. Nothing was done about it, and this administration took no action--in fact, seemed to encourage it, frankly.

In March 2011, ICE Director John Morton issued the first of a series of memoranda systematically weakening their enforcement deportation procedures, essentially implementing an ``administrative amnesty.'' He issued two more amnesty memos in July 2011.

In December 2011 reports surfaced that the Obama administration would reduce the National Guard at the border. President Bush had beefed up our enforcement and sent a pretty good message that we were getting serious about the border. We were making some progress when he was doing that, but by December 2011 the Obama administration had begun to reduce the National Guard's presence, which has now been eliminated at the border.

On June 15, 2012, President Obama bypassed Congress and in effect unilaterally implemented the DREAM Act--legislation that had twice or three times been brought before this Congress and failed to pass-- dealing with children who enter the country before the age of 16 and who can prove how old they were when they entered, who can prove how long they have been here. The legislation was poorly drafted, it was rejected by Congress on more than one occasion, and the President just said to his officers: Don't enforce it with regard to these young people. Don't deport anybody you apprehend who claims they entered the country before they were age 16 or 17 or 18.

Who knows what year it would be.

This was really the beginning of the message to the people in Central America particularly that young people weren't going to be deported-- the direct action that led to the crisis we have today--and I pointed that out at the time and others did.

Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, wrote a letter last May warning: We are seeing a surge of young people.

As I said, there are 39 pages with multiple actions on some of those pages--actions that were taken by the President's staff and underlings that undermined and weakened the ability of our immigration laws to be carried out effectively, consistently, and fairly. It is a terrible thing, and now we have this crisis today.

According to a new report from the Los Angeles Times--which, I have to say, is probably one of the more knowledgeable papers, if not the most knowledgeable paper in America concerning immigration issues. They issued a report that deportation of illegal immigrant youth has fallen dramatically under the current administration even as the flow of illegal youth into the United States has exponentially increased.

Just this weekend, they wrote this:

President Obama and his aides have repeatedly sought to

dispel the rumors driving thousands of children and teens

from Central America to cross the U.S. border each month with

the expectation they will be given a permiso and allowed to

stay.

But under the Obama administration, those reports have

proved increasingly true.

Data from the paper shows that the number of illegal youth from Central America who were apprehended averaged around 4,000 per year over the last decade. So the newspaper points out that over the last decade we have apprehended about 4,000 youth per year. Some reports suggest that the number could reach 90,000 this year--an increase of more than 2,000 percent. Yet since 2008 deportation of illegal youth has dropped roughly 80 percent. So we have an 80 percent drop in the deportation while we have seen a 2000 percent increase in the number coming unlawfully. Does this not tell us something? Is this acceptable? Isn't this a guarantee that we will see more people attempt to come to America unlawfully in the future? In May of last year, 2013, Chris Crane, the president of the ICE union, wrote a letter and he warned about the increasing number of young people coming in as a result of the President's unilateral imposition of rules to block enforcement of immigration law with regard to young people. In October 2013 numbers were already beginning to surge. That was obvious.

In January of this year, the Department of Homeland Security laid out proposals for bids for a contract to private companies that would handle as many as 65,000 young people coming into the country unlawfully. So in January they were well aware of what was happening. Was any action taken in May of last year or October of last year or January of this year to confront honestly what it was that was causing such an increase of immigration from our Latin American countries and Central America, primarily? The answer is no. So now what we have is an emergency demand for $2 billion to deal with the crisis--just a sad event, really. I wish it hadn't happened.

But you cannot play games with law enforcement. I spent too many years as a federal prosecutor--almost 15, really. You have to have clarity of law. People have to understand it, and they have to believe that if they violate the law they will be apprehended. So we have

this bizarre event where noncitizens can come into the country in violation of our laws, plain and simple, and they are given amnesty and forgiven and not prosecuted. But a citizen who doesn't pay a few dollars of our taxes or violates a speeding ticket or gets a DUI can go to jail. So how can this possibly be justified in any moral or legal sense? I just don't think it can.

The situation is so bad and so sad that we had Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson before the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member, and I pressed him. He said: Well, we don't want young people coming to America because it is dangerous. I said: ``What about it being a violation of the law?'' He sort of avoided that. I asked him again and I pressed him. He finally said: Well, it would be against the law. But he didn't clearly state that if you come to the United States unlawfully you will be deported if you are apprehended. He didn't deny that people who come to the country today--young people--if they are entering in they are given to HHS, they are released to the custody of some adult relative that may show up or housed by the government and eventually are unlikely to ever leave the country under their policies.

The moderator of ``Meet The Press'' pressed him about this. Mr. Gregory said:

Critics say you are not stemming the tide fast enough. This

number's going to grow wherever it ends up. The bottom line

is what happens now? Are you prepared to deport these

children, young mothers. . . . Are you prepared to deport

them?

Isn't that a good question to the man that heads Homeland Security, whose responsibility it is to enforce our immigration law?

Now, I will acknowledge I opposed Mr. Johnson's confirmation. I don't think he had ever met an immigration officer in his life or a Border Patrol officer in his life and never had any experience in this. He was active politically with counsel for Department of Defense, but he had no experience in these matters. So did Mr. Johnson give us straight answers to this question? His answer was this:

Our message to those who come here illegally: Our border is

not open to illegal migration. And we are taking a number of

steps to address it, including turning people around faster.

We've already dramatically reduced the turnaround time, the

deportation time. For the adults we're asking this week for a

supplement for Congress, from Congress, to bring on

additional capacity. And we're cracking down on the smuggling

organizations.

Mr. Gregory said:

Do they need to be deported? Or I've seen some reporting

suggesting that more than half of them could end up staying

in the United States.

That is a plain question.

Secretary Johnson said:

The law requires that, when DHS identifies somebody as a

child, as an unaccompanied child, we turn them over to the

Department of Health and Human Services. But there is a

deportation proceeding that is commenced against the child.

Now that proceeding can take some time. And so we are looking

at options, added flexibility, to deal with the children in

particular, but in a humanitarian and fair way.

Mr. Gregory:

Well, I'm sorry. . . . I mean it sounds like a very careful

response. Are they going to be deported or not?

Secretary Johnson:

There is a deportation proceeding that is commenced against

illegal migrants, including children. We are looking at ways

to create additional options for dealing with the children in

particular, consistent with our laws and values.

Mr. Gregory: ``I'm trying to get an answer to, `Will most of them end up staying, in your judgment?' ''

Mr. Johnson:

I think we need to find more efficient effective ways to

turn this tide around, generally. And we've already begun to

do that.

Mr. Gregory:

But what does that mean? Are you saying it is impractical

to deport all of them who are here now?

Secretary Johnson, our chief law enforcement officer, still does not say they will be deported.

I'm saying that we've already dramatically reduced the

turnaround time for adults and we are in the process of doing

that for the adults with the kids. We're looking at

additional options for the kids in particular.

Mr. Gregory:

To deport them or to settle them here in America? Is the

goal of the administration to settle as many of these kids in

America as possible? What about those who are here now? What

is the goal of the administration, to settle them in America

or deport them . . . ?

Secretary Johnson: ``There is a deportation proceeding pending against everyone who comes into the country illegally and apprehended at the border.''

Look, this is a top law enforcement officer. This is the top law enforcement officer with regard to immigration in America. He is the Secretary of Homeland Security and answers directly to the President of the United States. He could not say: Do not come to America unlawfully. It violates our laws. We cannot accept that. If you do so you will be deported. If you bring children, you both are going to be deported. Why couldn't he say that? He couldn't say it because they have had no serious policy to effectuate the law which is current law since he has been in office and before, really. They just don't want to say it. It is just stunning to me that you cannot have clarity and leadership in the top people in our government, and I am concerned about it.

So this Congress is going to have to wrestle with how to participate in doing something positive about the unlawfulness at our border. I wish we had a partner in the chief law enforcement officer of America, the President of the United States and his assistant, Secretary Jeh Johnson, but we do not. They have no intention of enforcing the law effectively and consistently. It demeans the respect this Nation should have in the world. It undermines one of the most remarkable valuable characteristics of America, and that is our commitment to the rule of law. It is a direct affront to the rule of law. They directly undermine the sovereignty of our Nation. If you don't control your border, you don't control your sovereignty, and it is just wrong. It is not right. We are not able to accept everybody that would like to come to America--we just cannot.

We have the most generous immigration system in the world. We admit a million each year under lawful application processes. We admit another 600,000-plus under the guest worker program to come and take jobs that we need to put Americans in. Over half a million of these are not just farm workers--only 20 percent of that 600,000-plus are farm workers. Most of them are taking jobs throughout the economy. At this point in time with high unemployment and falling wages, this is not a policy that serves our national interest. We just simply cannot do that. It makes businesses happy. They like an overflow of workers that helps keep wages lower, but it is not the right thing to be doing for working Americans.

So as a nation we have a challenge, and Congress is going to have to assert itself. Congress passes laws. The President executes the laws. It is his duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed, and they are not being faithfully executed. In fact, they are being eviscerated by policy after policy after policy.

One of the top immigration officials declared: ``If somebody gets into America and passes the border, they are virtually unlikely ever to be deported, adult or child.''

This is a direct result of the President's policies. We do not need to continue them. In the course of this crisis, I hope we will act with concern for those young people who are here, but I hope we will use this opportunity as a Congress to assert our legitimate rights as the lawmaking branch, and in a bipartisan way, the Republicans and Democrats will defend and assert to the President that he must enforce the laws that we, the Congress, pass. He does not get to on his own execute alterations in the fundamental law of America.

There was an internal memorandum, I believe, and this internal memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security said people with children were asked why they were coming. You have heard it said because there is more violence and crime in Central America this year than last year. That is not so. They interviewed these people and what did they tell them? According to this memorandum 95 percent of them said they came because they heard if they came to America with children they would be able to stay and they would be given a permiso--in other words, released on

bail--and they wouldn't have to come back for a hearing and they would be in the country.

The stories are quite clear from the investigative officers that people are crossing the border with children and they go right up to the Border Patrol officers and turn themselves in. The Border Patrol officers turn them over to Homeland Security, and Homeland Security doesn't deport them. They set them up for some sort of trial or hearing, which may take up to 500 days. Then they find a place for them and they take care of them. It is just the kind of process that makes no sense for a serious Nation. That is all I am saying.

Why are we seeing this large number again? It is because they believe it works. And in fact it is working. In fact, young people who are coming in with their parents or brothers or uncles or aunts are coming into the country and both of them are staying. Nobody is really being deported, and they don't intend to leave.

The President created this policy, and now it has caused a national crisis. I hope we can do better. I hope in the course of the discussion we can improve on our law and find some strength for the President and put some strength behind our law enforcement in America.

Chairman Goodlatte, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House, has made a strong statement. He said he simply cannot provide money until we have clarity that we are going to be taking action in this country that will keep this from happening in the future. We certainly need to do that, and if we do, I am more optimistic than a lot of people.

I truly believe if we follow up aggressively and start promptly reporting people who come here illegally instead of talking about it and not releasing them on bail on permisos, the word will get out in Central America just as it got out that they could come and stay. The message that will get out will tell them: Don't come here or you will take a risk. You will lose your money, you will lose everything you invested in this attempt, and you will be sent back. If we do that, the numbers will start to fall, and we might be surprised how fast those numbers would fall. It would be good for public policy and the rule of law.

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

Mr. President, I was to be recognized before, but I will be glad to, but would like the 15 minutes or so I was allowed to have even though it may back up after me.

So, Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that Senator Coons be allowed an additional 2 minutes and I be allowed 15 minutes thereafter.

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague. I would note he didn't mention and wasn't mentioned in the effort to pass the Gang of 8 bill, which was dead on arrival in the House, the American worker. The numbers just came out yesterday, a revision of the economic numbers--our gross domestic product showed a decline in the first quarter of 2.9 percent, a GDP decline of 2.9 percent, which is the largest we have seen since the recession hit--those dramatic days.

We are not creating jobs in this country. Wages are not going up. We do not need to be surging the number of immigrants coming into the country. We don't need to be passing a law such as the Gang of 8 bill that would double the H-1B workers brought into America, increase by 50 percent the annual flow, add another 500,000 so-called backlog workers, in addition to legalizing some 11 million-plus, at a time when Americans are having wages fall and jobs are very difficult to find.

For example, I would note that workforce participation levels have fallen to their lowest point since the 1970s. This is a dramatic decline in the number of people working and the numbers continue to slide. Since 2009, we have had a decline in median income for families in America of $2,300.

They suggest repeatedly that this legislation we have brought to the floor was focused primarily on melon harvesters, but that is not so. About 80 percent of the people who would be given legal status and would be allowed to come to America to work under the guest worker program would not be on the farms. They would be taking jobs in plants and factories all over America, reducing the need for businesses to increase wages for a change and try to attract people into some of these more

difficult jobs. It is not that people won't do this work; it is that the wages aren't sufficient to take care of them and their families.

We need wages to rise. We have a loose labor market, not a tight labor market. People are having a hard time finding jobs. We are talking about a dramatic increase in the number of workers at a time when the economy is struggling, workers are hurting, wages are down, and unemployment is up.

I just want to dispute that. I want to push back on it. That has been my analysis from the beginning.

Oh, we need more high-tech workers, they say, and businesses say that too. But what do the numbers show? Professor Harold Salzman at Rutgers did a report that said we are actually graduating about 500,000 STEM graduates--science, technology, engineering, mathematics--about 500,000 graduate a year, but we only have jobs for fewer than half of them. Most STEM graduates are not working in their fields. They haven't been able to find the kind of work for which they trained. One of the reasons is that a substantial number of those jobs are taken by H-1B workers who are brought in not to immigrate to America to create jobs, I say to my colleagues; they come in on the H-1B visa, which is a limited period of time, they work at lower wages, and they return to their country. They are not on a path to be permanent citizens. But it is a great asset to businesses that don't want to hire, perhaps--it seems--people and put them on a career path where they might be expected to get pay raises in the years to come.

So I will challenge even that fact. I talked to a business person recently about a factory they have. The work sounded pretty good to me. He wants to bring in foreign workers to Alabama. Well, we have unemployment in Alabama. We have people on unemployment insurance. We have people on welfare and food stamps and assistance who need to be taking those jobs.

So the first responsibility of a congress, a senate, when they consider an immigration bill is what is in the interests of the American people. I don't believe it is wrong to discuss that. We have to ask what is in our national interests, the interests of our people, and this is not a time to be doubling the H-1B workers into America. It is just not. And more and more scientific, peer-reviewed, excellent studies are coming out on that.

I see my colleague, Senator Durbin. I know he is exceedingly busy. My intention is to make a unanimous consent request that we actually do something about the crisis we have on the border.

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 202, the Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act; that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the measure; I ask further that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

For the information of all Senators, S. 202, introduced by Senator Grassley and of which I am a cosponsor, amends the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to make an E-Verify program permanent. This is critical to protecting jobs and wages of American workers. It requires the government to at least run a cursory computer check to determine whether a person applied for a job is legally in this country.

I renew my unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I thank the able Senator from Illinois for his articulate response. I would note that the E-Verify program should already have been fully implemented long ago. If it is so good, why don't we bring it up and pass it now? Why do we have to pass along with it a bill that will double the number of guest workers in the country and would increase immigration and also had many other flaws in it?

So I ask unanimous consent--and this will be my last unanimous consent request this evening--that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 91, the Child Tax Credit Integrity Preservation Act of 2013; that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the measure; I ask further that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

For the information of all Senators, S. 91, introduced by Senator Vitter and which I cosponsored, would close a loophole in the law that permits illegal aliens to illegally and improperly receive cash tax credits from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Treasury Department's own inspector general. The IRS sent illegal aliens $4.2 billion in additional child tax credit payments in 2010. The cost has quadrupled in 5 years. In one instance, four illegal aliens fraudulently claimed benefits for 20 children they claimed lived with them in the same trailer and received from the IRS $29,000 in refunds.

So I ask unanimous consent that this bill be passed.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Illinois. I would have to say that the inspector general of President Obama's own U.S. Treasury Department has said this is a clear abuse. They have written a detailed letter on why it ought to be closed. I am flabbergasted and amazed that we would sit by and allow $4 billion in child tax credit payments to go out that are not justified. We have been told this. Why is it that we won't even respond to this little problem?

It is one reason I brought it up today--because I want the American people to know this Congress, this Democratic majority is not willing to

take any steps to confront the problems we have with regard to immigration unless they get a massive increase that satisfies activist groups, business interests, and their own political interests.

It is not in the interests of the American people. We need to do the right thing for our country based on law, on principles, on fairness. That is what we need to do. People who come to the country illegally aren't entitled to get child tax credits. I would think certainly not for children who don't exist. Nobody is going out and checking to see if children are in the home. They are just claiming this. The numbers have surged in recent years. The inspector general expressed great concern about that--how it went from $1 billion to $4 billion. That is a lot of money, $4 billion in 1 year, subsidizing, encouraging further illegal entry into America.

The first thing any country ought to do to control its borders, its sovereignty, its legal integrity, is not to provide financial benefit to people who violate the law and then give them benefits that are unlawful. That is beyond comprehension.

I want to say to my colleagues, the last few weeks it is becoming more and more clear that we have chaos at the border--all a direct result of the President and his administrative officials who have told the world we have no intention, basically, of deporting people who enter the country unlawfully, particularly the young people. And has that been heard? Have people around the world heard what has been said? Yes. And they are coming in unbelievable numbers, creating a humanitarian crisis, creating a crisis of law for America, and creating a financial crisis. The President's Fiscal Year 2015 Budget request $868 million for the Unaccompanied Alien Children program at HHS. Now that cost is expected to be $2.28 billion, based on the numbers today. In 2011 there were 6,000 apprehended children trying to come into America illegally. This year they say it could reach 90,000 or higher. 90,000 from 6,000? It is a direct result of the unwillingness of President Obama to look the American people in the eye, tell the people throughout the entire world: We believe in immigration. We have a lawful system of immigration. Please apply. Wait your turn. If you qualify, you will be able to come to America, and we are going to do it fairly and objectively and treat everybody with respect, but do not come unlawfully. Do not give money to some smuggler. Do not attempt to sneak over our border across the desert and place your lives at risk because it is against our law, and we will apprehend you and we will promptly deport you and you will lose all the money you have invested in this effort. Just do not do it.

They refuse to say that with clarity. Secretary Johnson was before the Judiciary Committee and I asked him about it. He almost refused to say: Don't come to America because it is against our law. He said: Don't come because it is dangerous. That is not the kind of message we need to hear from our leaders. The first thing a law enforcement officer should do--and the President is the chief law enforcement officer--but the Secretary of Homeland Security has the Border Patrol, he has Immigration and Customs enforcement officers, he has the Citizenship and Immigration Service. That is who is supposed to be enforcing our immigration law. He will not say that with clarity and he will not communicate it with clarity.

Vice President Biden supposedly made a statement in Central America about it. It was weak. It just was not strong. What is it? Do they want the illegality to continue? Do they believe in open borders? This Congress, this Senate is about to recess having done not one thing about it, and the humanitarian crisis continues on the border.

These children, some of them are young. Some of them are 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and they claim to be 17. Who knows. They are not carrying birth certificates with them. It is creating an incredible crisis. One reporter said the Border Patrol, instead of enforcing the law, are changing diapers. This is a very dangerous situation. Our entire legal system is crumbling about us, and the chief law enforcement officer in America--the President--alone is the one who can bring order to it.

The Secretary of Homeland Security works for the President. If he does not get on it, he needs to be out of there. The President needs to say: Get this thing under control. What are we paying you for?

What about the officers and agents? What do they think? Our officers and agents are stunned. There is report after report of senior officers saying they have never seen anything like this. It is a direct result of the inconsistent message we are sending. They are saying a message is only part of the solution. It has to be backed up with words.

So how is it happening today? A child and an adult cross the border. What are they doing today? They are going straight up--this is, I know, hard to believe--they go straight to the Border Patrol officer and turn themselves in. What does the Immigration officer do? He takes them into custody. If they have a child, the adult has to stay with the child, and then they put them in a shelter. Then they give them a hearing date. The hearing date is down the road. They have a backlog. So what do they do then? They release them. They allow them to go someplace where somebody will take them in, which is what they desire to begin with. Then they are told to appear at court at some given date in the future.

Nobody is going to investigate if they do not show up, or to see where they are, and there is nobody to investigate it. We are talking about a huge increase--by tens of thousands--of people coming into the country, in addition to the 11 million who are already here. So this is a guaranteed failure. That is what everybody has been telling us who knows anything about it.

The ICE officers, the Immigration and Customs enforcement officers-- their association went so far two years ago to file a lawsuit in Federal court. What did they say? They said this administration is violating the laws of America and the Constitution by directing them not to enforce the laws they had sworn to uphold. The Federal judge was very sympathetic with them. He eventually ruled there was not standing for this lawsuit to proceed, but he was very sympathetic with the merits of their claim because that is exactly what has happened.

We have a situation where the President of the United States, based on the DREAM Act--the idea that we would provide legal status to everybody who was brought here under, I think, 18, that we would provide basically a legal status and a pathway to citizenship--that bill came up before the Senate and has been voted down three times by the Senate.

So what did the President do? He directed that the law not be enforced as to them, even though the law remains on the books. That is part of the message that was heard in Central America, and that is encouraging people to come unlawfully to America.

So we are not against immigration. We do need a certain number of farmworkers. We do need and will accept validated people who come with skills who are ready to go to work. We should do that, and we have a generous policy, but we should not be doubling it, as the Gang of 8 bill did. We just do not have the jobs for them. If we had low unemployment, rising wages, and a shortage of workers, I think we could justify a generous immigration policy perhaps but not now. Canada is not doing this. England is not doing this. They are reducing, right now, the number of people who are allowed into their countries. They feel an obligation to see that their people get the jobs first.

The whole matter is disturbing to me, that we are at a point where the law is not being enforced properly in this country.

Mr. President, today, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled against the President's unconstitutional recess appointments in a dramatic repudiation of the White House's position. Nine to zero they ruled. It was an obvious decision, in my opinion. It was breathtaking that the President of the United States would appoint members to the National Labor Relations Board who have to come before the Senate for confirmation under the Constitution--we have the advice and consent authority--and he did not want to do that, so he just appointed them and claimed we were in recess. We were

not in recess. It was not a close question. He just did it. So it took over 2 years of a lawsuit, and finally the Supreme Court has now ruled. A lower court ruled against the President some months ago. The President clearly and deliberately violated article II of the Constitution in circumventing the advice and consent clause.

At the time of these appointments, the Senate had determined it was not in recess. We determined we were not in recess, and the Court affirmed that determination. The question of whether the Senate is in session is up to the Senate, not the President. So the President has to yield to the Senate's authority to determine its own rules and procedures. This is basic law, it seems to me.

Unfortunately, the President has made it clear that he will only follow the letter of the law when it is not an impediment to whatever agenda he has at the time.

Just today, the White House displayed again its lack of respect for our constitutional traditions. In a rather brazen display of candor, the new White House spokesman today explained the administration's rationale for moving unilaterally to rewrite America's immigration laws. Here is what Josh Earnest had to say. Hear me, colleagues. This is a direct threat to the integrity of our constitutional separation of powers. It is not far different from what the President said before, but it was today.

[W]e're not just going to sit around and wait interminably

for Congress. . . .

How about that: We are not going to sit around and wait on Congress. We do not have to fool with Congress.

We have been waiting 1 year already. The President has tasked his Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson with reviewing what options are available to the President, what is at his disposal using his Executive authority to try to address some of the problems that have been created by our broken immigration system.

So this is about as close as you can get to an open admission that the administration does not believe it has an obligation to follow the law. You cannot just eviscerate whole code sections of the law claiming that you have authority to decide what you want to prosecute and what you do not. Jonathan Turley, the great law professor, has hammered this idea. He is a liberal. He voted for President Obama in 2008. He has hammered this idea. This is an abuse of Executive power.

We are seeing the results of this on our borders right now. In 2011, we had 6,000 illegal immigrant youth from Central America apprehended. This year, we may hit more than 90,000. Next year, projections are as high as 130,000, costing billions of dollars to take care of them. That would be more than a 2,000-percent increase.

The President's policies are directly responsible for this crisis. They just are. He has acted unilaterally to suspend immigration enforcement and has sent the signal to the world that our borders are open and that if you get here unlawfully and borough in, you will be able to stay here.

As former ICE Director John Sandweg said: ``If you are a run-of-the- mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.''

I asked Homeland Secretary Johnson about this during his testimony, to say clearly to the world: Do not come unlawfully. You must follow the laws of the country. If you come unlawfully, you will be sent back home. He refused to even say that in my presence with any clarity.

Here is what the New York Times reported on April 10:

With detention facilities, asylum offices and immigration

courts overwhelmed, enough migrants have been released

temporarily in the United States that back home in Central

America people have heard that those who make it to American

soil have a good chance of staying. ``Word has gotten out

that we're giving people permission and walking them out the

door,'' said Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent who is vice

president of the local of the National Border Patrol Council,

the agent's union. ``So they're coming across in droves.''

That is exactly what has happened. It is a national tragedy. It is a human tragedy for those children. It is costing them money, placing their lives at risk, and we are not able to handle them effectively.

Colleagues, I have a timeline over 17 pages long of the ways systematically this administration has ignored or simply suspended immigration law by issuing orders to the officers not to do their duty essentially.

So 1 week before the Fourth of July holiday, America cannot even protect its own borders, and what do our Democratic colleagues wish to do? They want to adjourn this Chamber, go home to their barbecues, work on their reelection campaigns, and promise while they are home they are fighting to end the lawlessness at the border, while doing nothing, while actually doing nothing but objecting to legislation that would make a real difference.

I see my colleague Senator Sanders and I will wrap up.

I believe we were elected, colleagues, to protect this country and its people and the laws of our country. A critical component of national sovereignty is a control over your borders. We have passed immigration laws that are on the books and not being enforced. We on the Republican side have opposed immigration laws that would reduce the illegality that cannot even see the light of day on the floor of the Senate.

So I am asking my colleagues, we ought to stay here. Why do we not stay here and work on this crisis? I intend to request that we do so-- and have done so--and offered unanimous consents to bring up legislation that would help improve the situation. But that has been objected to.

Our taxpayers are overstressed. If we want to get this country back on track, we need to control this border and enforce the Nation's laws in a fair and equitable way that allows generous immigration to America, that treats people fairly and decently, but is not an open border, where people can come by the tens of thousands unlawfully.

How can any of us relax at an Independence Day barbeque next week knowing at this very moment the Nation's sovereignty is being eroded? I think we have failed in our session. We have not responded to the crisis that is on our border. We could have made real progress. But there is a lack of will and a lack of willingness to act. I am disappointed to see that fact.

I yield the floor.