Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, the bonuses for thousands of employees at AIG, that huge insurance company to which the Government, the taxpayers of the United States, have shoveled $170 billion into to keep that company afloat, makes me recall an old maxim. The Sessions maxim I call it--announced about 20 years ago when I was a Federal prosecutor attempting to faithfully enforce complex Federal regulations. I stated this:

Oh, what a tangled web we create when first we start to

regulate.

The more we proceed with policies whereby the Government owns 80 percent of the stock of a private insurance company--or any company-- especially after we poured $170 billion in to buy that stock--the more we are inevitably compelled to direct how the company operates, to the point of deciding whom their executives should be. We basically picked Mr. Liddy, the chief executive--plus what the company's salary scale should be or what aircraft it can or cannot have or where and what kind of corporate retreat they might have or whether they can pay bonuses.

The size of our investment--``investment'' is an absurd term when used to describe the reckless, gargantuan commitment of our citizens' money to AIG puts us, the American people into the insurance business. Not long ago, I had occasion to meet an official of a healthy insurance company. In jest, I asked him--it is not one of the biggest in the country, but it is a sizable company with broad reach. I asked him how he liked competing with a company supported by the deep pockets of the taxpayers. He replied it wasn't a joke--AIG was their top competitor in several economic or insurance markets. At bottom, we extract tax money from this businessman to keep afloat his reckless competitor. The size of this commitment cannot and should not be lost on us. The entire Alabama State budget--we are about one-fiftieth of the national population, a State well and frugally run by our Governor, Bob Riley-- including the State education budget for all the schools and all the teachers--thousands of schools--amounts to about $7 billion a year. So how big is the $170 billion we put into AIG? It is big.

The entire Federal highway budget, for our interstate system and all the pork projects that get added to the highway bill, and the billions we send to the States for their highway programs, since they are on an 80/20, 90/10 matched basis, with the majority Federal Government money, is $40 billion a year. So that $170 billion is a lot of money.

But here we are, and similar to that unwise banker, we face the dilemma: Do we pour more good money in to revive this corpse in a desperate effort to recoup our improvident ``investment''?

It is not an investment because no rational investor would ever have invested this kind of money in this company. The bullet was already in its heart. It was a dead duck. Only the Government would have put in the kind of money we put into it.

So the facts are now becoming clear about some of the problems that go along with being in the private insurance business. The New York Times and the Washington Post have produced certain facts, with front- page stories yesterday, which, having read them, caused me indigestion and provoked me to write these remarks for which I ask you to forgive me for delivering. But it makes me feel a bit better.

What was the purpose of this $170 billion? The Washington Post said yesterday that it was to ``keep the company afloat.''

Treasury Secretary Geithner has had a ``difficult'' conversation, according to the papers, with AIG's leader, Mr. Edward M. Liddy, about Mr. Liddy's plan to award $165 million in bonuses. Mr. Liddy says he finds that awarding the bonuses is ``distasteful.''

I am glad to hear him say that. But then he says they are required under previous contracts entered into before he came to AIG or was put there by Secretary Paulson, President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury.

As an aside, let me recall that had this matter been handled in the regular

order such as other businesses in America get handled; that is, by appeal to the bankruptcy court for protection and reorganization under chapter 11, which doesn't shut down a company entirely but allows it to operate under bankruptcy protection, such as Delta Airlines, which is now performing very finely after saving itself through reorganization in bankruptcy, these bonus contracts would surely have been invalidated. For how could any Federal judge hold that executives of the ``same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year,'' said the New York Times, be given bonuses.

This was a unit that did these reckless insurance derivatives that got them into this fix. So why should they be given a bonus?

This has certainly been an embarrassment to, I will say not so much to the company which has by contract apparently awarded these bonuses, but to Secretary Geithner and President Obama, who I understand himself, his very self, today called for not awarding these bonuses. The President of the United States is now deciding the bonus policy of what was once at least a private company in the United States.

At bottom, our tax money is being used to pay bonuses to reward those responsible for one of the most colossal and reckless errors in the history of world finance.

I think this whole situation is one small but very revealing reason why I think that our Government--and I certainly include the Bush administration which started the process--should not have allowed itself to be drawn into, in fact, punching this tar baby, getting itself more and more deeply embedded in a situation that it has no real ability or capability to manage.

You see, we now own about 80 percent of AIG. It is ours--yours and mine. Who then is to run AIG? Secretary Geithner? I like to call these high finance guys such as Mr. Geithner ``masters of the universe.'' He is now returning from Europe where he upbraided the Governments of France and Germany for not spending more money and for not invading deeper into the private sector and for not going into debt even more deeply to, as he would say, I guess, stimulate the economy. He thinks they ought to spend more and borrow more, and they are spending more and borrowing a lot. He thinks they should be spending more and borrowing more and they should be like us.

I suspect running AIG must be a bit distracting even for our fine master of the universe because he has taken on the duty of advising not only the President and our Congress on how to fix the economy, but he is now advising our big government friends in Europe who are concerned about taking on more debt. The world is his parish, it seems. All the while, the proud people of the United States, inheritors of a great tradition of free enterprise and limited Government, watched this spectacle unfold in total mortification.

The irony of these events, the historical dissonance of these acts of the United States pushing Europe further toward socialism, seems to be lost on our smiling and brilliant young Secretary.

We are in a very difficult period financially, and there is only a limited number of actions prudent governments can take to fix it. But still in campaign mode, our Secretary declares it is the fault of the previous administration, and he promises that the new President will lead us out of it with bold action.

Our Secretary of the Treasury is now calling Mr. Liddy at AIG and the paper said ``demands''--that he apparently violate contracts requiring these bonuses. I submit it is not so much because of the financial significance of these bonuses, but because it is an embarrassment politically. You see, the populace is getting a bit aroused about this, and the focus of their anger might cease to fall on the last administration and begin to fall on Secretary Geithner and his boss.

The ``bonus'' dustup in one sense was theater, flim flummery, mountebankery, of course. Apparently in accordance with contracts and law, Mr. Liddy, while properly effecting his distaste for having to pay these bonuses, reluctantly paid them. I think they were paid yesterday. It caused much ado.

Mr. Liddy, the Government--it is not fair to call him a stooge. He was actually placed in this position by the Government to take over this unfortunate, disastrous company. However, he could not resist one parting shot to his overlords, noting that he could not run ``the AIG businesses--which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers--if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.''

He says right there he is operating this company on behalf of the American taxpayers, but he cannot do so if the Secretary of Treasury is going to tell him what kind of employment policy he should execute. That was in the paper yesterday. Apparently he wrote that letter Saturday.

Oh, what a tangled web we create. Will Secretary Geithner now set policy on insurance premiums? We own the company. Why can't the Government cut everybody's premium? Maybe we could order the premiums to be lowered. We own 80 percent. That would be a nice stimulus, wouldn't it, lower everybody's premiums? That is a stimulus we have not tried yet.

Probably not. He is too busy running the world and advising the French and the Germans on how to conduct their business and telling them they need to borrow more money.

What is going to happen now that the President and Mr. Geithner have demanded that the bonuses be stopped? This is pretty interesting now. What is going to happen? The people at AIG said they have to award the bonuses or they will be sued. Are they going to sue Secretary Geithner and the President if the bonuses do not get awarded?

I suggest it is plainly obvious that the folks who destroyed the financial soundness of AIG should not in any just world get a bonus. The only thing free they may deserve is a free lunch and a free room in the Bastille.

One thing we know: Much of this money has passed through AIG to the benefit of other corporate interests. But one thing we don't know completely is who they are, although today's paper had some of them listed. The biggest one getting $12 billion plus, almost twice the total 1-year funding for the State of Alabama, was Goldman Sachs-- Secretary Paulson's company he left to join the Government and be Secretary of the Treasury. They were the biggest ``bailoutee'' of this whole mess. We are going to find out more about that. But it doesn't look good to me. I don't like this whole process.

Things were decided in secret without any kind of hearing, so far as I can tell, without in-depth taking of testimony under oath, such as would happen in a bankruptcy court. Apparently people came in to Secretary Paulson's and later Secretary Geithner's office. They sat in and asked for $50 billion, $100 billion, $80 billion, and they would discuss it a little bit and would come out and say: We will give you $60 billion.

How does this happen? I don't know. I think we have a right as Americans to be concerned--very concerned--about the recklessness on Wall Street that caused a major financial catastrophe for the country. And we need to be worried that our attempt in panic, I think, to fix it may cause more problems for our historical heritage of free enterprise. A lot of people have begun to think about it. Although when I talk with people in my home State, they think about it. They say: What are you guys doing? My 88-year-old great-aunt, whose eyes are failing and she cannot read now, but she tries to keep up on things, she put her hand on my arm a few weeks ago and said: Buddy--she calls me ``Buddy''-- ya'll don't know what you're doing up there, do you? She was so sympathetic. That is what most American people think and are probably right.

I will say again, if your Government, our Government had acted properly, we would have allowed this company to go forward in a controlled, orderly process through reorganization under chapter 11, and we would not have this bonus embarrassment. Those folks would have been ordered to tell the truth in a well-equipped Federal court process, and there would have been no reason for the healthy parts of AIG to fail at all. They are being pulled down by the bad part. They could have then dealt with that toxic part of the company in

a more responsible way, in a more public way, in a bankruptcy court before a Federal judge who took testimony under oath and could put people in jail who deserve to go to jail.

I conclude with this. This spectacular spasm should be a vivid warning to the danger of arrogance by those would-be masters of the universe. You are not as smart as you think you are. Market forces ultimately control in the real world. Nothing comes from nothing. Debts must be paid.

Secretaries Paulson and Geithner remind me of a man in an airplane off the gulf coast throwing out dry ice in an attempt to prevent a hurricane. Do you remember that? Or of Mr. Ludd in England taking a sledgehammer to the weaving looms of England to stop the Industrial Revolution. I have seen the force of real hurricanes. We are now seeing the force of a financial hurricane, and a lot of people are getting hurt.

But there is good news, really there is. Hurricanes do pass. We will recover. The greatest danger, though, is that in this time of trouble, our Government, in a burst of overreach, will permanently damage the great heritage of free enterprise, ordered liberty, and limited Government that has made this the freest, most productive economy in the history of the world. Why would we want to be lecturing France on how to conduct an economy by telling them they should be a bigger, more oppressive government than they already are?

I will certainly meet my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to work to mitigate the economic and emotional pain we are now suffering. But if bipartisanship means acquiescing in the wildest of economic chimeras that we have recently followed, count me out. If it means changing the legal and economic order that, through ups and downs, has formed the moral basis of the American dream and served us so well, count me out.

Oh, we are told by our leaders--and Mr. Geithner said this at the Budget Committee hearing when I asked him a few days ago--we would never want to do that. We are committed to the American heritage of economic order, he said. But one writer noted that at a time of rapid erosion of a nation's classical values, the leaders are most vociferous in proclaiming their adherence to them.

Count me a skeptic. I am watching what is being done, not what is being said. For me and for those who love liberty, limited Government, and free enterprise, these actions that are occurring today are troubling and frightening indeed.

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

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

Madam President, I wish to briefly begin discussion in the Senate about the President's budget that has been submitted to the Congress. We have had hearings under Chairman Conrad, Kent Conrad. His committee has had excellent hearings. We have had some good discussions. We have had some important witnesses, and we have been talking about some very important matters.

I wish to say now that I think the American people and the Members of the Senate need to get focused on the fact that the budget is not a good budget. The budget proposed by the President presents unsustainable spending, tax increases, and debt. It is just that way. It is right here in the book and the numbers cannot be changed. People can talk and spin any way they would like to, but if you look at these numbers, it is a chilling proposal for America that cannot be sustained.

One of the things the President promised, I think in his State of the Union and in his budget, was that we would have an honest budget and there would not be gimmicks in it. There have been, over the years, quite a number of times when Republicans and Democrats have put gimmicks into the budget. I would say I do not think this one is any better than the past. In fact, I think it is probably worse, maybe considerably worse. The budget, entitled ``A New Era of Responsibility, Renewing America's Promise,'' says on page 43, the conclusion of the introductory summary:

The budget itself does not use budget gimmicks or

accounting sleights of hand to hide our plans or the status

of our economy. It is forthright in the challenges we face

and the sacrifices we must make.

I do not think that is a fair statement of some of the things in here. We will be talking about some of the concerns as we go on. Fundamentally, the budget, as proposed, presents an overly rosy economic forecast. In fact, the numbers do not correspond with the best numbers we have on the economy from the Blue Chip indicator. That is the top 51 economists in the country. It is considered the gold standard of economic forecasting that we should have used or been close to. The consensus view of the Blue Chip economists--why is this important? It is important because if you are projecting an overly healthy economy, you are projecting more revenue into the Treasury than you are actually going to receive. That is the big deal.

In a budget you assume certain things. If it assumes a level of growth that is too high or a level of unemployment that is lower than we can reasonably expect, then it provides the Government, for the purposes of a budget, the right to assume more income than we are going to have. The budget predicts our economic growth is going to only decline this year by 1.2 percent. That is what the budget has. It has these assumptions in it. That is how they reach the numbers they reach. According to the President's speeches, of course, we are facing one of the greatest economic crises in our Nation's history and things are not good at all. So I would say that is not a very honest evaluation.

The Blue Chip forecast shows that the economy will decline this year by 2.6 percent, more than twice that. That is hardly a depression, thank goodness. I like to see that number. It is not as bad as a lot of people have been predicting, 2.6, but it is way more negative than the President's budget.

Of the 51 economists who contributed to this forecast, only three said growth would decline less than 2 percent and not a single one said growth would only decline 1.2 percent. The closest that one came to 1.2 percent was one economist who predicted 1.4 percent, but the average was 2.6 percent and some, of course, higher than that. I do not think it is responsible. I think it is a gimmick or a misrepresentation to predict this economy will only contract by 1.2 percent in this year.

Let's look at unemployment. The administration forecasts it will only rise to 8.1 percent. That is in the budget. It says next year it has it coming down to 7.9 percent. That means more people are working, more people are paying taxes, we have less food stamps and less welfare and less unemployment insurance. It impacts how much money we are actually going to have to spend. So they are projecting 8.1 percent, which will be the peak of unemployment and that next year it will be lower, 7.9.

In the early 1980s, when President Reagan and one of President Obama's advisers, Paul Volcker--who was then head of the Federal Reserve--broke the back of 15 percent inflation, but it put us in a severe recession, unemployment hit 10.9 percent. We survived that without a $800 billion stimulus bill, every penny of it going to the debt. But at any rate, they are predicting 8.1 percent on that.

What are these economists saying, the consensus? They project 9.2 percent this year and 8.8 percent next year--not 7.9. That makes a big difference. This is a big difference. It matters as to whether we can reach the goal the President has stated of reducing the deficit in half by 2013. That is not a significant commitment, frankly. It, in itself, is a gimmick, and I will explain that too. Using the Blue Chip forecast, the deficit is going to be $53 billion higher next year for fiscal year 2010 and about $150 billion higher in 2013.

We will have opportunities as we go forward. We will have budget hearings this week, I think some more, and a markup in the Budget Committee next week. I think we have a good committee. Chairman Conrad is asking some tough questions. He is not rubberstamping the administration's ideas, and I am proud of that because we are going to have to take some tough decisions.

Let me share, fundamentally, where we are in spending. After 9/11, the budget deficit was $412 billion. That was one of the largest deficits we ever had. It fell in fiscal year 2007-2008 to $161 billion. Last year, ending September of last year, that would be the 2008 budget--the previous one was 2007 at $171--we came in at $455 billion.

In 2004, a $412 billion deficit; the $455 billion deficit last year represented the highest deficits in our Nation's history. President Bush was roundly criticized for those and a good bit of that criticism was deserved, in my opinion.

Now that we have pumped another $800 billion into the economy this year on top of the Wall Street bailout, that $700 billion; on top of the $200 billion that the Congressional Budget Office has scored that we pumped into Freddie and Fannie, those mortgage holding companies, we will total, hold your hat, this year when September 30 concludes, of this year, the estimate is projected to be $1.8 trillion--not $455 billion but $1,800 billion.

They scored in that, I have to say, $200 billion, about $200 billion from the Wall Street bailout, $200 billion for Freddie and Fannie, one- time expenditures. But they didn't score all the stimulus package. In fact, they have a portion of it scored as being spent this fiscal year and a portion of it the next and some the third year. Next year's fiscal situation, according to our own Congressional Budget Office, is that the deficit will be $1.1 trillion.

I just wish to say to my colleagues and to those who might be listening outside this Chamber, it is not very hard to cut a budget deficit of $1.8 trillion in half; $1.8 trillion is almost four times the highest budget in the history of the Republic--unless perhaps during World War II we reached that deficit, I don't know. But certainly nothing has approached it in the last 30 or 40 years.

We are not doing well. Also, I have to tell you that the budget is a 10-year budget. All of us know that in the outyears it is hard to predict what is going to happen. I will just say, however, that President Obama's 10-year budget

projects that the deficit in the 10th year--you would think if we cut the annual deficit, the annual shortfall, if we cut it in half in 4 years, we would keep cutting it. He is projecting some $500 billion in 2013, and that is certainly conceivable, if we do not continue spending. If we keep spending at the same level we have today, we would be well below $500 billion, Lord willing and things continue the way we project them to continue.

But I will say in the 10th year under the budget, they are projecting $712 billion in deficits. The lowest deficit they are projecting over the entire 10 years exceeds $500 billion. As Senator Gregg said at the hearing with Secretary Geithner in the Budget Committee last week, that is not sustainable. I am just going to tell you, that is not sustainable. I think we all, as a nation, have to ask ourselves: Should we go forward with a budget that is composed of more taxes, more spending, and more debt?

I am worried about it. I know a lot of Members are worried about it. We believe, as a lot of people do, that we have to spend some money right now to help start this economy. I am prepared to support some of that too. But I think we have gone overboard. But regardless, if it was ended after 2 years, if there were the kind of projections in the future that show these programs to end and this excessive spending of today would not continue, that is one thing. But if we present a budget and ask this Congress to pass it, that calls for, over 10 years, each year having the highest deficits--higher than any deficits we have ever had before, ending up with a $712 or $720 billion deficit 20 years from now, I don't think we can support that.

It is time for a national discussion. As the President said, we need to talk about an honest evaluation of the challenges we face. And we face some tough challenges. But I have to tell you I am hoping CBO and the Blue Chip guys and the President are correct. I am hoping unemployment will not hit 10 percent.

I am hoping next year will be a better year. History tells us that is probably going to be the case. We have certainly had the Federal Reserve take some very aggressive action, most of it probably wise and needed.

We needed some stimulus from the Government. We certainly got that and more. It absolutely should give us some boost in the short run, although the Congressional Budget Office said the $800 billion stimulus bill over 10 years would result in less growth of the economy over 10 years than if no bill at all was passed. But it will help us some in the short run. I am sure that is true. So we are going to hope this economy will come back. If we contain spending, if we watch the debt we are creating, we could end up with a lot better projection than this without a lot of pain because a big part of this debt increase is based on an increase of sizeable proportions in spending, more than we can sustain.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I hope that in a little bit we will vote in favor of the amendment I have offered to extend the E-Verify system for 5 years. It is time we do that. It is a proven, effective system that brings integrity to our immigration system.

The E-Verify system is up and working today all over America. Between 1,000 and 2,000 businesses a week are signing up voluntarily. Over 112,000 have already signed up. When an applicant submits an application for a position with a company, the company can input their Social Security number into an electronic system, and the computer checks it to see whether it is a valid Social Security number.

People who are not authorized to be in the U.S. know they can use any Social Security number you choose. We found a few years ago that hundreds of people were using the exact same Social Security number to get a job. People were also using the same fake ID and getting jobs in that fashion. E-Verify is a program that would help eliminate the jobs magnet, the ability of a person who enters America illegally to get a job. If employees aren't authorized to work after they have been checked through E-Verify, nobody will be arrested. Police officers are going to be called out. Nobody is going to be put in jail under this system. What would happen is the employer would simply say: You don't qualify. You are not a legal resident. If there is any doubt about it, the applicant has a mechanism to very quickly validate their status if they have a legitimate status to validate. It can make a big difference.

The Heritage Foundation and I believe the Center for Immigration Studies a few days ago did a study, and they estimate that under the stimulus bill, 300,000 people who are not legally American will be given jobs.

My colleagues probably saw the article--I am sure many of my colleagues did--a couple of days ago where 700 people signed up for a janitor's job in Ohio. The American people are seeing an increase in unemployment. I don't think the numbers are going to reach as high as they did in the 1980s--at least that is the testimony we just had at the Budget Committee at two different hearings--where employment reached 9.4 percent, 8.6 percent. People were estimating what unemployment will reach. I don't know what it will reach, but I know a lot of good people are out of work and looking for a job. We created a stimulus package, $800 billion worth, and that stimulus package was supposed to create jobs. The President says he wants to create 3 million, and we have just been given a report that says almost 10 percent of those jobs could go to people who are in the country unlawfully.

Let me just say as an aside something that worries me. I think every Member of this Congress should be worried about it. Under President Bush's Executive order 12989, which was supposed to be implemented in February of this year, every business that got a contract with the U.S. Government must use the E-Verify system. As I said, over 112,000 are using it voluntarily today.

What worries me is that President Obama pushed back implementation of that Executive Order. He has now put it off until May 21. At the same time, our Democratic leadership is blocking an effort to make E-Verify permanent or even extend it for just 5 years.

What does that signal, I ask? Do we want people here unlawfully in this country to get jobs working for the Government when there are hundreds of people applying for a janitor's job? Do we want contractors who hire illegals to get Government work while Americans cannot get the jobs? I don't think so.

I will just say with regard to extending the E-Verify Program, in the House they had a square vote on it last July. It passed 407 to 2. So now we are not going to put that in this legislation. I was blocked 3 times in my attempt to get a vote on the amendment as part of the stimulus package. At least, I have to say, I am pleased I will apparently get a vote on this bill. But I am troubled with what I am hearing that the leadership is going to put pressure on Democratic Members to vote no. There is a majority there, and if they do, it will not even pass today.

I urge my colleagues to listen to the telephone calls. I am getting calls asking that I vote for it. It is my amendment. People care about this issue. The American people wonder what it is we are doing here. Do we not get it? Do we not understand what this is all about? It is about a jobs package to create jobs for lawful American workers. They can be noncitizens, but they need to be lawfully present in the country.

The first thing you do in dealing with a situation of illegality is stop rewarding it. You do not give them good jobs.

I am amazed there is an objection to this amendment. I had a suspicion that a move was afoot to keep my amendment from passing on the stimulus bill, and that turned out to be correct. In addition to a 5 year extension, the House accepted an amendment making E-Verify mandatory for stimulus money recipients without objection in the House Appropriations Committee. It was in their bill, but Senate leadership was able to block us from getting a vote on it. So we did not get a vote and it was not in the Senate bill.

What happened when they went to conference? Speaker Pelosi and the majority leader meet. They control the conference. And, oh, goodness, they decided the House would concede and the amendment would be taken out of the bill. Since the Senate had not put it in the bill, it would be stripped from the legislation. That is how the stimulus package passed without any E-Verify extension. I think it has expired now, actually.

We need a long-term extension because it is going to cause businesses that don't use it to wonder whether they should sign up if they do not even know it is going to be a continuing system. It would be very bad.

The new Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Napalitano, President Obama's Secretary, says she does favor this program. Michael Chertoff, the previous Secretary of Homeland Security, strongly supported this program. A bipartisan group of people support it. We need to extend it. We need to actually make it permanent, and we need to make it apply to all Government contractors, as even President Bush required in his Executive order, which has now been abrogated by President Obama.

To sum up, this amendment does not make E-Verify required for Government contractors. All it does is extend the E-Verify system for another 5 years. I cannot imagine we would let this cornerstone of a plan to establish a lawful system of immigration to expire. We are on the verge of that now.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, 1 minute or 2 minutes?

Madam President, this amendment simply will extend the authorization for the E-Verify system for 5 years. On this current bill, it will be extended only for 6 months. I ask why we would not make it a more extended period of time unless we have doubts about it, unless we don't like it, unless we are looking for a way to eliminate it.

It is the core system businesses are signing up to use voluntarily. Over 100,000 are now using it. They punch in a Social Security number and determine whether the job applicant who is before them is legally authorized to be employed, if they are legally in the country. That is what it is. It is not required to be used even in Government contracts. It does not require there to be any police officers, detention spaces, or any enforcement. It simply allows businesses to use this system voluntarily.

We cannot allow it to expire. I am amazed we are not extending it permanently. We need to do that. And we need to soon pass legislation, which this bill does not do, that would require all Government contractors to use the system because that would have been the law as of January until President Obama stopped that Executive Order.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 604, the E-Verify amendment. I believe it has been agreed to by the leaders.

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

Madam President, when we recently worked on the stimulus package, I attempted, on three different occasions, to get a vote on my amendment which incorporated E-Verify provisions that were included in the House version of the bill. I was extremely disappointed that all of my attempts were blocked by Democrats. The provisions I refer to were both unanimously accepted without a vote by the House Appropriations Committee. The provision that extended the E-Verify Program for another 4 years had, in addition to being included in the House-passed stimulus bill, overwhelmingly passed the House last July by a vote of 407 to 2.

The E-Verify system is the system that about 2,000 businesses a week are voluntarily signing up to use. Over 112,000 businesses are now using it voluntarily. They simply check a person's Social Security number when they make employment applications to verify they are lawfully in the country, and not here illegally.

The main purpose of the stimulus package was to put Americans back to work. It is common sense, therefore, to include a simple requirement that the people hired to fill stimulus-related jobs be lawful American citizens or residents. They could be here lawfully and obtain a job, whether through as a green card or otherwise. The actions of the majority in blocking that amendment seems to be a clear signal that they are indifferent to the utilization of American tax money to hire people who are unlawfully in the country and indifferent to the fact that would deny an American citizen that job.

So I tried to offer the amendment that incorporated both the House provision to the Senate bill. But it was blocked. That was interesting, because the House had it in their bill, we did not have it in ours. We could not get a vote on it. Had we had a vote on it, I am certain it would have passed. But we did not get a vote on it.

When they went to conference, it was not in the Senate bill, but it was in the House bill. So one side or the other had to give. So what happened? The House gave. Speaker Pelosi and her team gave in and they took the language out.

So I did not think that was good. I am pleased now that at least we will get a vote, apparently, on that portion of the amendment that would reauthorize the E-Verify Program for an additional 5 years. I will be introducing soon a bill to make the E-Verify system permanent and make it mandatory for contractors who get contracts with the U.S. Government, get money from the U.S. taxpayers. Every one of them should be using this program. In fact, it should have been law already. That would include the TARP spending or other bills we are passing that spend taxpayers' money. At a minimum what employers should do is take the 2 minutes it takes to use E-Verify and determine whether a job applicant is legally authorized to work in the country.

Short-term extensions, such as the 6 month extension included in the underlying bill, are not the right way to go. It is baffling to me that we would go through the process of wanting to extend this program for 6 months. Why 6

months? If you are committed to it, if you understand, as almost every top official who has dealt with it understands, the E-Verify central component of creating a lawful system of immigration, a short term extension is simply unsatisfactory. E-Verify is a central component of eliminating the jobs magnet that draws people into our country illegally.

E-Verify is an on-line system operated by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. Participating employers can check the work status of new hires on line by comparing information from their I-9 form against the Social Security Administration and DHS databases. It is free and voluntary. It is the best means available for determining employment eligibility of new hires.

According to Homeland Security, 96 percent of employees are cleared automatically, and growth continues throughout the country voluntarily by businesses. As of February 2 of this year, there have been over 2 million inquiries run. In 2008, there were more than 6 million inquiries run. So we can see that those numbers are going up exponentially, since more than one-third of the number of inquiries made last year were already made from January 1 through February 2 of this year.

An employer who verifies work authorization under the E-Verify system will have established a rebuttable presumption that it did not knowingly hire an unauthorized alien. In other words, if law enforcement says you illegally hired someone knowing they were illegal and wants to prosecute, companies using E-Verify have a defense. That is one of the reasons people like to use it.

I was most disappointed to learn that on January 28 of this year, President Obama pushed back the implementation of Executive Order 12989 which would require all Federal contractors and subcontractors to use E-Verify. It was supposed to take effect on February 20, but now it has been pushed back to May 21.

Congress needs to act on this. My amendment that I called up today only incorporates one part of what we need to do, that is, a short 5- year extension. Though I do plan to offer the other provisions at some point later, it is imperative that we reauthorize this successful program which is currently set to expire when the CR runs.

It is important, particularly because of the economic downturn. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate in February jumped to 8.1 percent, 651,000 jobs lost in January, which equates to roughly 12 million workers without jobs. This is the highest unemployment rate since the mid 1980s.

Immigration by illegal immigrants and other poorly educated aliens has had a depressing effect on the standard of living of lower skilled American workers. This is a matter of very little dispute. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late civil rights pioneer Barbara Jordan, found that immigration of unskilled immigrants ``comes at a cost to U.S. workers.''

The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that such immigration has reduced the wage of average native-born workers in a low-skilled occupation by 12 percent or almost $2,000 annually. Is there any doubt about that? I do not think so.

In addition, Harvard economist George Borjas, himself a Cuban refugee, an immigrant who came here as a young man, has estimated that immigration in recent decades has reduced wages of native-born workers with a high school degree by 8.2 percent.

It also takes jobs. A report in today's USA Today cites to studies by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies which found that according to their estimate, out of the 2.5 million jobs projected to be created by the stimulus plan, 300,000 would be going to people illegally here. That is approximately 15 percent.

Doris Meissner, in February of this year, former head of the INS under President Clinton, said this.

``Mandatory,'' this amendment does not make anything mandatory, but she said:

Mandatory employer verification must be at the center of

legislation to combat illegal immigration . . . the E-Verify

system provides a valuable tool for employers who are trying

to comply with the law. E-Verify also provides an opportunity

to determine the best electronic means to implement

verification requirements. The Administration should support

reauthorization of E-Verify and expand the program . . .

This is an expert in this. She knows that E-Verify is the cornerstone of the entire effort to clear a lawful system of immigration.

Mr. Alexander Aleinikoff, the Clinton administration INS official and President Obama's transition team member, called it a ``myth'' that ``there is little or no competition between undocumented workers and American workers.''

It is a myth. Of course it does. Of course it pulls down the wages of lower hard-working American citizens. They are competition.

Even the distinguished majority leader, Senator Reid, has indicated he supports the program. In a time of increased unemployment, our focus should be on creating jobs for American citizens. It is critical that we extend the E-Verify Program in order to protect American jobs and to create a system we can be proud of.

Some critics have argued, the program is too cumbersome and costly. But in a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Powell, a human resources officer executive for a Fortune 500 company, wrote this:

The E-Verify program is free, only takes a few minutes, and

is less work than a car dealership would do in checking a

credit score.

Well, that is correct. How else can you explain so many employers signing up voluntarily. Recent improvements have also made the system more accurate. The USCIS has begun to incorporate Department of State passport information into the E-Verify program. This allows the system to check passport numbers for citizens providing a U.S. passport as Form I-9. Additionally, foreign born workers who receive a tentative nonconfirmation can now directly call USCIS instead of visiting a Social Security Administration office to resolve the case. Both of these measures are steps toward greater accuracy by eliminating any unforeseen delays in this system.

I will conclude by saying I hope our colleagues will consider this amendment and will all vote for it. It would represent, in my view, a statement that the fundamental electronic system that will help businesses, particularly those that are doing business with the Government, to ensure the applicant who applies with them for a job is lawfully in the country. That system would continue, and it would give encouragement for other businesses to voluntarily sign up for the program. There are 12 States that have made it mandatory. I think this is a good amendment. My amendment is not as far as we should go; it simply reauthorizes the program. It is time to do that. I believe our colleagues are prepared to vote for it. I certainly hope so. I think it would send a very bad message were we not to do so.

We need to make it clear this foundational system will be continued and will remain a part of our enforcement mechanism and we will continue to enhance it, improve it in the years to come.

I would note, of course, if someone shows up as not being lawful, and they cannot be hired, we do not have investigators or police or arrest warrants or jail for them. The employer simply denies their employment eligibility; they are not hired. That is not too much to ask. I think it is the right thing. It is good policy.

I urge my colleagues to support it.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we have had a number of discussions in recent days about the E-Verify system that allows employers to do a quick computer check of an individual's Social Security number to validate whether it is a legitimate number before hiring them, an action that would help them avoid hiring people in the country illegally.

The discussion has been whether to extend that program which is currently set to expire in March. I offered an amendment to do that, an amendment similar to the one that passed in the House last year, 407 to 2, that would extend the E-Verify program for 4 years. There are 100,000 American businesses using it every day, and 1,000 to 2,000 new businesses a week are signing up voluntarily--just voluntarily because it protects them.

They want to follow the law, as most of our businesses do. When they go through this process, if someone were to say: You deliberately hired someone illegally in the country, they could say: Well, we checked it out on the system and they showed up to be legitimate and we felt legitimate in hiring them. So it protects them and helps them follow the law.

But for some reason there has been a resistance here. It passed the House. It was in the House stimulus bill, that $800 billion stimulus bill. It also provided, in the House legislation which was accepted and the majority of the House Members all voted for it on final passage, that everybody who gets a contract from the U.S. Government as part of this stimulus package must use E-Verify. In other words, it was designed to create and protect jobs for lawful Americans. The amendment, which was unanimously accepted in committee, said that beneficiaries of stimulus money must use the E-Verify system, and that E-Verify system would help ensure that only legal people would be hired. They could be green card holders; they could be legal workers; they did not have to be citizens. But they at least ought to be in the country legally. And this Senate systematically refused to allow us to have a vote on that amendment, so it was not in the Senate bill.

I asked three or four times to be able to have a vote on that amendment and was rejected. When they went to conference, sure enough, as I suspected, as I stated on the floor, the Senate version won. Our bill, which did not have this language in it, prevailed. They took the House language out at conference without any deliberation. This was a common sense amendment, and I think it would have passed overwhelmingly in this Senate had we been allowed to have a vote.

So this has caused me great concern. A lot of us have believed President Bush and his administration failed to aggressively enforce the law to ensure that jobs are going to American workers and not those in the country illegally. And I criticized him for that.

But it does appear this administration and this new Congress may be even more determined to not enforce the law. In fact, it appears they may be indeed taking steps to undermine some of the programs that President Bush and the ICE Agency and the Homeland Security Department have been taking that were at least making progress toward creating a system of lawful immigration that we can be proud of.

We are a nation of immigrants. Nobody wants to end immigration in America. Over 1 million people can enter our country lawfully each year and become citizens and contribute to our country in many positive ways. But since so many people would like to come to our country, and we recognize we have to have a certain limit on the number who come, we have a legal system that requires them to make application, and by various standards they are approved or disapproved in their application. Those who are approved get to come to America, and those who do not have to wait until maybe later or maybe they, for one reason or another, are permanently unable to come. Maybe they have a criminal record or have other problems that would make them unacceptable for admission. No one has a constitutional right to come to America. We cannot have and do not have and should not have an open borders policy so that everybody who would like to come and work, can come and work.

So this is the situation we are in. In light of that, I was particularly troubled, I have to say, and all Americans should be troubled by a recent headline article in the Washington Times this week. It was about certain activist immigration rights groups criticizing the Obama administration because some of the agents in the Immigration Enforcement Division had raided an engine machine shop in Washington State and actually went so far as to detain certain illegal immigrants. They are not happy they actually went into a business and detained some individuals who

were in the country illegally, and they complained about that. So, apparently, according to the article, the Obama administration itself seemed ``taken aback by the raid by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.'' The new Secretary, Janet Napolitano, was ``vowing to Congress that she would get to the bottom of it.''

The article goes on to say that an official with the agency said, ``The Secretary is not happy about it.''

Well, that is troubling to me. In 2008, under the Bush administration, which was not, I think, particularly aggressive--as a matter of fact, not aggressive enough, ICE made 5,173 administrative arrests at work sites. Additionally, ICE made 1,101 criminal arrests in connection with worksite investigations. Those arrest represented criminal activity, gangs or drugs or other kinds of criminal activity. They were doing that, and periodic enforcement actions were taken because a company does not have a right to have hundreds and hundreds of illegal workers who perhaps certainly are working for less money than Americans would work for.

That is not good and creates unfair competition and undermines our lawful immigration system. But this worried me even more. According to the Washington Times article, immigrant rights groups said they had discussed this with the administration some time during the last election. They did not discuss it publicly, but they apparently had discussions with the campaign, and they said this:

This was a fixture of our conversations and demands with

him during the campaign. It has always been one that there

would be a hold on the raids or a stop to the raids.

The National Council of La Raza has urged supporters to call the White House and demand that Mr. Obama lay out his immigration policy. In criticizing this, they said:

What are Latino and immigrant voters to think? They turn

out in massive numbers and vote for change and yet the change

we can believe in turns out to be business as usual.

Well, I think maybe the American people need to make some demands on this administration. Maybe that is the way you get things done; you make demands on the administration that they actually enforce the law and that they do not conduct investigations of the law enforcement personnel who were doing what the law required and who were, by all accounts, legitimately identifying illegal workers in America.

So now, according to this article, the Secretary of Homeland Security is investigating our law enforcement officers for simply doing their duty in response to some secret demand and agreement they made back in the campaign to undermine law enforcement in America. I do not think it is good.

This is why people are upset with Washington and upset with Congress. I believe in lawful immigration. I think we need to stop all of this. But what do we do? Nothing. Whenever something starts happening and has some possibility of being successful, well, politicians intervene and stop the law enforcement officers from doing their duty.

I am really concerned about it. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency says in their statement about the operation that they were investigating criminal activity, and they apparently discovered in the course of that the hiring records revealed a significant number of people were using bogus Social Security numbers and counterfeit identity documents. That is why they did their jobs. They went and checked it out and found 28 people at this company who were not here lawfully.

So now the Secretary of Homeland Security has promised to get to the bottom of it--not to the bottom of why this company was hiring 28 illegal workers, not asking whether this company ever used the E-Verify system, they are going to get to the bottom of why the law enforcement officers of the U.S. Government, paid for by the taxpayers, had the temerity to actually go out and investigate criminal activity and detain people in the country illegally.

So I have to tell you, this is not going to fly. We are not going to go quietly about this issue. We need a vote in the Senate, and we need one soon to extend E-Verify. It is unthinkable that this highly successful, proven system that over 100,000 businesses voluntarily are using would be allowed to expire.

The only reason it would be allowed to expire would be we do not want the laws enforced. And, by the way, E-Verify does not raid any businesses. E-Verify does not call for a single investigator, not a single detention facility. All it says is the business owner could check and not hire someone if they did not have good documents. That is all. They do not arrest them. They do not call the police. Nothing happens. You just eliminate the jobs magnet, as the Border Patrol people tell us, that is causing people to come to our country illegally to get jobs, and that magnet is a factor. E-Verify would diminish that.

I wished to share those thoughts. I believe this is a troubling event. We need to consider it and not go down this path. It signals a further erosion of the efforts to bring a lawful system to this unlawful system we have today.

The Secretary does deserve credit for one statement she made, that businesses do need to be held accountable for exploiting the illegal labor market. I thought that was a good statement. She went on to state that there is an impact of illegal workers in the country and ``that has impacts on American workers, and it has impacts on wage levels, often has undue impacts on illegal workers themselves.''

This is also true. There are costs to the American worker in terms of wages, the ability to get a job, when we allow huge numbers of illegal workers into the country.

I hope our colleagues will consider this issue. The American people have a different view than some about the need to enforce our laws. The American people would like to see that, before we start talking about amnesty and a lot of other things. If we are not going to enforce the law, why should we go forward with some of these expansive programs that have been proposed to allow persons who only recently broke into the country to be placed on legal status? The American people are not naive about this. They want something done, and they have a right to expect it. We in Congress have to figure out a way to be responsive to their demands and not focus only on the demands of special interests, certain big businesses, and certain activist groups, but to focus on legitimate demands of the public for good public policy. Good public policy requires the end of the illegality in immigration and the establishment of a lawful system of immigration that honors our great heritage of immigration of which we have always been proud.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is a distressing situation where, for some reason, we have abandoned the knowledge we gained in 1977 that it takes a constitutional amendment to get representation in the Congress for the District of Columbia. There is so much in the Constitution that refers to this, but article I--the very first article--section 2, says the House of Representatives--that is what we are talking about: giving a Member of the House a vote for the District of Columbia--shall be composed of Members ``chosen every second year by the people of the several States.'' It goes on to say that the requirements of a Representative are that they should be--they must be, when elected, ``an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.'' The Senate--discussed in section 3--of the United States ``shall be composed of two Senators from each State.''

So I know there is politics here, and I hope when the Supreme Court reads this debate they look right through it because I don't think it is a sound position we are dealing with. I believe Senator McCain has rightly raised a point of order as to the constitutionality of this bill.

I wish to make some general remarks.

I think the legislation is an affront to the Constitution. Professor Jonathan Turley, one of the liberal outstanding scholars of the law, who has testified before our committee a number of times, testified before the House Judiciary Committee recently--this is the language he used, and I am sure he would consider himself a Democrat. He said he considers this bill to be ``one of the most premeditated unconstitutional acts by Congress in decades.''

Congress cannot, consistent with the Constitution, pass a bill that gives congressional voting rights to a non-state without violating the plain text of the Constitution. The Framers of our Constitution envisioned a Federal city that would not be beholden to any State government. The text of the Constitution does not provide anywhere that a non-state may have a congressional voting Member. Also, the District of Columbia is not a forgotten city. In fact, it receives more Federal dollars, per capita, than any State in the United States.

History is clear that the Framers excluded the District of Columbia from having direct congressional representation. Our Founders could have placed the seat of the Federal Government within a State--and that was discussed--thus ensuring direct congressional representation from that city, but they chose not to do so. As James Madison stated in Federalist No. 43, there was fear that the State that encompassed the Nation's Capital would have too much influence over Congress. It has a lot now. The Framers feared that, symbolically, the honor given to one State would create ``an imputation of awe and influence'' as compared to other States. That is, that the State would have an advantage in some fashion.

Thus, when the Framers of our Constitution considered carefully how to treat the Nation's Capital, they provided in the District clause-- article I, section 8, clause 17, of the Constitution--that Congress had the power to ``exercise exclusive Legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District.''

So it gave Congress the legislative power over the District, clearly. Congress was, of course, made up of Representatives from States. This meant that residents of the District would not have direct representation in Congress--they understood that, clearly, from the beginning and, indeed, they have never had it--but instead, they would have indirect representation and that such direct representation was reserved only for the residents of States.

Second, this bill violates the plain text of the Constitution, as I noted. Article 1, section 2 says ``each State shall have at least one representative.'' Further, one of the qualifications to be a Congressman is to ``be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.'' As George Smith, the former senior counsel at the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel recently wrote and was published: ``All told, no fewer than 11 constitutional provisions make it clear that congressional representation is linked inextricably to statehood.''

Congress has recognized this fact in years past. In 1977, Congress passed a constitutional amendment, which was never ratified by the States, but we passed it. It was a constitutional amendment that would have given the D.C. residents congressional representation. I suppose that was then and this is now. Now we are just going to pass a law that doesn't have to have a supermajority in Congress or be ratified by the States. That is a lot easier to do. I remind my colleagues that while political winds may change, the plain text of the Constitution doesn't. The Constitution says only States may have congressional representation, and no bill, no mere congressional legislation, no law we pass can change that fact. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Our legislation can't alter the constitutional requirements. We can alter the Constitution through the amendment process, as has been previously done, to fix this very problem.

Alexander Hamilton, many years ago, wrote:

The qualifications of the persons who may . . . be chosen,

are defined and fixed in the Constitution, and are

unalterable by the legislature.

Finally, the District is not, as I said, forgotten. Its residents have indirect representation. All 435 Members of the Congress travel in the traffic here, go in and out of the city, and 100 Senators likewise do the same. They have done pretty well by way of getting money out of the Federal Government.

One of the Framers' concerns, which Madison articulated, was a fear that the ``host'' State would benefit too much from ``the gradual accumulation of public improvements at the stationary residence of the Government.'' According to the most recent data available, as of 2005, the District of Columbia taxpayers received more in Federal funding per dollar of Federal taxes paid than any of the 50 States. According to the Tax Foundation, for every $1 of Federal tax paid in 2005 by the District of Columbia citizens, they received approximately $5.55 in Federal spending. This ranks the District the highest nationally by a wide margin. For example, New Mexico, which is perceived to be the most benefitted State, received $2.03 in Federal spending per $1 of tax payments their citizens made. But even that amount is $3.52 less than what the citizens of D.C. receive. Perhaps, some would say Madison's fear has become a reality, with all the jobs that are here and paying good wages--how many of us would love to carve out some of these agencies and have them be settled in Birmingham or Baltimore or New York? Then that tax revenue would be spent in our States. But it is being spent here.

I am just saying I don't believe the District of Columbia is being abused. In fact, they are doing pretty well with taxpayers' money all in all. I know the argument that you don't collect property tax on Government property and everything, but they are doing pretty well under any fair analysis.

The Framers envisioned a Federal district serving as the National Government's home. That district was not to be a State, and the District of Columbia was never to be treated as a State. Granting a non-state congressional representation and voting rights in the Congress of the United States violates the Framers' intent, pretty clearly, and the plain language of the Constitution. Congress, as Professor Turley notes, ``cannot legislatively amend the Constitution by re-defining

a voting member of [the House of Representatives].''

We have all sworn to uphold the Constitution and to defend it. As written, this bill violates the Constitution and it will, I predict, be struck down by the Court. I think it is going to come back from the Court like a rubber ball off that wall. If it doesn't, we are going to learn something about the Supreme Court of the United States--something we don't want to know. I submit that we cannot in good faith vote for this bill without conflicting with our oath to the Constitution. So that is why I cannot support it.

I would just point out a recent case decided November 4, 2005, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The panel consisted of now-Chief Justice John Roberts; Judge Harry Edwards, appointed by President Carter; and Judith Rogers, appointed by President Clinton, for whatever that is worth. I hate to even say that because we expect our judges to put away partisan activities when they put their robes on. So that is just background.

Basically, the court dealt with an argument over taxes. As part of their holding--it is a per curiam opinion; no one judge was considered to be the author. They all agreed to this language. They said:

Congress, when it legislates for the District, stands in

the same relation to District residents as a state

legislature does to the residents of its own State.

So we stand in the same position to the people of D.C., as set up by our Founders, as the State legislatures do to the people of the States. The court also noted:

Not only may statutes of Congress or otherwise national

application be applied to the District of Columbia--

That is the tax laws--

but Congress may also exercise all the police and

regulatory powers which a state legislature or municipal

government would have in legislating for state or local

purposes.

Then the court said:

This is true notwithstanding that the Constitution denies

District residents voting representation in Congress.

So this panel, in 2005, concluded--all three judges--that the Constitution denies District residents voting representation in Congress.

I am not personally of the view that people who voluntarily live within the borders of the District of Columbia have to have direct congressional representation. I guess it is a matter that we can discuss and debate. Arguments on both sides can be made. I simply say the matter is conclusively decided by the plain language of the Constitution.

As Mr. Smith says, 11 different places in the Constitution say that representation in Congress must come from States. It does not come from districts. It does not come from territories. It does not come from tribal areas. It comes from States.

If we would like to change it, maybe we can, but we are bound by the laws and our Constitution, and a mere statutory act of this Congress is not able to reverse the Constitution. Therefore, I will object to the passage of this legislation. I think it is incorrect. I will support Mr. McCain's constitutional point of order because I see no other rational conclusion.

As shown by a recent opinion from the District Court of the District of Columbia in 2005, the Constitution does not give congressional voting rights to residents of the District of Columbia.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky for his leadership in the Senate. I wish to share a few remarks about where we are financially in our country and what we need to do about it.

I am very pleased the President has said he intends to ensure we eliminate the gimmicks that obfuscate the real nature of the financial crisis the country has. I think we can make some real progress on that. He would certainly have my support for that.

I also am pleased he has repeated publicly what he said to us Members of the Senate in private meetings, that he believes we have a challenge in these long-term entitlement programs. They are out of control, they are on autopilot, and they are growing at twice the rate, three or four times the rate sometimes, of inflation. That is the kind of expanding cost that cannot continue.

I believe he is sincere about that. I look forward to working with him on that. But that is down the road. Let's be honest. I wish to be honest here. I think he is correct on both these important issues, and I hope we can all work together. I would say we begin to ask when can we begin to get a containment on spending.

I would point out to my colleagues the nature of the deficit we are now facing. It is unlike anything we have ever had before. We are not hyping this. I am telling you what the facts are. This is a Congressional Budget Office chart. It shows what we have been doing. I would briefly go over it. In 2004, the deficit hit $413 billion. That was President Bush's largest deficit to date. He was severely criticized for it. It amounted to 3.6 percent of total gross domestic product. It was the largest deficit in dollar terms since World War II, and he took a lot of heat for that. I was unhappy myself.

The next year, 2005, it dropped to $317 billion. In 2006 it dropped to $248 billion. In 2007 it dropped to $161 billion, which was 1.2 percent of GDP, heading in the right direction. The next year, 2008, was the first full budget of the Democratic Congress, but President Bush was still in office at that time. He proposed last spring to spend $150-plus billion to send out checks to everybody to make sure we did not go into an economic slowdown.

I did not think that was a good idea. I did not vote for it. Now, I think only about 15 of us voted no. But I think almost every economist now in the hearings we have had in the Budget Committee showed it had almost no impact on the economy. But that one expenditure almost doubled the deficit. Then there were some other factors that went into it. It ended up at $455 billion, the largest deficit in the history of the country. That was last September 30, when the fiscal year ended, the 2008 fiscal year. Last September 30, we had a $455 billion deficit, the largest since World War II; I think the largest in dollar terms ever. But what about this year? You can see that chart and how long that line goes for the year we are in now, September 30, $1.371 trillion, three times-plus the amount of money we had in a deficit in 2008, the largest deficit in history.

It only includes about $185 billion from the stimulus package we passed. That is a historic event. It is not a little, bitty matter. That was a big event. One reason that number looks so bad--and we ought to talk about it so we can get a real picture of why 2009 looks so much worse than the other years--is because the Congressional Budget Office has the responsibility to ascertain how much money the Government is actually spending. So they score programs.

They scored the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, the TARP money, as costing the taxpayers $247 billion. It will probably happen over a series of years, but for some reason they decided to put it fully in 2009. Maybe that is so they can blame President Bush for it, and he deserves a lot of blame for it. He spent half of it. But they scored it all in 2009.

Then they also calculated the amount of money they believed the taxpayers will absorb as a loss from our takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, those mortgage agencies of huge proportion that kicked off the crisis. We have been bailing them out, people have not talked about that very much, but we have been, and they score that at $240 billion. They stick that in 2009.

They assume we will spend about $185 billion out of the $800 billion stimulus package we passed a few weeks ago, every penny of which went straight to the debt because we were already in debt. Every dollar we spent increased the debt. So they come out with $1.371 trillion. That's a big deal. In 2010, they expect the deficit to be $1.1 trillion based on current law, more than twice as big as the biggest deficit we ever had in 2008. They project by 2011 we will still have about $134 billion unspent from the stimulus package. That plus the regular deficit will show us a deficit of $632 billion.

There are a couple things I wish to say. One is, the President has promised to cut the deficit in half by 2013. I do not think he used the figure $530 billion. Somebody has used that figure, perhaps. But by 2013 he promised he would cut it in half.

Well, if you cut $1.4 trillion in half, that is $700 billion. From the normal

operating expectations, as calculated by the Congressional Budget Office, we will have cut the deficit in half in 3 years. So that is going to happen. That is not a great promise to make, frankly. I would note the $632 billion, other than the 2 previous years, represents the biggest deficit in the history of the Republic. So we are still a long way from having financial responsibility here.

At one of our hearings, the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad, produced a New York Times article. It talked about the dramatic reduction in the trade surplus that China has. That is because they are not selling as much as they were either. It was out of that surplus that China was buying so many of our debt obligations. Where does the money come from to fund this debt? Well, just like you, you have to give somebody a mortgage. They give you money; you give them a mortgage and promise to pay it back.

Well, China has been the biggest buyer, and Japan has been a big buyer. Japan is already reducing its share of Treasurys. And China inevitably will because they do not have as much money, even if they desire to buy them.

Also, some of the oil-producing countries had bought our Treasurys. Oil is $40 a barrel this year instead of $140 a barrel. They do not have as much money to buy them either. So I asked the witness, and the consensus was that we are in an unusually beneficial time at this moment to borrow because the world is unsure financially, and they are willing to buy American Treasurys at 1 percent or less. But that is not going to continue. So during this year we are going to have to go out on the market and find three times as many people to buy our Treasurys as we did last year. Next year, we are going to have over twice as many Treasurys for people to buy; and the next one, a record year also. We are out here getting people to buy this, and they are going to demand higher interest, particularly if they are worried--which they probably will be--that one way we are going to pay back this debt is by deflating our currency, debasing our currency, and paying back the dollars in cheaper dollars than what we borrowed. Then the people who loan us money are going to get nervous and demand higher rates. So the CBO projects a significant increase in interest rates in the outyears.

This chart I have in the Chamber I think is relevant. It gives us some idea of the omnibus bill we are going to be seeing rather soon. What we understand is that the Democratic leadership in the Congress is going to submit to us an omnibus bill to complete this fiscal year. On top of the $800 billion we passed a couple weeks ago, they are going to propose one of the largest increases in discretionary spending in the history of the Republic.

For example, it is an 8-percent increase. This year's discretionary spending--in addition to the stimulus package we passed--is going to be an 8-percent increase. Now, those of you who know a little bit about interest rates know if you get a 7-percent return on your money, the money will double in 10 years. So I would suggest at an 8-percent rate increase, we are headed to more than doubling the discretionary spending in our country.

This is not good. President Bush was criticized, and sometimes rightly so, for excessive spending. But he did not propose an 8-percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending any year he was in office. So we could expect to see, if every year we had an 8-percent increase in discretionary spending--it goes into the baseline each year, and that is more than double what the current rate is. So within 10 years, our basic spending for all the things we do--highways, agriculture bills, Department of Justice, prisons--everything we do in America will double.

The only thing I am asking my colleagues is--and I will ask the President: I like what you are saying about confronting reckless spending. I do. But when?

I suggest with regard to this chart, maybe it will give us a little bit of an indication about the point I want to make now. Let me say something I believe to be a fact. I believe it is a fact that the $789 billion we sent out 2 weeks ago as a stimulus package will never be saved by any actions by this Congress or this President over the next 8 years, if he stays the President for 8 years. He will not come close to doing that.

I remember a few years ago Senator Judd Gregg, then chairman of the Budget Committee, proposed an idea to reduce Medicare spending--one of these big entitlement programs--by $40 billion over 5 years. They worked on it for months, and they thought they could save money here, there, and otherwise, and they could save $40 billion. We lost it on the floor. A number of Republicans voted no. I think all the Democrats voted no. We could not cut $40 billion out of Medicare. Actually, it was not a cut. Medicare was increasing at 7 percent a year, and the reduction would have reduced the increase to about 6.5 percent a year. It would have saved $40 billion and would have only reduced the growth from 7 percent or so to 6.5 percent or so. That is the way I remember the numbers, and we could not pass that.

So we have added last week's $800 billion to the debt. This idea that somehow in the future we are going to all have a conference and we are going to figure out a way to get our house back in financial order, and by reducing Social Security or Medicare, is a matter that is not in reality with what I am seeing.

Now, we could do more than Senator Gregg proposed. He tried to get something he thought everybody could agree on. But we could not. I think you could save more, but I am saying: How much are we going to be able to reduce Medicare? Not that much if we are honest with ourselves. We are not going to be able to reduce it that much. Over 20 or 30 years, any savings, any integrity we bring to that process can mount up to hundreds of billions of dollars. There is no doubt about it.

But to think we are going to wipe out what we have done already, and then to see the bill come forward with the fundamental operating legislation for our Government that will be on the floor within a matter of days, and to see that be an 8-percent increase--when the inflation rate is--what?--2 percent or less--four times the rate of inflation, this is fiscal responsibility? Give me a break. I am worried about it.

So I will say, as we go forward, we will listen to some of the President's ideas tonight. He is such a fabulous spokesman for his values. He is so articulate. He is going to have a lot of support here. He is saying some very good things. But I urge my colleagues, if you applaud those statements about financial responsibility, ending this reckless spending, ending the surge of debt, and bringing some financial accountability, we are going to have to stand up and vote. We cannot keep sending up huge discretionary spending bills. This is not a war. These bills do not include homeland security and the Department of Defense. This is the basic operating of our Government. We are going to have an 8-percent increase every year? Well, maybe we will not next year, somebody will say. Maybe we won't year 2 or 3 when we are in better shape. Well, when do you start? Are you sure we are going to be serious 2 or 3 years from now if we are not serious today? Why would we be more serious then than we are today?

Words, I have learned in this body, are less important than dollars and action that goes out the door. So let's be thinking about that. I do not want to be a recalcitrant, but I have to tell you the truth. The truth is, I am worried about where we are going. I hear words about concern over rising debt that is the largest surge in debt this country has ever seen. But I am not sure I am seeing any actions about it.

Combined--let me share this figure with you--the two bills, the omnibus spending bill we will be voting on soon and the stimulus we saw, means we will spend 80 percent more money in 2009 than in 2008. My colleagues need to know we will be spending 80 percent more money as a result of these huge spending programs we have seen this year, which includes the TARP, which includes the Freddie and Fannie bailout, and includes the stimulus package.

Those are my concerns. I hope my colleagues will at least consider the challenges we face. They are not small. They are quite large. We have never seen anything like this kind of spending. It seems they are determined to help us work through this debt spasm

we are in by borrowing record amounts of money. I am thinking we need to get away from borrowing sooner rather than later and get ourselves on a path of sound money.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator from California yield?

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for allowing me to interrupt. Most Senators, a lot of times, don't like to do that. She is a good advocate on the floor.

I would just say that we need to get away from the political situation. As I showed in my chart, I would note to the Senator, the Bush administration had the largest debt since World War II in 2004 and was rightly criticized for that. After going down for 3 years, when we sent out the checks last year, it jumped to $455 billion, and we got not much for it. This is $1.3 trillion this year, $1 trillion the next year, $632 billion the next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office scoring. So I think this is a quantum leap higher than the deficits we saw in previous years.

I know we are in a difficult time. I would just say I hope my colleagues will share President Obama's commitment to deal with the long-term structural problems we have. He is correct on that. He has a commitment to quit using gimmicks, which we have been using in the Senate too often to mask how big the deficit is. Those are good steps, but sooner or later we are going to need to reduce spending.

I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. President, this is 10 minutes for morning business?

I ask to be notified after 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I truly believe the legislation before us is a historic piece of

legislation. It is a piece of legislation that changes the course the United States has steered throughout its history, by moving us rather significantly and precipitously toward a European model of an economy. The Government's share of GDP has historically been about 20 percent for the last 34 years, up and down, 17, 21, 22. One score--when you put all the stimulus money, all the bank money and all the bailout money and what we may expect to see in the future--one score indicated that it could reach 39 percent. In 1 year, we go from 21 or so percent of GDP to 39 percent of GDP. They say this is a temporary stimulus package. But it is not a temporary stimulus package. It has all kinds of permanent expenditures, creates new Government programs, and spends more money on things such as IDEA, special education--$14 billion on that existing program. Does anybody think we are going to reduce that in the future by any significant degree?

This bill funds program after program that will be increased in size, and the Government spending will then account for a larger percentage of our economy.

As George Will wrote--he is frequently, I think, thoughtful and wise--recently:

If this is not a matter that ought to be politically

discussed, what is?

So we want to be nonpartisan, bipartisan, and work together. But if you realize that we are undertaking an expenditure, the largest in the history of the Republic, the largest in the history of any nation in the world, in one fell swoop, and if you believe that is going to move us significantly in a way that alters the historic principle of this Nation that believes in limited Government, then you need to be here talking about it and opposing it and voting against it.

I think it is pretty clear. I know a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, a lot of new Senators who came in recently, they are uneasy about this legislation. But they have been led along, I am afraid, by the leadership and some of the others and listened to the Siren songs and are going along with this legislation.

I do not think, in years to come, they are going to be that proud of it. I just don't think so. I wish that some way, even in these last moments, we could stop this train, go back and look at a piece of legislation that might be better. The House proposed legislation. Senator Thune offered it here. Some folks have taken a look at Christina Romer's work. She is the Obama administration's top economic adviser.

She put a model out on how to evaluate a stimulus-type legislation last year. They believe their legislation, following her model of what creates jobs, following her analysis, would create twice as many jobs at half the cost and not create so many permanent Government bureaucracies and programs that are going to absorb more and more of America's wealth.

I think this is a big deal, and I do not like the process. The bill got out in the middle of the night, and now we are supposed to vote today. There is hardly time to read it. It is $1 billion per page, 700, 800 pages, maybe more in there, and almost $1 billion per page. If you add up the minutes between now and the time we will be voting, it is almost $1 billion a minute. One professor at Hillsdale College notes that this represents--$789 billion is almost equal to all the currency in circulation in America today. It is a stunning piece of legislation.

I want to repeat something that I have spoken about before. In my view, there was a deliberate plan that was hatched to create a perception that something would be done in this legislation that would require any business that obtained money out of this program, any contractor, to use the Government E-Verify Program. All you have to do with this program is punch into the computer the Social Security number of the people who seek employment and have it checked by the Department of Homeland Security. And we are finding that a considerable number of potential new hires--not too many but a considerable number--are here illegally. Now, let me ask my colleagues, is it the desire of the Members of this body that the stimulus money to create jobs--that those jobs should be given to people illegally in the country? People who are here lawfully, green card holders or temporary workers, if they are lawfully here, they can have a job under the program. I am not objecting to that. But the Government has a computer system, and 2,000 businesses a week are signing up to use it voluntarily. Nobody has required them to do that. Those businesses are finding that some of the people who apply are not here legally, and they are not hiring them, as a good citizen company should do. They are not supposed to hire illegals--in fact, it is a criminal offense if they knowingly hire people who are in the country illegally. So why would we not do that? Why?

I thank the Chair.

Why would we not include this simple requirement? Well, let me tell you, the American people want us to do it, overwhelmingly, and I think the leaders of this body know that. So a clever plan was hatched. I began to get the feel for it when I began to offer this amendment. Three or four times I offered the amendment. Many amendments were voted on on the floor during this debate. The leadership was most proud of that: Oh, we had a lot of votes. But some did not get voted on. This was one that did not. Why? It passed the House last year. One part of my amendment was passed on a floor vote of 407 to 2 to extend the E- Verify Program, which is set to expire in March. The other part was accepted in the Appropriations Committee, without objection, and that part would say that if you get a contract under this jobs bill, you would use E-Verify. So the House passed it. It was in their bill. All but 11 Democrats voted for the overall bill, so they voted for the E- Verify provision. And I am sure that the Republicans and the 11 Democrats, had they been asked to vote on just this provision, would have voted for it too. So it was virtually unanimous in the House.

So I kept pushing it here, and if it had passed here, using the same language our House colleagues used, it would have--absent skullduggery, which sometimes happens--been in the final bill because it would have been in the House bill and the Senate bill and become law.

So the House Members are most proud. They voted for it. They voted with their constituents. They voted for common sense. They voted for American jobs. And they are proud of themselves.

The Senate, however, did not get to vote on it--sorry, Jeff, we just couldn't find time to get your vote. We had all the other votes, but we did not have time for yours.

No Senator is now on record as having voted against E-Verify. But just as I predicted, they went to conference and they got with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, who control the conference--both of them pick the conferees; a majority of Democrats on both the House and Senate side, and they had the power to write the bill as they chose-- and lo and behold, surprise, they took it out. They did not want it in from the beginning. They systematically maneuvered around to get a plan to take it out, and they think they can pass the bill without it, and perhaps they will. And who is to lose? Low-skilled, honest, decent American workers out looking for a job.

Let me tell you about E-Verify. Doris Meissner, who is the former head of the Immigration Service under President Clinton, in a report last week, February 2009, said this:

Mandatory--

That is what we are doing, requiring these companies to use E-Verify, not mandatory now--

employer verification must be at the center of legislation to

combat illegal immigration . . . the E-Verify system provides

a valuable tool for employers who are trying to comply with

the law. E-Verify also provides an opportunity to determine

the best electronic means--

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

She goes on to say that:

E-Verify also provides the best opportunity to determine

the best electronic means to implement verification

requirements. The administration--

She is talking about the Obama administration--

should support reauthorization of E-Verify and expand the

program.

Alexander Aleinkoff, a Clinton administration official, called it a ``myth'' that there is ``little or no competition between undocumented workers and American workers.''

And I would say, I am disappointed. I am not surprised, I could see how this was headed for the last week or so. I hoped it was not so. I raised openly my concern with the majority leader and the bill managers that this would happen, and I am now seeing it happen.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I want to say something at the conclusion of the debate. I have spoken a number of times and have had my say, but this is not a normal bill. This is the largest expenditure in the history of this Republic, or of any nation in the history of the world. Some have said--and we heard this from the Administration--that they want to remake the economy. A press person asked me today: What do you think happened to bipartisanship?

I said, well, I don't know if I can hold hands and walk down the road to socialism. I don't want to walk down the road together to say our heritage of limited Government and lower taxes and individual freedom and responsibility ought to be altered.

What I am concerned about, at my deepest level, is that this step, as huge as it is, is only one of many that we are going to see. We had the Wall Street bailout of $700 billion. We hear there may be another $500 billion coming on housing and that kind of thing, because there's not much housing benefit in this.

This endangers our heritage. It is not a little bitty matter. I am proud of my colleagues who have said no. I believe it is the right vote and I hope and pray that yet it might fail.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will share a few remarks about the stimulus package that we understand is making its way here after going through conference. I believe there may be some opportunity to change what is in it. I hope so because one of the most disappointing aspects of the process we have been going through is that I was denied a vote on an amendment that would simply say that every business that gets contracts out of this job stimulus package will have to use the very simple-to-operate E-verify system that over one hundred thousand American corporations are using voluntarily.

With that system, you simply punch in the Social Security number of a job applicant in order to verify work eligibility. Employers run the social security number through the system and they receive information as to whether this individual has a legitimate Social

Security number. It accurately identifies quite a number of people illegally in the country who are passing themselves off as being legal. In fact, we have had testimony over the years that there are quite a number of individuals who have used the same social security number; possibly thousands who have used the same Social Security number. Until the E-Verify program, nobody checked.

This system has successfully been set up. President Bush was somewhat reluctant but moved forward with it, and the system is up and running. It was supposed to be fully implemented for every business in America. It is available to every business in America today on a voluntarily basis. Last year, the Bush Administration issued Executive Order 12989, which would require all Federal Government contractors and subcontractors to use E-Verify.

It is not an unusual idea. It is a popular idea in the House, the Senate and with the American people. Out of all the potential applicant queries made, E-Verify only identifies about 3 percent a year who are apparently not legally in the country and should not be getting a job. We are passing a bill, a huge piece of legislation that, frankly, is less stimulative and less job creative than we would like it to be.

Gary Becker and one of his partners, a Nobel Prize economist, in the Wall Street Journal yesterday wrote a big piece in which he questioned how many jobs would actually be created and how stimulative this package is. It has too much in it that is not stimulative. He said you would normally hope to get 1.5 percent of GDP of stimulation for every dollar spent. In his opinion, because of the way it is written, it would be less than 1 percent. Not good.

The idea was to create jobs, but not for people illegally in the country; for Americans, legal Americans. These include citizens, green cardholders and legal workers in America. They should all be eligible for jobs created under this bill, but not illegally here should not.

The House unanimously accepted 2 E-Verify amendments. The House passed legislation by Congressman Calvert of California that said the E-verify system, which will expire this spring, will be extended for 4 years. In addition to being accepted in their stimulus bill, that language passed the House 407 to 2 last July. Unfortunately, the Democrat majority blocked the Senate from voting on it in the last Congress.

Congressman Kingston offered an amendment that every contractor who gets money under the stimulus bill should use E-verify to try to ensure the people who are hired, those who get jobs, are lawful Americans.

How much simpler can it be than that? How much more common sense can we have in a bill than that? That was accepted as part of the final package. When the vote was held in the House, I guess all but 11 Democrats voted for both of those provisions.

They are kind of proud of themselves. They are telling their constituents: I voted to make sure, as best we could--it is not a perfect system--but as best we could, that contractors would use E- verify and prohibit some of the people who should not be getting jobs from doing so.

Then when I offered an identical amendment in the Senate, it was never allowed to be brought up for a vote. I have been through this process for some time. I have seen how things work. I am beginning to see what might be afoot. I know that the majority leader, Senator Reid, whom I respect so much, who has such a difficult job--I don't see how anybody can handle it--but he has to make decisions. He has made one with which I don't agree.

Somewhere along the way, the leadership decided they would not allow the Senate to vote on this amendment, although they claimed everybody gets votes on their amendments. They would not allow a vote on it.

Why was this significant? My amendment, supported by Senator Ben Nelson, one of the people who helped arrange this final settlement, a Democratic Senator, an experienced Governor--was the same as the language included in the House version of this bill. Under our rules, if the Senate passes legislation that has the same language as the House, it should remain in the final bill. It should not be taken out. If it was validated by both Houses of Congress, it should not be altered by the conferees. But if one body does not have the language in their version of the bill, then the conferees have a choice. They can either take the House language that had the E-verify provisions in it, or they could take the Senate language that did not.

Let me tell you why I was pretty worried about it. Under this maneuver, this is what happened. The House Members all get to claim they voted for it, and the Senate Members never have to say they voted against it. If anybody complains about it not being in the bill, any Member of the Senate can say: I would have voted for it; I just didn't get the vote. That works a lot of times, and it is not good because I truly believe that if this amendment had been voted on in the Senate, it would have received very large bipartisan support.

I don't think there is any doubt in my mind that many Senators would take the position that E-verify, an essential system for creating a lawful system of immigration, should be extended. I think very few Senators would take the position that somebody getting money under this jobs package, this stimulus package paid for by the American taxpayers, shouldn't have to hire those who are not lawfully in the country.

I am disappointed. I think the American people should be disappointed.

I want to go back a little bit further and discuss it some more because I firmly believe that one reason the American people distrust Congress and that we have such a low approval rating is this very kind of manipulation and chicanery.

Back when the effort was made to move the comprehensive immigration bill in the Judiciary Committee, it would have given, I think it is fair to say, amnesty to those here illegally, while only promising a lot of enforcement measures in the future. During markup in the Judiciary Committee, I offered several amendments to tighten up enforcement. I was a little bit surprised because amendments I had offered before were accepted, amendments to extend the fence, to add to the number of investigators, and to add necessary detention space so people could be deported if they were apprehended.

Two years ago, we were apprehending 1.1 million people a year attempting to enter the country illegally. We arrested that many people at the border and we had a lot of things we needed to do.

It finally dawned on me what was happening. This is what happened in 1986. Why did the 1986 amnesty bill ultimately fail? The amnesty bill in 1986 gave legal status and a path to citizenship for millions--it turned out to be more than estimated--but it promised enforcement. What I want you to know is the amnesty provisions become law at once. But the enforcement was merely a promise. Unless the money for enforcement is actually appropriated by the appropriators, no additional Border Patrol agents get added, no fence and barriers get built, no detention spaces get added, no systems, such as E-verify, get set up. That is why it failed before, and I saw that we were heading down the same path again in 2006 and 2007.

Those of us who questioned the legislation and demanded that we have confidence in the enforcement provisions did not receive those assurances. And that is why the American people made their voice heard and the bill ended up going down in flames with an overwhelming vote against it. This was a far different outcome than people had been projecting even a few months before.

I remember how we handled the amendment I offered on defensive barriers at the border. It was obvious that at the California border, barriers were working. We wanted to extend that barrier. I introduced an amendment to authorize the construction of barriers of various kinds--some vehicles, some fixed--and it would pass with 86 votes. But when the appropriations bills came back, where we actually disburse the money to fund these programs, the money for the barriers was not included. So we began to have a serious discussion on the floor of the Senate about that kind of duplicity, I felt, where we would vote overwhelmingly to take an action and then when came time to put up the money to make it happen, we would vote it down, and everybody would say: I voted to build a

fence. It is not my fault. It just didn't happen.

I want to say, this is what is happening with these E-Verify provisions. The American people need to know it. This was a very reasonable and restrained provision. It is common sense, if there is any such thing as common sense associated with the way this stimulus bill was handled. It tries to help Americans get jobs. Unemployment is up to 7.6 percent now. Unfortunately, I think it may go up more. Why in the world would we not take this reasonable, simple step to try to ensure that the $800 billion we are spending goes to American citizens or those lawfully in our country? It does not create police. It does not create enforcement. It does not create a bureaucracy. It simply extends the already successful program and says every employer ought to use this simple E-verify system, a 2-minute computer check to find out if the person is likely to be illegal or legal.

I could not imagine why we would not do that, but now I understand. I saw one publication, an inside trade publication that said the chicken processors and the Chamber of Commerce, big business Chamber of Commerce, had written the leaders and asked them not to pass my amendment. They didn't write to me. They didn't write to other Members. Somebody is talking in secret. Somewhere, somehow this plan was developed to keep this provision from becoming part of this law. And it is not right. I protested. Three or four times I came to this floor, and I asked that this language either be put in the bill or that, at the very least, the Senate be allowed to vote on it. I expressed my concern that this very thing was happening. But the leadership in the Senate has the power to pick and choose the amendments they allow to be voted on, and they didn't want this one to be voted on. They didn't want it because they didn't want the language in the bill, I conclude. What else could I conclude because if we had had a vote, it would have passed, I am convinced.

Senator Ben Nelson and I supported it. We had a whole lot of Members on the Democratic side who did not go for this last comprehensive immigration bill. This is just a tiny step compared to that historic vote. I believe virtually all of our Members would have believed this was a reasonable amendment, and, overwhelmingly, I am confident a strong majority would have voted for it and it would have been in the bill.

So that is the kind of thing we are doing. If people are unhappy with their Congress and the process we have ongoing, then they need to do like they did back during the immigration debate and send letters and make phone calls. That apparently made a tremendous difference then.

You may ask: Well, why did the conference not include the House- passed language; isn't there a process? Well, the Senate conference was very small, and the Senate conferees were a majority of Democrats selected by the majority leader. In the House they have a majority appointed by the Speaker. That means basically the Speaker and the majority leader control what comes out of the conference. They pick the people who run it and vote on it and they get to decide. So somewhere along the way the Speaker and the majority leader agreed to take this language out. It should not have happened. It should have been in this bill, and I am very sorry it was not.

Mr. President, I will just say that will be one of the reasons I will oppose this bill. I am very disappointed we didn't have the free ability this great Senate is so famous for to have a vote on a clearly relevant, germane amendment. It was already in the House bill. That guarantees it to be a germane amendment. It would be germane under any circumstances, I believe. I am deeply disappointed we didn't have a right to vote on that.

I thank the Chair, 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, to follow up on my earlier remarks about E-Verify, I would note it is ironic that it appears the final version of this legislation will result in a huge expansion of Government, but it also could result in termination of a key program, and that is the E-Verify Program. It has been proven to be successful. People like it-- on a bipartisan basis they like it--and it will terminate this spring if we don't do something about it.

According to both Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation, and Steven Camarota from the Center for Immigration Studies--Mr. Rector was the architect of welfare reform and one of the best minds in the country on these issues--this legislation we are talking about passing today or tomorrow could result in several hundred thousand jobs being given to illegal immigrants--several hundred thousand.

The version of the stimulus bill that passed the Senate contained $104 billion in construction spending, including highways, schools, and public housing. Only about $30 billion is for highways--a little over 3 percent of the bill's value, just for perspective--but it would total about $104 billion for infrastructure and construction. Government estimates suggest this spending could create about 2 million new construction jobs.

Consistent with other research, the Center for Immigration Studies has previously estimated that 15 percent of construction workers are illegal immigrants, which means about 300,000 of the construction jobs created by the Senate stimulus plan could go to those who are not lawfully in the country.

The E-Verify--formerly called the Basic Pilot/Employment Eligibility Verification Program--is an online system operated jointly by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. Participating employers can check the work status of new hires online by comparing information from the employee's submitted I-9 form against the Social Security and Department of Homeland Security databases. More than 107,000 employers voluntarily are using that system today, and happily so.

E-Verify is free--it doesn't cost the employer anything--it is voluntary, and the best means available for determining employment eligibility for new hires and the validity of their Social Security number. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 96.1 percent of employees are cleared automatically, and growth continues at a rate of 2,000 additional businesses using the system each week.

Now, this 96 percent, I know, is for all employees and all companies, and I am sure there might be a higher number with construction workers. As of February 2, 2009, there have been over 2.5 million inquiries through the system. In 2008, there were more than 6.6 million inquiries run. The number is really going up.

An employer who verifies work authorization under the E-Verify system has an advantage. That employer has created a rebuttable presumption that they have taken reasonable steps to make sure they are not filling their employment rolls with illegals. If the investigators come out and find someone who is illegal, they can say: Well, I ran the number on your system, and if it had been bad, I wouldn't have hired them and I can show you where that cleared your system. So it protects the employer from any false charges.

So Senator Ben Nelson and I wrote a letter to Senators Reid and McConnell asking that this legislation include provisions to require E- Verify for the jobs created under this proposal.

As an aside, there is another problem, and we might as well talk about it. I was very worried and concerned because, on January 28 of this year, President Obama pushed back the implementation of Executive Order No. 12989, executed by President Bush, which would require all Federal contractors and subcontractors to use E-Verify. In other words, those who are doing work now on military bases and roads and other things would be required to use a successful system that has long been planned and being phased in. Now, the implementation date has been pushed back to May 21.

So are we now seeing some sort of serious movement to undermine one of the most effective, least intrusive systems we have ever developed, the cornerstone of Homeland Security's enforcement efforts? I don't know. When

you add that decision to what has happened on the floor of the Senate, my concerns are increasing.

Recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate in January had gotten to 7.6 percent, including 598,000 jobs lost in January. This is the highest unemployment rate in 17 years. We know and expect it will go higher--hopefully, not a whole lot higher, but certainly those trends are not good.

Immigration by illegal immigrants and other poorly educated aliens has a serious and depressing effect on the standard of living of low- skilled, hard-working Americans, and I will tell you that is a fact. The United States Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late civil rights pioneer, Barbara Jordan, found that immigration of unskilled immigrants comes at a cost to unskilled U.S. workers. I don't think there is any doubt about that.

The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that such immigration has reduced the wage of the average native-born worker in a low-skilled occupation by 12 percent or $2,000 a year. It may not impact people in universities and Senators, but hard-working Americans are having to compete against persons who are willing to work for so much less and who often are being taken advantage of.

I just give this aside: I talked to the CEO of a company--a family company. They do right-of-way clearing and other type work of that kind for utilities in States and counties. He said they have had good employees. They have hired them for many years. They pay retirement and health care benefits and competitive wages. All of a sudden, just a few years ago, they started losing bid after bid after bid. They could not understand how the competitor could bid so low. They began to look into it, and it appears, quite clear to him, the reason a company from Texas was able to outbid him was because they were paying their employees much less, and he believes many of them were illegally in the country. Now, how did that help his employees? He may be forced to go out of business simply because he was obeying the law.

In addition, a Harvard economist, Professor George Borjas, who has written a book on this subject--himself a Cuban refugee; at a young age he came from Cuba--has estimated that immigration in recent decades has reduced the wages of native-born workers without a high school degree by 8.2 percent.

Doris Meissner, former head of INS--the immigration service--under President Clinton, wrote this in February of this year:

Mandatory employer verification must be at the center of

legislation to combat illegal immigration. The E-Verify

system provides a valuable tool for employers who are trying

to comply with the law. E-Verify also provides an opportunity

to determine the best electronic means to implement

verification requirements. The administration should support

reauthorization of E-Verify and expand the program.

That is Doris Meissner, who is certainly a moderate on immigration issues. She served under President Clinton and said just recently this is a key thing for us to do.

I thank the Chair, and I would suggest finally that these are very important issues for American citizens. We need to speak out clearly on them.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia for his excellent comments about the housing proposal offered by our colleague, Senator Isakson. I thought it was a good idea when he first brought it up. It would have pleased me if that had been included at the time President Bush sent out those checks a year ago that had no real permanent benefit, and I thought it should have been included then. I was very much supportive of it when he brought it forward later, last week, and I thought we had adopted it. But it looks like it is going to be taken out or so reduced it will not have the same effect.

The advantage of that was it would target the real problem we have; which is the housing supply that is growing. The growing supply of unoccupied housing causes the price of everyone's home to decline. We know it had to decline some because we had a bubble in housing. But there is a danger when home prices fall below what the real market value is. When they fall too low, it does begin to have serious ramifications in the economy.

Similar to Senator Chambliss, I thought Senator McCain's proposal had some real infrastructure spending, some targeted tax reductions that would put money in people's pockets immediately but would not necessarily be permanent, and we could shut that off without creating a bureaucracy. I thought that was a real good piece of legislation. It cost about half the cost of this legislation.

So there are some things we could do. I was certainly prepared to consider other options and other alternatives. But, as it is, there has been very little input into this bill. Right now, we still have not seen it. There was talk about trying to vote on it tonight. That is unthinkable: to have a 700-plus page piece of legislation, spending almost $800 billion, and people who have not read it are going to vote on it? Surely, that will not happen. It is not a good process, in my view.

I am disturbed about it, and I think the financial soul of our country is at stake. If this becomes a pattern, if this becomes the way we do business and the way we spend money and throw money around, it seems to me, too much in a political way, rather than in a stimulative way, we will say to our constituents and to the world: The United States does not have its house in order, it is not a safe place to put money, and there is no certainty about what will happen next because unpredictable Government actions may dwarf the natural economic forces that people relied on in the past to make their investments. So I am worried about that.

I would share something here. When you get the Government spending a large amount of money, it creates a lot

of problems. Our economy has always been less dominated by Government spending than the European economies, at least Germany and France in particular. They have had Government spending that represents as much as 45 or 50 percent of their gross domestic product. It is a huge portion of their economy. Their unemployment rate has always tended to be higher than ours, and their growth has not kept up with ours.

One other thing happens when the Government injects itself into the economy; and that is, it has a tendency to corrupt the Government itself. We have had a lot of criticisms about lobbyists, that we have too many lobbyists. Lobbyists have too much influence, and we should have fewer lobbyists and they should have less influence. But as the size and power of the Government expands, I think it is only natural that one would expect companies worth billions of dollars would feel a necessity to have more lobbyists. This is a Washington Times piece not long ago dealing with the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, and it shows some of the things that were happening. During the fourth quarter, Citigroup had $1.28 million in lobbyist expenses. In the third quarter, they had $1.39 million in lobbyist expenses. People say, well, that is unbelievable. That is a lot of money. There are 1,000 million dollars in a billion. That is how many 1 billion is, 1,000 million. During that time, Citigroup gets $45 billion from the U.S. Government. So what is that? Forty-five billion is forty-five thousand million. So it is probably a pretty good idea, from the company's point of view, to spend $1 million on lobbyists. That is a pretty good bargain. That is all I am saying. The bigger the Government, the more the Government gets interfaced with what has historically been a private sector that we didn't stick our nose in. Historically, the companies paid taxes, they obeyed the law, and the Government didn't subsidize winners and losers in the banking industry.

So AIG, they actually got, I think now, over $100 billion. They spent $390,000 in fourth quarter expenses. General Motors, look at that: $3,320,000. They got money out of this Wall Street financial bailout that nobody ever thought they could get. They got the Government to give them $10 billion. So I guess they consider $3 million in lobbying expenses to be a pretty good bargain. Those are some of the dangers when we stick our nose into matters that we out not to meddle in.

Once again, I wish to share this chart because I think it is instructive of the situation in which we find ourselves. Back in 2004, President Bush had the biggest deficit up to that time since World War II--maybe ever, in terms of real dollars. It was $413 billion. That is when he was criticized so aggressively, as many of my colleagues will remember, for reckless spending and running up the deficit. I thought a lot of that criticism was valid, but we had a war going on and we had some other things. We didn't contain spending as well as we should have. The recession that occurred was biting into revenue, and we ended up with a $413 billion deficit, the biggest we had ever had. It dropped in 2005 to $318 billion, it dropped to $248 billion in 2006, and in 2007 the deficit dropped to $161 billion. It was definitely heading in the right direction. That represented only 1.2 percent of GDP. This 3.6 percent of GDP for the deficit was the highest in about 30 years, since the recession in 1980, as I recall.

So what about 2008, the last fiscal year, ending September 30 of 2008. We sent out the $150 billion in checks to Americans in the hope that it would do something good for the economy. People blamed the President for it. I think he deserves blame for it because it didn't work. However, the President has no authority whatsoever to spend a dime that Congress doesn't give him. He had to come to Congress and ask for that money. The Democratic leadership supported it and moved the bill forward, and we sent out the checks. That, plus the economic slowdown, caused the 2008 deficit. Last September 30, it was $455 billion, the largest ever.

What about this year? Our own Congressional Budget Office has done some analysis. And I would just say that the CBO is a nonpartisan group. We just elected a new Director. He was basically selected by the Democratic majority. The Republican members of the Budget Committee liked him. We thought he was an honest, capable man, and we voted for him. So we got a new Director. He is, I believe, an honorable person, gives us good numbers, as the previous Director did. So the CBO estimates, without the stimulus, the deficit ending September 30 of this year will be $1.3 trillion. That will represent 8.3 percent of GDP, the highest ever.

Now we are about to pass another almost $800 billion stimulus package on top of that. It all would not get spent in 2009. It is not all going to get spent before September 30 of this year, so of that 800 they are scoring about 232 to be spent in this year, meaning the total deficit would be $1.4 trillion, three times--three times--the size of the highest deficit we have ever had in history.

I have to tell my colleagues, Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, and another one of his associates, just wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He questioned this stimulus package. He used careful language. He said normally in a stimulus package, for every dollar you expend, you hope to get a dollar and a half of growth. He said in their opinion, because of the nature of this legislation--I will say the political nature of it rather than the stimulus nature of it--they conclude each dollar spent will produce less than a dollar of stimulus.

So we are adding another $800 billion on to our debt total for very little benefit. When you go to next year, they are expecting it to be another $1 trillion deficit and the year after that, $640 billion. By the way, these 2 years at least have $70 billion more which will be added because we are going to fix the AMT, the alternative minimum tax. It costs $70 billion to fix it, and we do it every year, and that is never scored until we fix it. So that will be added on to both of those. Also, physicians are set to get a 20-percent reduction next year in their physician payments. Why do we do that? Well, we passed a law a long time ago that would call for that. We have long since recognized we can't cut our doctors' pay that way, we can't cut them 20 percent. Every year, we put the money back in. It is about $30 billion, I believe, a year. That doesn't score in these numbers. So you can assume the deficit next year will be at least about $100 billion higher than current estimates. Those are gimmicks we use to hide the real nature of the deficit.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, interest in the stimulus bill alone over the next 10 years will amount to $326 billion, and that includes the first 2 years when all is not yet spent. It will actually be about $40 billion a year thereafter once it all gets spent. That is a huge thing. That is $400 billion every decade. Who is going to pay it? Our children and grandchildren. There is no plan to pay this off. So this is not a minor matter.

Finally, our own Congressional Budget Office, after studying this package, concluded these things: It would have a temporary stimulus effect in the first 2 to 3 years, but over a 10-year period, they conclude the gross domestic product would grow less if the legislation were enacted than if we didn't pass anything. They project that over a 10-year period it would hurt the economy--not a lot, but it would be down. Why? Because when we borrow $1 trillion from the private economy to pay this debt, it crowds out private people who may want to borrow money and create jobs.

Secondly, you have to pay the interest on it every year; we have to pay $40 billion a year in interest. How much is $40 billion? That is the amount of the entire Federal highway budget each year, $40 billion--a lot of money. Now we are going to add that every year, just in interest, which we will be paying indefinitely. Some people have said--even some conservatives have said deficits don't matter. Wrong. Deficits do matter.

Finally, I would just point out these facts about why the bill is not effective to do what it says it wants to do, which is to create jobs. It is simple arithmetic. We wrote this chart when the bill was $826 billion. It actually came out of the Senate at $838 billion. We are hearing it is going to come out less than that, and that we will end up with about $789 billion. So we don't know. Apparently, they are still arguing over what to spend and how to spend the

money. The interest on that version, according to CBO, would run $347 billion, give or take a billion or two, over the next decade.

I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

So that totals over $1.1 trillion. You divide that out per taxpayer, per person who pays taxes--don't think that something can be created for nothing. To inject $800 billion into the economy today, we have to borrow it. How much does that mean that the average American is assuming as new debt? Well, what we conclude is--just from simple arithmetic--it is about $8,400 per taxpayer. Think about that. Just like that, we are going to pass a bill that over 10 years will cost over $1.1 trillion and increase the average taxpayer's share of the debt by about $8,400. It is like adding it to your mortgage or something.

If it produces 3.9 million jobs, which is the high end of what the Congressional Budget Office says it would create--the goal for those pushing the legislation say they want to create 4 million jobs. That is the high side of what--it is higher, actually, than what CBO, our own budget office, tells us it will create. So 3.9 million jobs, that costs $300,000 per job. Do the arithmetic.

Is that a good deal for America? Is that worth burdening us with $8,400 each? What if it came out on the low side? What if it only created 1.3 million jobs, which was the low side that CBO scored--1.3 to 3.9? That would be $900,000 per job.

Mr. President, I would say that, yes, we can do some things to improve this economy, but we are moving a political agenda; we are moving programmatic ideas. A lot of people might like to see some of these things become law, but they don't want to go through the entire budget process, to compete and debate. They just stick these programs into this emergency stimulus bill that goes straight to the debt, none of which is paid for, and then it is all debt. I don't think it is a good idea.

Good people might disagree, but I firmly believe it is not a good idea for my constituents. My phones are ringing off the hook against it. I don't believe it is good for my children, my grandchildren, or yours.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased today to support the confirmation of Mr. William J. Lynn, III, for the important position of Deputy Secretary of Defense. He will be the chief deputy to the Secretary of Defense, the largest Department of Government, with great responsibilities for weapons systems and to our men and women who serve in harm's way.

If confirmed, Mr. Lynn would be the thirtieth deputy secretary. I firmly believe that he is uniquely qualified for the position and would serve well in that post. He served as Under Secretary of Defense- Comptroller during President Clinton's administration from 1997 to 2001. He was widely commended for providing strong managerial emphasis on improving the Department's financial management.

In addition to his service as comptroller, he has served as Director for Program Analysis and Evaluation and as Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Budget. He has broad experience with many of the core issues within the Department of Defense.

My meeting with him was positive and I have heard people comment on his strong character. Many of the issues that come before the Department of Defense are contentious. Rather than basing decisions on merit, people often try to infect those decisions with politics. I believe he will stand firm to ensure that our men and women in uniform get the best equipment and training for the best value. This type of judgement is a critical attribute for a deputy. If the deputy is weak; if he compromises or tries to play politics with a defense contractor, or allows a Member of Congress or the executive branch to have undue influence, he can damage the reputation of the Department of Defense. More importantly, such influence can prevent our servicemembers from getting the best equipment at the best value in a timely manner.

He also has 6 years of experience working in the defense industry. He well understands the challenges facing both the defense industry and the Department of Defense.

I am convinced his experience in DOD, coupled with his experience in the defense industry, makes him a nominee we can support for this very important position.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think the Congressional Budget Office, our top adviser, advises us there will be some stimulus in the next 2 to 3 years. But over a 10-year period, our own budget office says the crowding out of private people being able to borrow money because the Government has already borrowed it, and the substantial interest payment on the economy as a result of taking out this debt, will result in a net negative growth in GDP over 10 years. We are talking about a short-term gain for a long-term negative and certainly in the next 10 years the stimulus is long since gone then, and we will have that debt burden every year thereafter because there is no plan to pay it back.

Mr. Gary Becker, Nobel Prize winner in economics, the University of Chicago, in the Wall Street Journal today raised this question:

How much will the stimulus package moving in the Congress

really stimulate the economy?

That is what he asked. The evaluations to date have been incomplete. This is what he says his conclusion is:

So our conclusion is that the net stimulus to the short-

term GDP will not be zero--

Certainly $800-plus billion cannot be zero. He goes on to say--

and will be positive, but the stimulus is likely to be modest

in magnitude. Some economists have assumed that every $1

billion spent by the government through the stimulus package

would raise short-term GDP by $1.5 billion. Or, in economics

jargon, that the multiplier is 1.5.

That seems too optimistic, given the nature of the spending

programs being proposed. We believe a multiplier well below

one seems much more likely.

He goes on to make some other points and raise questions about the nature of this package.

We have a budget process in this Congress. In the Senate, and the Budget Committee of which I am a Member--meeting right now, I just left the committee--we set a spending limit for America each year. That limit is supposed to be complied with unless we declare an emergency. When we declare

an emergency, then we can spend over the budget. I wish to say, first, we are getting in too much of a habit of declaring emergencies, tacking all kinds of spending programs onto those emergency programs and, as a result, we are collapsing the power and effectiveness of the budget process.

For example, we had over $100 billion on Katrina. A lot of that was needed, but all kinds of things not related to Katrina were added because if you add it onto an emergency spending bill you don't have to account for it. It does not have to compete with any other national spending priority. Otherwise, you have to go in through your committees and argue that this spending is justified.

I think when you look at other things such as the TARP spending last fall, $700 billion we authorized, and then authorized the second half of it earlier this year, that was outside the budget process. We are going to see that this stimulus, every penny of it, is on top of the largest debt we have ever had in America. The Congressional Budget Office scores the debt this year to be $1.2 trillion, without the stimulus. Last year, at $455 billion, we hit the highest deficit in the history of the country. So this is more than twice that added to it.

Then we are going to have another financial Wall Street bailout package presumably presented to us soon. It will also be spending outside the budget.

I wish to repeat: Every penny of the $1.2 trillion of the stimulus package will add to the U.S. Government debt. The debt burden is so high that CBO projects the gross domestic product 10 years from now will be even lower as a result of the passage of this legislation than if we did not pass it, over a 10-year period.

I do not believe we can continue to spend such large sums of money without knowing that the money is well spent, without having the kind of oversight and hearings we need. We are rushing programs through in great numbers. Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, our Democratic colleague, estimates there is $125 billion in what he calls bow wave money that will increase the spending permanently out of this bill; at least 125. Another one of our Senators says it will be $300 billion that will be continued and not be temporary. So there are seven budget points of order that will lie against this legislation. I expect to offer that.

It would mean we would have to vote 60 votes and those 60 votes would say we understand it violates the budget, but we want to spend it anyway. That is what the effort will be about.

Let me briefly point out the significance of the legislation. Everybody wants to do something. I understand that. We need to do some things. But we have to ask ourselves responsibly what has happened.

I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I believe we need to exceed the budget and to expend targeted, temporary money that can improve the economy and will make some positive steps. Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize winner, today said he does not believe this is an effective way to do so. Others have said the same. I believe greater jobs can be created at substantially less funding.

I make a point of order that the pending amendment offered by the Senators from Nebraska and Maine,

Mr. Nelson and Ms. Collins, would increase the on-budget deficit for the sum of the years 2009 through 2013 and the sum of the years 2009 through 2018. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to section 201(a) of S. Con. Res. 21, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2008.