Floor Statements

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wanted to say a few words today about the current debate over ``class,'' a term that has been ubiquitous in this election year. Its usage in political rhetoric is, I believe, misguided and wrong and even dangerous. Most prominently, we have a President who talks incessantly about class, particularly the middle class. Maybe you have noticed that.

He defines class strictly by your income. In the President's narrative, someone who makes $199,000 a year is a member of one class, and someone who makes $200,000 belongs to another class. Does that make sense? Indeed, each day the President is out on the campaign trial championing himself as the great protector of what he calls the middle class, and pitting those Americans against their fellow citizens by arguing that the wealthiest class is victimizing them through the Tax Code.

If wealthy people are not made to pay more, he argues, the middle class will be stuck in their current stations. What one class wins, he implies, the other class loses. In this, I believe he is wrong. Moreover, I believe such a formulation is contrary to four centuries of American history.

First, I think ``class'' is a loaded term that is not appropriate for our debates about income, mobility, and tax policy. Implying there is a rigid class structure in America suggests some people were born innately superior to others, and that where you were born is where you stay.

That is not what we believe in America. A true class-based society is one in which one ruling class employs another class that labors but cannot own property or move out of their class.

This is not who we are in America. We do not have an ingrained class system. There are no noble bloodlines. We do not have an aristocracy or commoners or people who are legally unable to own land, for example, because of their class. Spreading economic resentment weakens American values and ideals, and it ignores the uniquely meritocratic basis of our society where you can succeed if you work hard, and you can do well.

Generations arrived here in America to get away from class societies in Europe. They believed in that meritocracy. They wanted the opportunity to make it in the land of self-government and equal rights and opportunity, to work and compete and to build something of their own, something they could perhaps one day pass on to their children.

In America we believe everyone can achieve the American dream regardless of background. And how many rags-to-riches stories are there out there? There are countless. How many from one generation to the next, and by the third generation you had an incredibly more successful generation than the first. Think of all the people who had a big dream and built something or made something that changed lives; maybe a company that employs a lot of people or a product that makes life easier or maybe even just more fun. We have different talents to offer and different ideas of success and what we want to do with our lives, and that is all part of the American story.

As columnist Robert Samuelson noted recently, four modern-day Presidents--Obama, Clinton, Johnson, and Eisenhower--all came from very modest backgrounds. So we don't need the current President touring the country and defining every American's values and status based upon a class system he has made up.

If we want to talk about income and mobility, which is the basis of the class debate, let's do that. And that leads to my second point. Income in America is fluid; that is, there is ample evidence that people can and do move among income groups. Our economists study this. They divide our country into quintiles and they talk about how people move from one quintile into another quintile, and they do this throughout their life. You know, younger people start in the lower quintiles and as they get education and get work and then get improved work and more experience, they move into higher quintiles.

Take one statistic here. The Tax Foundation found from 1997 to 2007-- the 10-year period they studied--only 50 percent of the taxpayers who reached millionaire status did so more than one time. In other words, high income status is often the result of 1 or 2 years of financial success, frequently based on the sale of an asset or some other temporary event.

Here is another notable factoid: A Kauffman Foundation survey of more than 500 successful entrepreneurs found that 93 percent came from middle-income or lower income backgrounds. The survey notes that entrepreneurship did not run in the family for these people. Quoting from the survey:

The majority were the first in their families to launch a

business.

A Treasury Department study on income and mobility in America found during the 10-year period starting in 1996, roughly half of the taxpayers who started in the bottom 20 percent had moved up to a higher income group by 2005. Similarly, people in the top income group dropped to lower groups, thus making way for others to move up. The point is there is no such thing as a permanent middle class or any other class in America.

There are other measures of income mobility. As columnist Robert Samuelson noted, one litmus test for mobility in America is whether people rise above their parents economically, and this happens frequently. Citing a new report from the Pew Mobility Project, he notes that 84 percent of Americans exceed their parents' income at a similar stage in life. Income gains were ``sizable across the economic spectrum,'' he writes. Indeed, in the bottom fifth of income earners, median income grew by 74 percent over just this decade.

While income mobility has slowed during this economic downturn, the overarching point is that nobody in America is stuck where they are because of a ruling class of greedy wealthy people.

Here is my third point: To borrow a phrase from Congressman Paul Ryan, the real class threat is a class of bureaucrats and crony capitalists using their government connections to try to rig the rules and rise above everyone else.

One example is ObamaCare. Recently released documents show that industry lobbyists and Democrats worked very closely in drafting ObamaCare. After it became law, the Department of Health and Human Services granted approximately 1,700 temporary waivers from the new annual limit requirements of the law. When the Federal Government is handing out lucrative favors, it is easy to predict what will happen. Companies hire armies of lobbyists and politically connected organizations--in this case, primarily, labor unions--will get special treatment. And that is exactly what happened here.

It is not just ObamaCare. Cap-and-trade would have enriched politically connected energy firms. Even without cap-and-trade, many of Obama's political supporters have reaped huge benefits from the administration's green energy industrial policy. The Solyndra scandal demonstrates what can happen when government tramples free markets in a misguided attempt to pick economic winners and losers.

As University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales reminds us in his new book, ``A Capitalism for the People,'' being ``probusiness'' is not the same as being ``promarket.'' All too often, the Obama administration has embraced spending policies and regulations that favor certain businesses but are fundamentally antimarket. If a Federal policy is probusiness but antimarket, it is most likely an example of crony capitalism.

The irony here is remarkable. Even though President Obama tours the country advertising himself as the defender of the little guy and a guardian of the middle class, he has consistently embraced policies that promote crony capitalism.

That is not the type of capitalism that made this country so prosperous, and it is not the type of capitalism the American people support. Citizens across this country are eager for policies that promote free markets and equal opportunities for all businesses, all industries, all entrepreneurs, all people. Those are the principles upon which our country was founded. Americans firmly reject the idea that certain companies and industries should receive preferential treatment for political or ideological reasons. Centuries of evidence from around the world demonstrates crony capitalism leads to corruption, a decline of social trust, and economic stagnation. That is certainly not the future Americans want.

Instead of policies that favor politically connected entities and take even more money from successful Americans, let's clear the way for more opportunity and mobility in a true free market system. Higher taxes and more government are not the answers. We should not make it more difficult for Americans to get ahead.

We should certainly not believe Americans are to be distinguished by their income in any given year or be presumed to have different values or value because of that. To say America has a middle class presumes we have a lower class or an upper class. Think about it. You can't have a middle without something on either side. Is it true we have a lower class and a middle class and an upper class? Some Americans are better off financially than others. That is certainly true. But that is no basis for dividing us into arbitrary classes to favor one over another.

My guess is that all this talk about class, while it has a tendency to divide Americans, is more about trying to identify with the common man, and that is something all politicians try to do. ``I am just like you. I am just like the average guy.'' Abraham Lincoln talked about identifying with the common man. He said he thought God made a lot of them, and I think that is true. Most people in this country like to think of themselves as basic, common citizens, and they do not particularly like somebody identifying them as a class in order to suggest they are better or worse than somebody else.

That is why I think, even though this divides America, the discussion about class is probably simply an effort to say ``I am for you.'' And some politicians don't like to say ``I am for everybody'' because that would imply they are for people who are very successful. Well, why shouldn't we be for people who are very successful? They are probably people who have accumulated wealth because of something they have accomplished in life--usually by studying hard, working hard, sometimes by creating some special kind of product.

Take Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. They were smart people who created something people wanted and were willing to buy, and they got very wealthy because of that. Is that bad? Bill Gates has created a foundation, and he and his wife have contributed more to charity than probably any other thousand people you can name. That is a good thing. They have created more jobs than many other people in this country have. They have created products that have enabled us to lead much better lives. The same thing is true of Steve Jobs and thousands and thousands of other entrepreneurs. So there is nothing wrong with being successful, being rewarded for that, because most likely it has given many other people an opportunity.

There was a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal that talked about the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. The article noted they weren't a very impressive team before Michael Jordan came and the team wasn't making very much money and neither were any of the players. When Michael Jordan came, after he established how great he would be, he was given an enormous, almost unheard-of salary. Did the other players say: That is not fair? No. Actually, all the other players got big salary increases too--nothing like Michael Jordan, but they got huge salary increases. Why? Because he made the team better and it began to succeed and, eventually--you all know the story--the world championships, the whole franchise did well--the people selling popcorn in the stands, the people parking the cars, and certainly every one of the members of the team made much more money than they ever would have had Michael Jordan not come to the team. But Michael Jordan still made many times more than any of them did.

This is a point President John Kennedy made when he talked about reducing the tax rates in the country on business--on capital gains--so that businesses could create more wealth so they could do what? They could grow and hire more people. He said a rising

tide lifts all boats. If the economy is doing well, if we have wealthy people who are doing well, we have less wealthy who will also do better.

That is what America has always been about. We don't take it away from the person who makes a lot of money. Maybe it is because they are lucky with a God-given talent they have or their good looks and their acting ability. Whatever it is, those people generally participate in activities that create wealth for others as well. They also create products or services or even entertainment we enjoy. So Americans don't look askance at these people. We celebrate them. We are happy for their success. Frequently it helps us too, besides which they pay a lot of taxes.

Likewise, for those people who are less fortunate, I don't know of any politician who wants to talk about the lower class. That almost is a pejorative term. It is as though these are lesser people. Well, the reality is maybe it is somebody down on his or her luck. Maybe it is somebody just starting out so they are not making as much money as somebody who has been in business a lot longer. Maybe it is a student, for example, or somebody who suffered misfortune, somebody who doesn't have a good education, or maybe a recent immigrant to the country. There is nothing lesser about those people. We are all Americans. They may be in a lower income group, at least temporarily, but there is no reason to distinguish between the people in that income group and however the President defines the middle class.

Why is the middle class more deserving or special than people who don't make as much money as those in the middle class? The point is, people are deserving all up and down the economic ladder. It isn't just about money, anyway. The person who makes an average income--who provides for his family, provides them a good home, good tutelage as a parent, strong values, maybe sends them off to college and helps them to prepare for their life as a productive citizen--is just as important as the wealthy person in this country. A teacher may not make much money but influences the lives of thousands of young people to be better citizens in this country--more educated--and that influence goes far beyond the salary the individual teacher makes. So you can't judge value by how much money someone makes, and you certainly can't identify with one class and say: That is the class I am for.

The President, in particular, represents all Americans. He should be for all Americans. And I don't think there is anything called middle class values that are different from the values of other people in this country. Tell me what is different about the values of someone who the President identifies as middle class? Does that mean middle income? If so, what income and what year? Because a person will be in a lower income group one year, in a middle income group the next year, and maybe 10 years later in a higher income group. Has that individual's values changed? No. Americans are Americans, and it doesn't matter how much money we make in a given year. What matters is that as a country we have found a degree of success that others can only dream of because we create opportunity for everyone to succeed, and we teach that to our kids.

I think it is destructive for the leader of the country, the President, to be suggesting something else--that you should consider what class you are in in this country: If you are middle class, that is great, I am for you. Well, what about the other classes, and what about the person who is middle class today under the President's definition but wasn't yesterday and might not be tomorrow?

I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It is not what we do here in America. You can divide people for statistical purposes into income levels, into wealth levels, into levels of education. We divide ourselves for statistical reasons into all kinds of categories, but at the end of the day, we don't suggest that one group has different values than the other or that one is better than the other one. And I think that is the pernicious effect of the President's rhetoric--constantly talking about the middle class. I don't even know if I am in that group or not. Am I in the middle class? I make less money than the President suggests identifies the wealthy, that is for sure, but I don't think my values are any different or any better than those who make less money or more money than I do. In my view, money isn't even the measure of what this should be all about anyway.

I hope that as the campaign goes on, maybe we can focus a little bit more on what unites us rather than what divides us, on the values that I think we all subscribe to, and on the things that would make us a better country not just in economic terms but in other terms as well. And if we are focused on economic terms, then let's focus on those that will make us better off economically: a better education, a better home environment, strong communities, a government that is willing to help when that is necessary, and certainly governmental policies that reward what? That reward education; that reward hard work; that reward savings and investment; that reward entrepreneurship, people working to create something, to create a business; that reward job creation so that you don't have a law like ObamaCare that says: You are OK if you have 49 employees, but as soon as you have 50 employees, then here are a whole bunch of expensive burdens you are going to have to take on--tax burdens, penalties, and regulations. That is not something that favors building a business beyond 49 employees. It doesn't favor job creation beyond 49 employees. These are the kinds of issues we should be debating. What will make our country better both in economic terms and in all of the other terms that define us as a society?

I hope that as the campaign goes on, we will focus a lot more on what we hold in common, that we share, and that we can do better with, rather than those that divide us and especially that divide us in political terms.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, today I wish to speak about two related subjects. Both are very much in the news, and both relate to the fiscal condition in the United States and what happens on January 1 if the U.S. Congress and the President allow a tax increase to be imposed upon the American people that will amount to the largest tax increase in the history of our country--about $4.5 trillion over 10 years. That tax increase is slated to go into effect unless we stop it. The effect of that tax increase on economic growth, on job creation, and on our small businesses and families will be devastating unless we act. The other subject, which is also pertinent to tax policy, is a subject that has been raised by many in the Obama Presidential campaign relating to outsourcing of jobs. Let me speak to that first because it has a direct relationship to this question of taxation.

In today's Wall Street Journal, there is an op-ed piece by Arthur Laffer and Ford Scudder called ``The Tax Cliff is a Growth Killer.'' Let me quote just two sentences from it:

The United States faces economic collapse thanks to massive

tax increases on Jan. 1, and continued deficit spending for

years on end.

They go on to say:

The blunt reality is that we cannot have a prosperous

economy when government is overspending, raising tax rates,

printing too much money, overregulating and restricting the

free flow of goods and services across national boundaries.

Now, what does this have to do with outsourcing? There has been criticism of companies that send jobs to another country or that hire people in other countries to do work for them. The same thing can be said when a business no longer expands in the State in which it is headquartered or operating and moves part of its business to another State. We have seen our States actually compete for business. The reason they do this, in many cases, is because the business conditions under which they operate in the first State are no longer conducive to competition, for them to be able to make products or provide services that are competitive with those who are working to compete against them. So they have to go where labor is cheaper, where the costs are less, where the regulation is not as onerous, and where taxes are lower, perhaps--in other words, where the conditions for doing business are more favorable so they can continue to compete.

The same thing is true when jobs are sent overseas. The reality is American businessmen are not sitting around wondering how they can be evil, how they can fire American workers, how they can go overseas to do business. It is much easier to stay right here in the good old USA. For a whole lot of reasons, they make a lot of sacrifices to keep their businesses here. But there comes a point in time when American tax policy, regulatory policy, and the uncertainty of doing business here finally gets to the point where--in order to stay in business, in order to remain competitive--they have to find places elsewhere where they can do their work that enables them to remain competitive.

When we go to the store, and we are looking at the goods on the shelf, and we see the very same thing, where in one case it costs $5 and in the next case it costs $10, chances are we are going to buy the $5 product. If a company has to make that product overseas in order to stay competitive, that is exactly what they are going to do. It ends up helping the American consumer. It is not good for American workers who cannot work in that particular industry.

But what is the cause for it? Is it because there are entrepreneurs out there, business folks--your neighbors and mine--who want to somehow hurt American workers, who are not patriotic or who are evil people? Think about it. The answers, of course, are no. The only reason they are hiring work to be done in foreign countries is because that is how they can stay competitive, how they can offer that same product for $5, as their competitor does.

What causes them to have to do that? Well, the first thing is American tax policy. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Of all industrialized countries, we are No. 1. In this case, No. 1 makes it more difficult to do business. We have the most progressive tax system; that is, the people at the highest end pay the highest amount of taxes of anyone in any country in the industrialized world. When

you take the corporate tax rate and add to it the capital gains and dividends, we have the highest tax rate--the integrated tax rate is what they call it--in the industrialized world for dividends and the second highest for capital gains.

What about regulations? We impose far more in the way of regulatory burdens on our businesses--ranging from environmental regulations to labor regulations, you name it--than most of the other industrialized countries do.

What about uncertainty? Well, we have this new law called ObamaCare that has put a tremendous amount of burden on American businesses. They are either going to have to continue to provide insurance for their employees or pay a fine. They have to pay new taxes. There are some $800 billion in taxes under ObamaCare--some 21 different taxes.

The problem here is not that there are evil businessmen who hate American workers. They bend over backwards to keep their business here; it is a lot easier. But the reason sometimes they have to go abroad is because their government treats them unfairly compared to their competitors overseas. We tax them too much. We regulate them too much. And there is too much uncertainty.

So when we are debating this subject about outsourcing, about people abroad making products that are then sold in the United States, ask yourself the question: Why would an American company do that? The answer is, they do it when they have to, when their own government's policies make it impossible for them to compete effectively here in the United States.

That leads to the second. Why would the President be proposing to add more taxes, both on American businesses and American families, at a time when we are in the middle of a very severe economic downturn, and when the President himself a year and a half ago said: To raise taxes under these circumstances would be a blow to the economy? Again, he said: You don't raise taxes in a recession.

When he said those things, our gross domestic product growth was about 3 percent. We were growing at a rate of about 3 percent. Today, it is under 2 percent, and we still have 8.2 percent unemployment. So the circumstances today are, if anything, worse than they were a year and a half ago when the President said: We should not raise taxes because it will be a blow to the economy. You don't raise taxes in a recession.

So why would the President be proposing it now? And what is he proposing? He says we should raise taxes on any individual who makes over $200,000 a year and a family who makes over $250,000. We should raise capital gains taxes to the rate of 23.8 percent; dividends the same; the death tax to 45 percent. So your dad created a business, built it up; he passed away, you and your sister are the heirs, and the day he dies, Uncle Sam says: That will be 45 percent of the value of the business, please, minus whatever the exemption is. It is unconscionable we would do that in this country.

When the President was asked by Charlie Gibson in one of the Presidential debates, when he was campaigning the first time: Senator Obama, would you raise taxes on capital gains even if it did not bring in any more revenue--because economists all agree that frequently raising the rate actually results in less tax collection because people do not sell the property that would be subject to the tax under those circumstances--what did he answer? He said, yes, he would still raise it, even if it did not bring in more revenue. And the reason is because he wanted to redistribute the wealth from people who made money to other people to whom it would be given, presumably.

So this is not about deficit reduction as much as it is about a theology that we need to raise taxes, and we need to raise it on people who are the productive, successful people in our society who make money.

If you take the top quintile of taxpayers--the top 20 percent, high income earners--they already pay 90 percent of the taxes in the country. Is it fair that top 20 percent should pay 90 percent of the taxes? Well, you can argue whether it is fair, but I think for the President to say that is unfair, they should pay even more, raises the question: Well, how much more? Should they pay all of it? Should 20 percent of our citizens pay all of the taxes for everybody else? Nobody else has to pay anything? As it is, the rest of us only pay 10 percent.

So what is fair? Why is it fair to take away from people what they have earned and what they want to save in order to give it to somebody else or to have the government spend the money as if the government was wiser in spending money than the citizens are?

The reality is the people who are successful, who make money, create capital, which is then invested in businesses, and that investment promotes job creation and economic growth, raising the gross domestic product for all of us. That is the economics of success and it is the opportunistic society this country has held sacred for over two centuries. Give people an opportunity to succeed, and when they do, do they put their money--the money they earn--do they put it in a mattress? Well, not anymore. You either put it in a bank or you invest it with a mutual fund or in some other kind of investment.

What happens when that money is put in the bank or in the mutual fund? It creates capital for somebody else to use, to create a job, to invent a new product, whatever it might be. It helps business expand.

So why would you change your mind, a year and a half after you said it would be a blow to the economy, to now suggest raising taxes? And who are these people who make $200,000? Well, it turns out about a million of these people--940,000, to be exact--are business owners. These are the small business folks who create the jobs--most of the jobs coming out of the recession. In fact, they account for 25 percent of all jobs in America. A quarter of all of the jobs are by these very folks on whom you are going to raise the taxes.

I know some people said: Well, that is only a small percentage of the business owners, it is only 3 percent. Yes, and that 3 percent accounts for 53 percent of the income taxes paid. In other words, these are the businesses that are creating the jobs. They employ a quarter of all of the people in country. They are paying 53 percent of the taxes in this tax bracket. The reality is, when raising taxes on that group, you are going to make it more difficult for them to grow their businesses, to add more people.

Here is an example. A woman by the name of Karen Madonia, who is the CFO of a family business in Aurora, IL--it is called Illco, and it supplies ventilation and heating and air conditioning and refrigeration equipment--testified before the House Small Business Committee in May. Among the things she said was--and I am quoting her now:

We don't have money sitting in the bank to pay more taxes--

all our profit is invested in the business. If we have to pay

more taxes, that means we can't hire workers or buy trucks

and inventory.

That is typical of small businesses. The money is plowed back into the business. And when the owner passes away, it goes to his heirs--and then subject to the kind of tax we are talking about here? That would be devastating to this kind of business.

One of the objections from those who support the President's idea of raising taxes is that: Well, the Bush tax cuts benefited the wealthy more than anybody else. Bear in mind that the Bush tax cuts applied to everybody. That is the tax rate that has been in existence now for a decade, and everybody's taxes were reduced to some extent.

They say: Well, that contributed to the deficit. How much did it contribute to the deficit? The Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, recently issued a report, and in that report they calculated the difference between the projections of a surplus and then the resulting deficit and what was the reason for that. Do you know what they found? That the amount of tax relief to this top 20 percent of taxpayers--the high income earners--accounted for all of 4 percent of the deficit. And how much did the new spending and the interest cost on that spending account? Over 12 times as much. So the reality is the Bush tax cuts, which helped everyone, did not help the wealthy more than everybody else, did not contribute to the deficit, and, in fact, those taxpayers are now paying 94 percent of income taxes, up from 81 percent before

the Bush tax cuts went into effect. So that high income group is paying more now in taxes than it did before the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

My point here is, when the President demagogs this issue, suggesting that somehow it was only the rich who got the benefit of the Bush tax cuts and we have to take that money away from them, they are paying more than they did before, and it only accounted for 4 percent of the deficit. And these are the very people who are creating the jobs in America today. So why would we want to raise taxes at this point on anybody, including on this group of people?

My final point: Again, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has issued a report in which they say that this fiscal cliff--the combination of across-the-board sequestration and the expiration of the existing Tax Code on January 1--will result in a new recession; that we will have growth next year of only one-half of 1 percent if we allow that to happen. Why would the President be willing to raise taxes on America and take a chance that we are going to drive ourselves even deeper into economic trouble than we already are?

I urge my colleagues to work together to forestall these new tax increases on all Americans and to forestall the sequestration--a combination of which will drive us back into recession.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Arkansas (Mrs. Murkowski), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

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

Mr. President, yesterday the Senate voted by a wide margin to proceed to Leader Reid's Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act.

Everyone in this Chamber claims to support both small businesses and tax relief, and Republicans know the best way to do that is to stop the $4.5 trillion tax hike that looms over the economy, and it is crippling job creators.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to solve the problem: Vote on and pass amendment No. 2491, introduced by Senators Hatch and McConnell and cosponsored by myself and several colleagues.

The amendment is simple. It prevents the looming expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief for 1 year, and lays out specific conditions for progrowth tax reform in the coming months. It is similar to the approach the House will take later this month.

In other words, the Hatch-McConnell amendment stops income tax rates from rising. It stops capital gains and dividends rates from rising. It stops the job-killing death tax from rising and the related exemption from falling. And it prevents the alternative minimum tax from engulfing millions more middle-income Americans.

It is an amendment that would protect our economy more than any debt- financed stimulus bill or other kind of short-term tax credit that the Obama administration could dream up. It is an amendment that, given the history of bipartisan support for tax relief in this Chamber, should pass the Chamber today.

To be clear, stopping these tax hikes for 1 year is not a perfect solution. My preference is to continue the current rates as we move toward comprehensive tax reform for both individuals and corporations. But let's be clear about what the other options are.

First, we could let the top two marginal tax brackets increase from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent respectively. That is what President Obama and Leader Reid wish to do.

That strategy means that almost 1 million business owners will be hit with a massive tax increase on New Year's Day. And that is according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. That strategy means 53 percent of business income will be subjected to a tax hike in order to fund the historic levels of spending from the current administration. The strategy guarantees more jobs will be lost, that unemployment will stay high, and that economic growth will remain sub par.

Let me repeat that. Over half--53 percent--of all business income would be subjected to this tax increase.

If we do nothing, the current code expires and Americans will see over $4.5

trillion taken from the private sector over the next decade. This will help push us into a recession next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For any Member of this Chamber who cares about job creation and economic recovery, these two options should be unacceptable. They certainly were for President Obama in 2010. Less than 2 years ago, when President Obama signed legislation into law preventing taxes from going up on any American, he noted that tax hikes, and I am quoting here, ``would have been a blow to our economy just as we are climbing out of a devastating recession.''

Evidently, 40 Senate Democrats agreed with the President since they too voted to stop taxes from increasing in 2010. What is the difference now? Our economy is in worse shape, growing now at less than 2 percent. At that time it was 3 percent. So there is even more reason not to raise taxes now than there was in 2010 when the President thought it was a bad idea.

I want to echo the sentiments of Senator McConnell this morning. Even though the President's plan is bad for the economy, we should vote on it and we should vote on the Hatch amendment today. Let's show the American people where we stand. A unanimous consent agreement to do just that was blocked this morning by the majority leader even though President Obama said the following 2 days ago:

So my message to Congress is this: Pass a bill. I will sign

it tomorrow. Pass it next week; I'll sign it next week. Pass

it next--well, you get the idea.

We should follow President Obama's suggestion. We should vote on these proposals. Let's vote on his proposal. Let's vote on Senator Hatch's proposal. Senator Hatch's proposal will stop taxes from going up on any American. The other one will burden nearly 1 million business owners with job-killing higher taxes. I think Americans deserve to know where their elected officials stand on these critical issues.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may address the Senate as in morning business for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, ``fairness'' has become one of the watch words in this year's political debates, both at home and abroad. The term echoes throughout Europe, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure to come up with billions in bailouts for troubled eurozone countries. Her insistence on reasonable reforms is considered unfair by many in those countries, even though Germans have sacrificed to live within their means, for example, by forgoing wage increases to avoid the problems of their neighbors.

In the United States, President Obama and his supporters have used fairness as a justification for various redistributionist policies, including a massive tax hike, a government takeover of health care, complex financial regulations, and new government spending programs.

The President and his supporters believe the Federal Government should pursue policies that will result in economic equality. But forced equality is inherently unfair. It necessarily relies on the wrong incentives that penalize success. More fundamentally, it is based on a shallow, materialistic definition of ``fairness.''

Aristotle wrote: ``The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.''

Contrary to the goal President Obama pursues, the key determinant of lasting happiness and success is not whether you have as much money as your neighbor, regardless of the differences between you. Rather, it is what American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks calls earned success and meritocratic fairness.

Much research shows people are happiest when they have the opportunity to succeed and earn their rewards. Sometimes we take risks and succeed. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we defer gratification by saving our money. Maybe our neighbor does not. Some of us are better at making money than others. Some deliberately earn less to enjoy other pursuits in life. Decisions about families result in very different economic circumstances.

When the government tries to equalize everyone or take all the trouble out of life by taking care of our every need, it makes earned success and meritocratic fairness that much harder to achieve. When government aims to smooth over every rough patch, it eliminates the experiences that make us resourceful and resilient--the experiences that teach us how to work harder or smarter for our rewards.

Those of us who believe in earned success and meritocratic fairness believe the best way to promote these concepts is through the free enterprise system, a system in which opportunity is sacred and excellence is rewarded. We reject the notion that it is fair to impose interventionist and redistributionist policies to guarantee material equality. As Brooks notes: ``For the overwhelming majority of Americans, fairness means rewarding merit, not spreading the wealth around.''

In his new book, ``The Road to Freedom,'' Brooks asks some fundamental questions related to the future of earned success, the pursuit of happiness, and meritocratic fairness:

First, ``Will we see a growing bureaucracy or more entrepreneurship?''

Second, ``Will we be a culture of redistribution or a culture of aspiration?''

Third, ``Will we be a nation of takers or a nation of makers?''

These are serious questions that will be answered in the long run-- not in 1 day or 1 year or in one session of Congress. But for now, I would like to focus on the short term. How do recent government policies help answer these questions about what is fair?

How does government spending, and the staggering debt that comes with it, affect bureaucracy and entrepreneurship? How does a redistributionist tax policy affect the aspirations of job creators and innovators? And how does our burdensome regulatory regime affect the so-called ``makers'' in American society?

Let's take these Brooks' questions one at a time. First, will we see a growing bureaucracy or more entrepreneurship? We all know entrepreneurship requires opportunity and private investment. But a burdensome Federal Government reduces opportunity and it crowds out private investment. Let's take a look at the growth of government under President Obama. Since his inauguration in January of 2009, the Federal debt has increased by more than $5 trillion, and it is rapidly approaching $16 trillion in total.

Meanwhile, the Federal budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion 4 years in a row. The highest deficit before President Obama was less than half that

amount. How did our deficit and debt skyrocket so quickly? Well, for starters, President Obama's economic policies have resulted in slower GDP growth, which means less tax revenue flowing to the Treasury and more Americans requiring government assistance. So government income is down.

Second, the President has dramatically increased government spending. Prior to the 2008 fiscal crisis, the 40-year average for Federal outlays was less than 21 percent of our gross domestic product. But under President Obama, spending soared over 25 percent of the GDP in 2009. It has remained above 24 percent since then. This new spending has grown the Federal bureaucracy and it has increased the regulatory burden on families and businesses.

For example, the President's 2,700-page health spending law created or codified at least 159 new boards, bureaucracies, and programs, along with thousands of new pages of government regulations and more than 20 new taxes. A recent Bloomberg News report notes that the President's health care law imposes $813 billion in taxes on middle-income families and job creators, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In total, it has imposed $24 billion in new regulatory costs on the private sector and States, as well as almost $59 billion in annual paperwork hours on the economy.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank law is a similar story. It is still creating countless new rules and its direct compliance costs have already exceeded $7 billion. Indeed, according to the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank will force more than 26,000 employees to comply with the law.

Other Obama initiatives have failed to pass the Congress, but likewise would have expanded the bureaucracy and funneled resources from the private sector to the government. These initiatives include cap and trade, the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act, and the more recent Paycheck Fairness Act. We need to get back to basics.

As Congressman Ryan has said, we need to make it easier for people to employ their ``right to rise.'' That means leaving more money in the private sector and reducing the size of the Washington bureaucracy. We can start by stopping tax hikes and bills such as ObamaCare that suck needed resources out of the economy and give unaccountable regulators immense power.

Let's consider Brooks' second question. Will we be a culture of redistribution or a culture of aspiration? Public policy has a direct impact on economic aspiration and economic mobility. America has traditionally been an aspirational society with high levels of mobility. Although President Obama has made class warfare a central campaign tactic, we do not have a class system here in America. We do not have an American aristocracy or noble bloodlines. Because of our meritocratic system, people in America can and do jump from one income level to another throughout their lifetimes, from the one place to another. But with unemployment stuck above 8 percent now for 41 consecutive months, and the Obama administration's preference for redistributionist policies, there is real concern that America's culture of aspiration may gradually be replaced by a culture of redistribution.

Look at the tax issue. President Obama wants to increase the top marginal income tax rates in order to expand the entitlement state and promote what he calls greater ``fairness'' in society. But what about the economic consequences of taking more money from successful people as the economy continues to struggle? The Joint Committee on Taxation has told us that allowing the top two marginal income tax rates to rise from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively, will hit 53 percent of net positive income and just under 1 million business owners overall.

Raising marginal tax rates is no way to encourage aspiration or job creation. It certainly imposes a wet blanket on the kind of risk taking that has helped build America. It is merely redistribution under the guise of social justice. The President's approach to investment is also hostile to aspiration and risk taking. He has endorsed raising the top capital gains rate from 15 to 23.8 percent, and he also wants to raise the top rate on dividends from 15 to 43.4 percent.

The so-called ``Buffet tax'' is yet another method of hiking taxes on investment. All of these taxes on investment reduce the value of the asset by reducing the aftertax return. Our private economy runs on business investment, which is highly sensitive to tax rates, especially on capital gains and dividends.

Some of those who prefer higher taxes have argued that if taxes do not go up, those in the top brackets will invest and save more, but that will not do much for job creation and economic growth. Well, that is factually incorrect. Saving does not mean throwing your money under a mattress or burying it in your backyard. Anyone who saves money either puts it into the bank, where it is lent to someone, often a business, so they can hire more people, purchase equipment or invest in stocks and bonds, or the money is directly invested in a stock or a bond, which provides capital for the same purpose.

In other words, savings actually puts the money saved to work providing capital for someone to do something with it. And that creates economic growth. If that increment of income is instead taken from those who earned it and spent by the government, the effect on the economy will almost always be a net negative. If we want to encourage aspiration, innovation, and the job creation that comes with those, is it a good idea to raise the capital gains rate by almost 59 percent and nearly triple taxes on dividends, even though these profits have already been taxed once at the corporate level? The President and some Congressional Democrats think so, but I strongly disagree.

Here is Brooks' third question: Will we be a Nation of takers or a Nation of makers? Many have lamented the decline of the manufacturing base in America. Although the United States is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, there is no doubt that policies from Washington have made it more difficult for manufacturers--and those are the economy's foremost makers--to compete in global markets. The list of these policies is long. Let me explain a few.

First, the corporate tax rate. At over 39 percent, our combined corporate tax rate is now the highest in the industrialized world. Other countries are cutting their corporate tax rates to encourage economic growth, but we are doing nothing on the tax front to follow their lead and attract more investment to the United States. Is it any wonder jobs are moving overseas? If not, whose fault is it, the company trying to return a profit to its investors or the government which makes it impossible to compete with foreign corporations?

Look at energy. Manufacturers rely on cheap sources of energy to produce products cheaply. Yet President Obama has stood in the way of domestic production of energy such as the Keystone XL Pipeline and worked tirelessly to punitively raise taxes on the oil and gas industries. New regulations on coal-fired powerplants, emissions of greenhouse gases, and industrial boilers will also hurt our economy.

Simply put, domestic makers are being hurt by the President's anti- energy and proregulatory agenda. Is this fair? Why should Americans pay more than the real economic cost of available American energy? And is it fair that a few corporations make billions because the government mandates that we buy ethanol from them, just to cite one example?

Now let's turn to labor. Manufacturers are also being burdened by union-dictated rules including from the National Labor Relations Board such as the ``ambush elections rule'' and new rules on the establishment of ``micro unions'' within the workplace.

With anticompetitive tax, energy, and labor policy, it will be increasingly difficult for our country to compete as a Nation of makers. These are precisely the kinds of policies that encourage employers to move jobs overseas, which hurts American workers and the greater economy. And this is required in the name of fairness?

We are also trending toward being a Nation of ``taking.'' The government is the biggest taker. But a majority of Americans now take more than they contribute. In tax year 2009, 51 percent of Americans paid zero Federal income

taxes, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation--over half of Americans. And these citizens take much more than their follow citizens in government benefits.

Look at food stamps, for example. As my friend Senator Sessions has pointed out, ``food stamp spending has quadrupled since 2001. It has doubled just since 2008. A program that began as a benefit for 1 in 50 Americans is now received by 1 in 7.'' Spending on food stamp welfare has increased 100 percent since President Obama took office. Some 80 percent of all spending in the recently passed farm bill will go toward food stamps.

In total, there are 69 means-tested Federal welfare programs costing taxpayers $940 billion every year, including both Federal programs and State contributions to those programs. The number of Americans living off the wealth of ``makers'' keeps growing and growing. There are nearly twice as many government workers today as there are in the manufacturing sector, meaning that there are more government workers than people making products and paying their salaries. Is that fair?

As economist Stephen Moore noted, ``This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960 when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing, and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.''

The growth of taxpayer-funded dependency is directly connected with the growth in the economy. The more we make as a Nation, the more wealth we generate and the less people who rely on welfare to survive. To get there we need aggressive progrowth policies in place to encourage free enterprise and discourage a Nation of taking. It is neither fair to the makers nor those who must rely on the government for the President to impose policies that reduce economic growth, reduce job creation, reduce savings and investment, and reduce opportunity and freedom.

In conclusion, free enterprise and meritocratic policies are consistent with our founding principles. As Thomas Jefferson declared in his first inaugural address, ``A wise and frugal government . . . shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.''

Will America remain the country our Founders envisioned or will we become a country where fairness means equal outcomes for all dictated by the government? Will we make it easier or harder for people to earn their success? And will the American people be happier if allowed to pursue their dreams, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, or if the government tries to force equal economic outcomes? Which is more moral, which is more fair, which is more American?

Mr. President, regarding yesterday's Supreme Court decision, there have been a variety of very interesting editorials, op-ed pieces, and blogs--many of them erudite and very useful for the analysis of the Court's opinion. Of course, it will take a long time for us to know precisely how all of this will work out over time. I thought I might refer to a couple of these opinions and op-eds and put them in the Record for people to see what a sampling might look like so they can more thoroughly analyze the opinion and then pose a question at the end.

I start with one of my friends, and I think one of the best columnists, even nationally, that I know. He writes for my local paper, the Arizona Republic. His name is Bob Robb, and he writes in his column on June 29:

Roberts' decision controlled the outcome, even though it

was fully joined by no other justice. Here's what he

concluded:

The federal government has no power under the

Constitution's Commerce Clause to require individuals to

purchase health insurance, as Obamacare does. However, the

federal government does have the power to impose a financial

penalty on people for not complying with the mandate the

federal government has no authority to impose. That's because

the penalty is actually a tax under Congress' constitutional

taxing authority.

However, the penalty is not a tax for purposes of the Anti-

Injunction Act, which would preclude the court from

considering the legality until someone actually pays it.

Obviously, Mr. President, these dilemmas require some explanation. It may be--and this is my phrasing, not Bob Robb's--this is a good example of where the phrase of ``legal legerdemain'' comes into play.

Robb continues:

If Congress has no authority to require people to do

something, such as purchase health insurance, how can it

penalize them for not doing it?

And how can money owed exclusively because of failing to

comply with an unconstitutional mandate be regarded as a tax

and not a penalty?

He goes on to say:

The purpose of the constitutional taxing power is to raise

the money to operate the government. The clause reads:

``Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes . .

. to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and

general welfare of the United States.''

The purpose of the penalty for not buying health insurance,

however, isn't to raise revenue. The government would prefer

not to get any money from it at all. The purpose is to compel

compliance with the mandate that Roberts says the government

has no power to impose.

There is nothing in the Constitution that can remotely be

construed as giving Congress the power to tax people, not to

raise revenue but to punish them for failing to do what

Congress would like them to do.

And Robb concludes:

If Congress cannot do something directly, it shouldn't be

able to do it indirectly through taxation.

Mr. President, this raises a very important question. If the taxing power can be used to institute mandates such as ObamaCare, the real question is, What limits are there on such taxing power? I believe this may be one of the most important unanswered questions in Justice Roberts' opinion.

One attempt to square the circle, in effect, was by a writer named Joshua Hawley in the Daily Caller in his column entitled ``What's behind Roberts' surprising decision?'' I note that Hawley comes to this with some credentials, being described as a former law clerk to Chief Justice Roberts as well as an associate law professor at the University of Missouri. In effect, as I read Hawley's piece, he said Justice Roberts actually constrained Congress's power dramatically by, first of all, drawing a clear line on the reasonable and proper extension of the commerce clause power. But he also said the taxing authority Roberts uses to justify Congress's action in ObamaCare is actually very limited.

In fact, he says that Roberts attempted to make this case sui generis--that is the Latin phrase for ``one of a kind''--and that only in this particular case would the taxing authority be permissibly used for Congress to require the people to do something.

I hope Hawley's analysis is correct. I am not so sure it is. Roberts' opinion certainly will make it more politically difficult for Congress to pass things that extend its authority because it will have to be clothed in the cloak of a tax, and Congress doesn't generally like to pass new taxes on people. But Congress and the lawyers who advise us are pretty clever about phrasing legislation in such a way that it would meet constitutional challenges.

Now that we have a new example of a power that we might exercise-- namely, this expanded taxing power--I suspect we will see efforts in the future to clothe our legislation under the guise of that taxing power. If so, the constraints in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion would be no constraints at all.

There is an old saying that hard cases make bad law. I don't know that this was all that hard of a case, but it clearly resulted in a lot of different points of view from the Justices, from which one could conclude that at least they saw it as a hard case. I just hope the end result is not bad law, as I have suggested it could be here today.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks the following pieces: first, the Robert Robb column dated June 29 from the Arizona Republic; second, the Wall Street Journal editorial of June 28, ``ObamaCare and the Power to Tax''; a Rich Lowry piece in National Review Online dated June 29, ``The Umpire Blinks''; a National View Online piece by The Editors dated June 28, ``Chief Justice Roberts's Folly''; and the Joshua Hawley piece dated June 28 from the Daily Caller.

Mr. President, I also refer people to an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal, ``A Triumph and Tragedy for the Law,'' by David Rivkin, Jr., and Lee Casey, both fine lawyers who frequently opine on matters of this sort.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, might I ask my colleague to yield, if I could add one other question to his very important question for my colleague from South Carolina.

I have a recollection that during one of the hearings the Senator from South Carolina specifically asked the Secretary of Defense what the consequence would be, and I recall he had a very dramatic response. I wonder if the Senator might share that with us as well.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. President, I didn't hear all the remarks of my colleague from Kansas, but I think what I have to say will follow on directly.

I saw a prominent news magazine, the cover of which had a likeness of President Obama, and the title was ``The Imperial Presidency'' or ``The Imperial President,'' and the theme of it was this President seems to believe that by Executive order or Executive action he can simply do what he wants to do irrespective of whether the Congress has passed a law authorizing it or has in some other way directed the President to carry out a particular policy.

When the President takes his oath of office to see that the laws of the country are faithfully executed, that is a requirement of his job. Our three-branch government has the legislative branch and the President jointly deciding what the law is to be, when Congress passes the law and the President signs it into law. It then has the President required to execute those laws.

Now, he doesn't do it personally, of course. He does it with the Department of Justice. If it is something related to our national parks, then it would be the Department of the Interior, and so on. But the Department of Justice has a big role to play in this, as does the Department of Homeland Security in respect to immigration laws because the Department of Homeland Security has now taken over all of the immigration functions, and that relates to customs, to issuing visas and, of course, enforcing the laws against illegal immigration as well.

So it is not up to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security or the Attorney General or the President to decide whether to enforce a law of the country. That is their responsibility. Then the Supreme Court resolves differences about the meanings of the statutes, their application, and whether they are constitutional.

Earlier this week--yesterday--the Supreme Court determined the constitutionality of a law the State of Arizona had passed to deal with the problem of illegal immigration in my State of Arizona. It is a serious problem there. About half of all the people who cross the border do so in the Tucson sector, and the results of that on Arizona have been devastating over the years: the damage to the environment, creating forest fires; the problem of the people who try to cross the border in the summer and end up dying in the desert because of its very harsh environment; the people who are brought across the border by unscrupulous coyotes, they are called--the smugglers--who then badly mistreat them, hold them hostage from their families, perhaps in Mexico or Central America and brutally mistreat them in many cases; the problems of crime that law enforcement has to deal with, the hospitalization and medical treatment they are required to receive under the law. All of these things have had a dramatic negative impact on my State.

As a result, the State legislature said: To the extent the Federal Government is not enforcing the law in our State, we will try to help fill that gap in cooperation and coordination with the Federal Government. So they passed S.B. 1070. A key feature of that, which was the cooperation between law enforcement, was upheld by the Supreme Court. But what has been the Obama administration's reaction to that? The Obama administration has reacted by saying: Well, we don't like your ruling and, therefore, we are simply not going to cooperate with the State of Arizona as we have been in the past or any other State that has laws like Arizona, even if you, the Supreme Court, say it is constitutional.

The petulance and the arrogance of this are something the American people have to judge, but from a law enforcement perspective, to me, this suggests the administration is creating some very serious problems. It was one thing for the administration to say, as they did last week, as to the 800,000 or 900,000 students primarily who came here because their parents brought them here illegally, we are going to find a way, in effect, to suspend their deportation so they can go to school or work here; we are just not going to apply the law to them. But it is quite another for it to say: By the way, we are going to treat all the other illegal immigrants here the same way--the 10 million to 12 million people who have been in the United States for a while, those who crossed the border some time ago.

In effect, that is what the administration has said. Even if local law enforcement, such as the Phoenix Police Department, has the right to stop someone they see weaving down the road in the manner of a drunk driver, and they stop that individual and determine they are driving while intoxicated and then ask to see their driver's license; and if the individual cannot produce an Arizona driver's license--which is already a violation of Arizona law today--but if, for example, the individual says: Here is my Matricula card from the Mexican Embassy, that may be reason for the officer to believe that individual is not here legally.

So in addition to driving while intoxicated and not having a valid Arizona driver's license, the police officer, who now has reason to believe that individual may not be an American citizen, ordinarily then would take that individual's name, call it in to a Federal database--I think it is up in Vermont or New Hampshire--and there is verification that either the individual is or is not in the United States legally. If the person is not here legally and hasn't been convicted or accused of a major crime, they are turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, which is the part of Homeland Security that is supposed to take these illegal immigrants and decide what to do with them. In most cases, they are simply removed from the United States or deported.

But now the administration is saying we are not going to do that anymore. We don't even want to know whether the individual is an illegal immigrant. We are not going to check, and we are not going to allow you access to the database to check. Up to now, the Phoenix Police Department or the Maricopa County or Cochise County Sheriff could call up the database and say: We have the name of an individual; is this person legal.

The administration is now saying it is not even going to allow Arizona to check. So, Mr. President, this is a condition which cannot be allowed to stand. Where the administration is not enforcing the laws, the Congress is going to have to take what action we need to take to ensure the President enforces the laws, as he is sworn to do.