Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Utah for his leadership on this issue.

I am proud to stand with Senator Lee, Senator Rubio, and with so many others. I can tell my colleagues that in the State of Texas, Texans overwhelmingly understand that ObamaCare isn't working, that this legislation is failing and it is hurting the American people.

When we look at jobs, there is no legislation currently in effect that is damaging the economy more or damaging jobs more than ObamaCare. In direct response to the law, 41 percent of small business owners have held off plans to hire new employees. Thirty-eight percent said they pulled back on plans to grow their businesses. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that 71 percent of small businesses say ObamaCare makes it harder to hire workers.

Beyond that, one of the most pernicious aspects of this law is that it is forcing more and more employees to be moved to part-time employment, to be moved to working 29 hours a week or less to get out of the ObamaCare 30-hour threshold.

In 2013, employers have added more part-time employees, averaging 93,000 a month, seasonally adjusted, than full-time workers. And it is important to understand who it is that is moved to part-time work, who it is that is hurt by ObamaCare. It is the most vulnerable among us. It is not the CEOs. It is not the wealthy. It is young people, Hispanics, African Americans, single moms. According to the most recent census data, in 2011 the poverty rate for those who worked full-time was only 2.8 percent. The poverty rate for those working less than full-time year-round was 16.3 percent.

I am reminded of earlier this year when we were debating the issue of ObamaCare and I read from a newspaper article out of the State of Oklahoma that quoted a single mom who is working in a fast food restaurant. She and all of her coworkers had their hours forcibly reduced to 29 hours a week or less. This single mom said: I have two little kids at home. I can't feed my kids on 29 hours a week, and neither can the other single moms who are struggling to make ends meet.

Beyond the impact on jobs, on the economy, and beyond those being forced into part-time work, we also have the compliance costs. According to Federal agency estimates, ObamaCare will add paperwork burdens totaling nearly 190 million hours or more every year. To put that in perspective, Mount Rushmore, which took 14 years to build, could be constructed 1,547 times with the paperwork ObamaCare requires in 1 year.

Not only do we see jobs being hurt, the economy being hurt, workers being hurt, hours being reduced, paperwork going up, but we are seeing premiums going up--premiums going up far too high--and it is hitting those who are suffering the most.

On Monday, Florida's insurance commissioner told the Palm Beach Post that insurance rates will rise by 5 to 20 percent in the small-group market and by 30 to 40 percent in the individual market. As those who are at home in Florida watching what is happening, as they are seeing their insurance rates go up--they are going up because of the impact of this failed law.

The Ohio Department of Insurance announced that ObamaCare in Ohio will increase the individual market health premiums by 88 percent. If a person in Ohio right now is seeing their premiums go up, they can thank the men and women of the U.S. Congress.

According to the Wyman Firm, looking at young people, young people in particular are hurt by ObamaCare. The Wyman Firm estimates that 80 percent of Americans age 21 to 29 earning more than $16,000 will pay more out-of-pocket for coverage under ObamaCare than they pay today. If young people at home are watching this today and wondering how they are going to get a job, how they are going to climb the economic ladder, how they are going to achieve the American dream, ObamaCare is driving up their health care premiums right now.

We all know that at the time ObamaCare was being debated, the President promised the American people: If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. The facts have conclusively proven that wrong. According to a February 2013 report by the Congressional Budget Office, 7 million people will lose their employer-sponsored insurance. McKinsey & Company, a very well-regarded consulting firm, found that 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering health insurance in the years after 2014.

This bill isn't working, and I would note there is growing bipartisan consensus on that front. As the facts have come in, the American people have kept an open mind, have looked at this bill, and have seen that as it is being implemented, it is not working, it is hurting the economy, and it is hurting jobs. According to an ABC-Washington Post poll, in 2010, 74 percent of moderate conservative Democrats--there are a significant number of Democrats who describe themselves as moderate or conservative--in 2010, 70 percent of them supported ObamaCare. Yet, in July, just 46 percent supported ObamaCare.

Not only that, we have seen the lead Senate author of ObamaCare--a senior Democrat in this body--describe ObamaCare as headed toward a ``huge train wreck.'' We have seen unions--

which initially supported ObamaCare--over and over turning as they realize the consequences. In April the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers called for ``repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act to protect our employers, our industry, and our most important assets, our members and their families.'' If we listen to the voices of unions, unions are saying ObamaCare is failing; it is not working. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers released a white paper in July explaining that ObamaCare ``threatens to harm our members by dismantling multiemployer health plans.'' And then--really quite striking--James Hoffa, Jr., the president of the Teamsters Union, wrote a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi stating that ObamaCare ``will destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other hard-working Americans.'' Why? Well, Mr. Hoffa explained that ObamaCare is destroying the 40-hour workweek that has been the backbone of the American middle class.

If we trust the voices of unions, if we have a concern for the American middle class, then listen to the bipartisan voices that are rising up saying that ObamaCare isn't working.

Most strikingly, we have President Obama himself, who just a few weeks ago was forced to unilaterally and without legal authority delay implementation of ObamaCare for large corporations, for companies with more than 50 employees--he unilaterally moved the employer mandate until after the next election. I would suggest there are at least two things we can derive from President Obama's decision to do that:

No. 1, if ObamaCare were a good thing, if it were working, we can be sure President Obama would want it to go into full effect before the next election. He would want to take credit with the American people for the benefits of this signature bill. The fact that the President was forced to concede that the wheels are coming off and to move the employer mandate until after the next election I would suggest is highly revealing.

No. 2, it raises the obvious followup question: Why is President Obama willing to grant a waiver for giant corporations but not for hard-working American families, not for the men and women who are struggling to make ends meet, who are climbing the economic ladder, who want, like their parents and grandparents before them, to achieve the American dream? ObamaCare is standing in their way.

So what are we to do about it? Well, the most important constitutional check and balance that Congress has on an overreaching Executive is the power of the purse. The Framers of the Constitution wisely gave authority over expenditures of money to the Congress, and that is why the Senator from Utah, the Senator from Florida, and I, among many others, are standing together and saying: This isn't working, and Congress should defund it.

In 62 days the continuing resolution that funds the Federal Government will expire. Each of the three of us, along with a number of others, has publicly stated that under no circumstances will we support a continuing resolution that funds one penny of ObamaCare. If 41 Members of this body stand together and make that same statement or if 218 Members in the House of Representatives stand together and take that same position, we can do something different than we have seen this year.

Over the past couple of years we have seen 39, 40, 41 votes to repeal ObamaCare, all of which have been effectively symbolic because none of them had a real chance of passage. With the continuing resolution, we have a chance to successfully defund ObamaCare. Right now we don't have the votes in this institution. If the vote were held today, we would not hold 41 Senators to defund ObamaCare. But we have 62 days until September 30, and every one of us takes very seriously our obligation to represent our constituents. If in the next 62 days we see what I believe we are going to see, which is the American people rising up en masse--hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans standing up and saying: It isn't working, it is hurting our jobs, it is hurting our economy, it is hurting our health care, it is making our lives worse, and we need to defund it--if enough Americans speak out and demand of their elected officials that we do the right thing, I am confident we will. I am confident that Republicans will, and I am hopeful that Members of the Democratic Party will as well, that every one of us will.

I believe the American people should hold their elected officials accountable, and that most assuredly includes me. It includes all of us. We should be held accountable by our constituents. The American people know this bill isn't working. There is bipartisan agreement on it. We have the potential in the next 62 days to show real leadership-- not to give a speech, not to give a meaningless, symbolic vote, but, if we stand together, to actually defund it.

Let me make one final point. Those who disagree with the position that is being taken by Senator Lee and Senator Rubio and me and say that taking this stand will mean Republicans will be blamed for a government shutdown, let me be clear on what I think should happen. I believe the House of Representatives should pass a continuing resolution to fund the entirety of the Federal Government except for ObamaCare and should explicitly prohibit further funding of ObamaCare and should adopt the legislation I have introduced as a condition to the continuing resolution.

Now, the next step. There will be partisan critics who immediately charge Republicans with threatening to shut down the government. I would suggest that we then take the argument to the American people. The American people should decide. If there are Members of this body who are willing to shut down the Federal Government in order to force ObamaCare down the throats of the American people, in order to say President Obama will grant a waiver to giant corporations but not to hard-working American families, let's take that argument to the American people because I think the American people want economic growth back. That should be our top priority. Nothing is killing jobs more. Nothing is hurting the American economy more than ObamaCare. There is bipartisan agreement on that.

I am hopeful that Members of this body will stand and lead. I thank the Senator from Utah for taking the lead on what I believe is the most important battle this Congress will confront.

Mr. President, I do indeed share those thoughts and feelings and the obligation we owe to our constituents to honor our word and put action behind our words.

I would ask the Senator from Utah if he would yield for a series of three short questions?

The first question is, There has been much talk of a shutdown. Am I correct that we do not have to hypothesize what a shutdown would look like, that we, in fact, saw that in 1995 with two temporary, partial shutdowns that occurred when Republicans in the House stood up to President Clinton?

When that occurred in 1995, we saw several things. No. 1, we saw that the parade of horribles that was brought out did not occur. Social Security checks continued to flow, the military continued to be funded, interest on the debt continued to be paid, planes did not fall out of the sky.

Indeed, what occurs--if Democrats decide to block a continuing resolution and force a temporary shutdown in order to force ObamaCare on the American people--is a partial, temporary shutdown where nonessential government services get suspended for a period of time, not a shutdown of essential services, such as paying for the men and women who are fighting in the military and providing Social Security checks. We have seen that in the past; is that correct?

A second question I would ask is this: This week we saw the rather stunning news that the IRS employees union--the men and women at the IRS charged with enforcing ObamaCare are asking not to be made subject to ObamaCare. Indeed, the union leaders have said to their union members: Draft letters to send to Members of this body, saying that we, the IRS employees union, do not want to be subject to ObamaCare.

Likewise, ObamaCare subjects Members of this body and their staffs to ObamaCare. I am not aware of a single Senate office that is not deeply concerned about that, that is not facing the prospect of staff quitting the congressional offices because the arms of ObamaCare are so significant, and there have been many a panicked discussion among Democrats and Republicans about what to do about subjecting Members and their staff to ObamaCare.

My second question of three short questions is, What does it say to the Senator that the IRS employees union is asking: Let us out from ObamaCare, and that Members and congressional staff are deeply concerned about the harms ObamaCare is going to do to them?

My third brief question is, For those in this body who have campaigned at home, who have told their constituents they are opposed to ObamaCare, on January 1 the exchanges go up and running, the subsidies begin. And the history of the modern entitlement state is that anytime a subsidy has been put in place, it has proven to be politically virtually impossible to undo. Indeed, no major entitlement that has been implemented in modern times has ever been undone.

For those who say they oppose ObamaCare, what is the alternative to defunding ObamaCare with a continuing resolution? Let me ask it a separate way. If we do not defund it, am I correct that come January 1, Republicans will essentially be surrendering that in all likelihood ObamaCare will be a permanent feature of the economy, hurting the economy, hurting jobs, hurting low-income workers, hurting our health care system? And if that is correct, has any reasonable alternative been proffered by anyone on this side of the Senate to stop that harm other than what you and Senator Rubio and I and others are trying to do?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

The issue before this body is not complicated. There are a lot of procedural ambiguities that make it difficult to penetrate, and yet it is one very simple issue. The issue before this body is whether the Senate can raise the debt limit of the United States with simply using a 50-vote threshold or whether it should go through the regular order before raising any debt limit, subject to a 60-vote threshold.

What is the difference? The difference is simple: If the debt limit can be raised using 50 votes, then the majority party--the Democrats-- do not need to speak to the Republicans, do not need to sit down at the table and work with the Republicans, do not need to listen to any opposing views.

Indeed, the President of the United States has been very candid. He has been unequivocal. President Obama has said he believes we should raise the debt limit, with no preconditions, with no negotiations, with no changes whatsoever.

If you think it is OK that in 4\1/2\ years our Nation's debt has gone from $10 trillion to nearly $17 trillion, if you think it is OK that our Nation's debt is now larger than the size of the entire economy, if you think it is OK that our children and grandchildren are being be bankrupted--in 4\1/2\ years the national debt has grown over 60 percent--and if you think it is OK that the Senate Democrats want to continue borrowing trillions more while doing nothing--nada--zilch--to address the spending problems, to rein in out-of-control spending, then you should welcome this motion.

Over and over again the majority has asked to go to conference on the budget. Why? Because going to conference on the budget allows a procedural back door to enable them to raise the debt ceiling using only 50 votes.

How do we know that is what this is about? We know that is what this is about because my friend the Senator from Washington could go to conference on the budget right now. This instant we could go to conference on the budget--right now--except, when I ask--as I am going to in a moment--for unanimous consent not to use it as a procedural back door to raise the debt ceiling, my friend the Senator from Washington is going to object. And I know this because we have done this kabuki dance more than once and we continue doing it back and forth. But it makes clear that is what this fight is all about.

Of course the Senate budget didn't address the debt ceiling; the House budget didn't address the debt ceiling; we didn't have a debate on the floor of this Senate about the debt ceiling; we didn't have a vote on the floor of the Senate about the debt ceiling; and yet the reason the majority is so adamant that they want to go to conference is because it presents them with an avenue to use 50 votes--the votes of only the Democrats in this body--to raise the debt ceiling to dig us further in debt and to do nothing--nothing--to fix the problem.

I would suggest that is irresponsible. That is not what Americans want. That is not what Democrats, Republicans, or Independents outside of the Washington beltway want.

We fundamentally know it is wrong to stick our kids and grandkids with $17 trillion in debt. It is even more wrong to keep on doing it and making it worse and worse and not rolling up our sleeves to fix it.

One of the great frustrations of this body is that for some time now the American people have been unequivocal: Their top priority is jobs and the economy, and is turning around what is going on. Yet this body doesn't talk about that. It doesn't talk about generating jobs, getting the economy growing, and stopping our out-of-control debt. Instead, we debate every other priority under the Sun--whether it is restricting Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms or whether it is a national energy tax through the President's climate change proposal.

Reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator modify her request so that it not be in order for the Senate to consider a conference report that includes reconciliation instructions to raise the debt limit.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Reserving the right to object, I would note the comment from my friend from Washington suggesting a motion to instruct the conferees. What she of course knows is that is a typical Washington maneuver, because the motion to instruct is nonbinding and it is subject to 50 votes. So if we had a motion to instruct the conferees not to raise the debt ceiling, every Democrat in this body would vote against it. It would be defeated. And even if it were passed, it would be nonbinding on the conferees.

No one should be confused. What the Democrats want is to raise the debt ceiling. And they want to do it using 50 votes, ignoring the views of the minority, and doing nothing to fix the problem.

Accordingly, I object.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

If I may ask my friend two questions on the two topics he addressed, the first being the debt ceiling, the second being immigration. On the debt ceiling, the question I will ask is, Does my friend from Colorado believe Congress should continue raising the debt ceiling in perpetuity, with no changes and no preconditions, and should the Senate be able to do so with just 50 votes?

Will the Senator yield for an additional question at that point?

I like and agree with his analogy about cutting up a credit card. Indeed, if my friend from Colorado supports anything resembling Congress cutting up the credit card, that will truly be a dramatic position, a position on which he and I could find common cause.

If I can ask the question. I ask, the natural results of what my

friend from Colorado just said are that I assume, then, that he would readily support Pat Toomey's Default Prevention Act? What Pat Toomey's Default Prevention Act does is it ensures what the Senator said--money that we borrowed we will keep paying. It says that in the event the credit limit is not raised, the United States will always, always, always pay its debt. We will never, ever, ever default on the debt, and we will take that completely off the table. Then the debt limit fight would only be about, as my friend from Colorado put it, cutting up the credit card for future spending.

Would my friend from Colorado support the Default Prevention Act of Pat Toomey, making it impossible--taking default off the table permanently?

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate temporarily set aside all pending amendments so that I may offer my amendment No. 1580.

Madam President, the amendment I would have called up had not the majority party objected is an amendment that would have corrected one of the most egregious aspects of the Gang of 8 bill; namely, it is a penalty that is imposed on U.S. employers for hiring U.S. citizens and for hiring legal permanent residents. It is a striking result of the Gang of 8 bill as it intersects with the ObamaCare legislation.

Let me explain how it operates. Right now, for any company with 50 or more employees, if that company does not provide a sufficiently high- dollar health insurance policy for low-income workers, that company faces a fine of $3,000 per worker. Moreover, that fine is not deductible in the company's taxes, which means that as an effective matter to the company, the penalty is in the order of $5,000 per employee when you factor in the tax consequences. That is the present status quo under ObamaCare. That is the penalty that is visited upon U.S. employers for hiring U.S. citizens and for hiring legal immigrants.

What does the Gang of 8 bill do to change that? Well, the Gang of 8 bill takes some 11 million people who are here illegally and it grants them what is called RPI status--registered provisional immigrant status. I have many concerns about legalization prior to securing the border, but this concern is altogether separate from that, and it is the simple reality that anyone granted RPI status--anyone granted legalization under the Gang of 8 bill--is exempted from ObamaCare, which means that the employers who would be hiring them do not face the ObamaCare tax of $5,000 per employee, whether U.S. citizen or legal immigrant.

What does this mean in reality? Let's take an example, a simple hypothetical. Madam President, I would ask you to envision a small business: Joe's Burger Shack. Joe's Burger Shack is owned by a small business owner. It is a series of small fast food restaurants in any given State. It could be my home State of Texas or any State across the Union.

Let's assume that Joe's Burger Shack has 100 employees and that at Joe's Burger Shack, with 100 employees, business is doing relatively well, people are eating more hamburgers, and Joe decides he wants to hire 5 more people. If Joe and Joe's Burger Shack decide they want to hire five more people, if Joe chooses to hire five U.S. citizens or if he chooses to hire five legal permanent residents--five legal immigrants--Joe faces a penalty of $25,000 for doing so--$5,000 apiece right off his bottom line to the IRS. In contrast, if Joe decides instead to hire five RPIs, who came here illegally among those 11 million who are here illegally but granted RPI legalization under the Gang of 8 bill, Joe pays a penalty of zero dollars.

Let me ask a simple, commonsense question. In this instance, who is Joe, the small business owner, going to hire? This bill creates an enormous incentive to hire those here illegally, and at the same time it does it by creating a statutory penalty for hiring U.S. citizens and for hiring legal immigrants. That makes no sense.

Let me give a second example. Suppose Joe is facing harder times. Because of ObamaCare penalties, Joe makes the decision that a great many fast food restaurants have made--to forcibly reduce workers' hours. ObamaCare kicks in when a worker works 30 hours a week, so a great many small businesses--and in particular fast food restaurants-- have been forced to forcibly reduce their employees' hours to 29 hours a week or less.

Now, imagine that of Joe's 100 employees, 25 of them are RPIs--are formerly illegal immigrants who have received legalization under the Gang of 8--and 75 are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.

Well, if Joe wants to reduce the hours of 25 of his employees both below the 30-hour threshold because times are hard and he cannot afford the burden ObamaCare is putting on his business, if Joe forcibly reduces the hours of 25 U.S. citizen employees or 25 legal immigrant employees to below 30 hours a week, Joe saves potentially $125,000 a year in tax penalties, $5,000 apiece times 25 employees.

In contrast, if Joe says instead, I want to reduce the hours forcibly of those who are here illegally who have received legalization through the Gang of 8, Joe saves zero dollars in tax penalties because he is not paying a tax penalty regardless of whether those here illegally are working 30 or 40 hours or more. The question I would pose to the Presiding Officer is, whose hours will Joe reduce?

This statute puts an enormous incentive, an incentive from Congress, for Joe to forcibly reduce the hours of U.S. citizens and of legal immigrants.

Let me give a third and even more stringent example. Imagine if Joe is facing great financial burden, as a lot of small businesses are, as a lot of small businesses are struggling. Imagine if Joe instead made the decision to fire all 100 workers, all 100 workers who happened to be U.S citizens or permanent legal residents and instead hire only those who are here illegally or have been legalized under the Gang of 8. The consequences, simply doing the math at $5,000 an employee, mean Joe could save $500,000 a year in tax penalties. Actually the way ObamaCare works, it is a complicated formula where there is an alternative avenue where Joe could well be paying $2,000 per employee minus 30, which would get down, when you factor in the tax savings, to about $200,000. But any way you measure it under ObamaCare's complicated tax penalty formula, Joe could potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars by firing his U.S. employees--U.S. citizen employees or his legal resident employees and instead hiring those who are here illegally.

That does not make any sense. That is not an incentive anyone rationally would set up. That is what this Gang of 8 bill does. You know, to share how real this incentive is, this penalty for hiring U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, I wish to read a letter from one of my constituents, Mr. Allen Tharp, who is chairman and CEO of Old England, Lion and Rose Restaurant, Ltd. in San Antonio.

He wrote a letter that reads as follows:

My name is Allen Tharp. Since 1985, I have been the sole

owner and CEO of Allen Tharp LLC, as well as the Lion and

Rose restaurant chain, and a partner in the Golden Chick

restaurants. Our corporate restaurants provide well over

1,000 jobs to fellow Texans, and our franchise restaurants

provide many more.

I've been following the current debate over immigration

reform very closely and want you to be aware that this bill,

coupled with the new ObamaCare legislation, makes it much

more affordable for a business like mine to employ Registered

Provisional Immigrants than American workers. I do not

believe that was the intention of either legislation, but it

is the irrefutable effect of both.

ObamaCare, as documented in numerous news stories, already

creates an incentive for businesses to cut hours in order to

avoid triggering the 50 full-time employee threshold that

requires businesses to pay a fine if they do not provide

government-approved health insurance. Because of this law, I

have been forced to cut back every single hourly employee in

each of my companies to no more than 28 hours per week.

Cutting schedules from 40 to 28 hours per week has caused

some hardship on many employees. However, our choice is to

either provide part-time work or no work at all because our

business cannot afford to comply with the severe consequences

that would be imposed on us under this law if we continue to

provide full-time employment to all these employees.

If the current immigration bill before the Senate, however,

is made law, a business could hire Registered Provisional

Immigrants instead of U.S. citizens and avoid triggering

ObamaCare regulations and fines.

Hiring RPIs over American workers, from a purely economic

point of view, would be the best thing for my business. I

personally do not believe this is the right thing to do. But

surely some of my competitors would. ObamaCare and the

immigration bill is forcing employers to make extremely

difficult choices. I do not want to be in the position of

choosing to grow my business or choosing to pay my fellow

Americans. I want to do both. ObamaCare and the immigration

bill will prevent me from doing so.

This is a real CEO, facing the real incentives of running a business under ObamaCare and looking at what would happen if this Gang of 8 bill passed into law.

What are the potential counterarguments to this concern? Well, in the way of Washington, we do not actually have to predict, because the proponents of this bill have followed a long tried and true path in Washington; namely, they have gone to an ostensibly neutral reporter at a mainstream publication and urged them to ``fact check'' the claim the Gang of 8 bill with ObamaCare would put a penalty on hiring U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. And to fact check, the reporter compliantly gave the answers to the responses that are given by the Gang of 8. But I would suggest that those responses are, on their face, singularly unpersuasive. The first response the Washington Post Fact Checker put up was a claim that Cruz is creating a mountain out of a mole hill because ``the impact on employers is almost too miniscule to be noticed.'' That is a quote from our friends at the Washington Post in their so-called ``fact check.'' The basis of this is they said, well, gosh, there are a lot of companies that do not have 50 employees. The number of companies with more than 50 employees is really small or, as they put it, ``almost too miniscule to be noticed.''

I am going to suggest the claim that companies with more than 50 employees comprise a share of the economy that is ``miniscule'' is facially absurd.

Indeed, if you look at the data, 71 percent of all U.S. employees work in a business with more than 50 employees. So, according to the Washington Post, it is an objective fact that the employers for 71 percent of U.S. employees are ``almost too miniscule to be noticed.'' To put that in raw numbers, that is 80 million employees. I would suggest 80 million employees is, on any measure, not miniscule.

The second basis of the so-called fact check, the second response from the bill's proponents was that, well, under current law it is illegal for a potential employer to ask about a person's immigration status. I would note this is a particularly facile response that almost surely came from a lawyer. As a lawyer myself, I will say it is precisely the sort of response that causes people to love lawyers as they do, oh, so much in today's society. Because, yes, it is true there is a provision in statute that says: You cannot ask about a person's immigration status and base employment decisions on that. But the statute also requires you to check their immigration status before you hire them. Moreover, there is no provision for employees volunteering this information. If this bill passes, if there is a massive incentive to hire RPIs over U.S. citizens, the simple reality is there will be massive economic incentives for employers to do so.

Let me note this point is utterly irrelevant when it comes to reducing employee hours. Because even if you engage in the ``Alice in Wonderland'' world where employers do not know if an individual is an RPI or a U.S. citizen, once they are hired, as a matter of legal requirement, they do know that. If they are then subsequently making a decision on whose hours to reduce, the overwhelming economic incentive would be to reduce the hours of the U.S. citizen or the legal immigrant rather than those who are currently here illegally.

I want to ask the Presiding Officer, this penalty on hiring U.S. citizens and on legal immigrants, who is this going to hurt the most? Well, it is not going to hurt companies that are doing nuclear science research. It is not going to hurt companies that are designing satellites. It is going to hurt the workers who are working in the sorts of jobs where they face competition from those who are here illegally. It is going to hurt workers, for example, in the fast-food industry. It is going to hurt workers who are working in landscaping, in construction.

Who is it going to hurt the most? If you look right now, today, under the Obama economy, who is being hurt the most by the Obama economy? Those who are the most vulnerable among us. Hispanics today have a 9.1- percent unemployment rate. Hispanic U.S. citizens, Hispanic legal immigrants will be directly harmed by this outcome. African Americans have a 13.5-percent unemployment rate right now under the Obama economy. It has gone up under President Obama. African-American workers will be hurt by this statutory penalty on hiring U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.

Teenagers face an unemployment rate of 24.5 percent. Teenagers, in particular, if you look at jobs, for example, in the fast-food industry, are so often the first or second job a young teenager gets as he or she begins to climb the economic ladder. If Congress passes a bill that puts a major economic penalty on hiring a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, he or she may never get that job.

I wish to read a letter from another constituent who is president of Painless Performance, a high-end car parts manufacturer in Fort Worth, TX. The letter reads as follows:

My name is Adrian Murray. I am an immigrant. My parents

moved to America from Ireland 55 years ago to seek

opportunity and a better life. At the time, new immigrants

had to have a sponsor and proof of future employment. I still

have the letters written to the INS on their behalf. My

parents later became naturalized citizens and raised me to

respect America, her customs and her laws.

That was back in the day when being an American citizen was

prized. To stand before a judge with hand raised, pledging

allegiance and fidelity to America was the dream of millions

around the world. We devalue American citizenship by making

it a cheap tool for political gain.

My parents taught me to respect America's exceptionalism

and therefore honor the institutions of this nation. Because

of their example, I have built a successful business with 52

employees. Many of those in my plant are legal immigrants

from Vietnam. They, too, came here the right way and endured

much hardship to earn their citizen status. What am I to tell

them, that their sacrifice was meaningless, that they should

have just snuck in, that their citizenship has no value, that

the joke is on them?

Well, I would never exercise the option of replacing them

with cheaper ObamaCare-exempted workers. Would they not be

justified in questioning the motives and validity of a

government which would even consider giving an employer that

option? What has this nation come to?

It is getting harder and harder to recognize America. A

nation which once proudly held fast to the virtues of liberty

and freedom is now seriously contemplating a law which

amounts to nothing more than thinly disguised human

trafficking. Once the world's greatest deliberative body, the

Senate is set to vote this bill into law without bothering

even to read it. This cannot be. This must not stand.

It is not too late. At the outset of my remarks, I asked unanimous consent to call up my amendment to fix this problem, and the Democrats in this body objected. My amendment would address this problem by providing that ObamaCare shall be defunded until there are no longer any registered provisional immigrants in line. This is the one way to correct this problem, to correct the statutory penalty on U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, if this bill were to pass.

As we have just seen, the majority party has chosen to object to bringing up that amendment. Indeed, so far, we have not had an open debate on amendments on this bill. I would note that a number of proponents of this bill claimed they were going to fix this. Here are a few of the comments sponsors of this bill have made concerning the amnesty tax loophole.

From my friend, the senior Senator of Arizona, Mr. John McCain:

I think that is an issue, and I think that it needs to be

addressed.

Also from Senator McCain:

We cannot give people who are not citizens the same

benefits; that is the fundamental principle . . . we are

trying to work around it so that an American citizen is

competitive for a job.

A quote from a senior Democratic aide:

We are willing to work through these issues as the bill

works its way through the Senate.

I am sorry to tell you, those promises have not materialized. We haven't worked through these issues. I cannot help but think, with an issue such as this, of the very real impacts it has on so many families. At least in my family that impact would not have been hypothetical.

Fifty-five years ago my father came from Cuba as a legal immigrant. He was 18, and he couldn't speak English. When he arrived in Austin, TX, penniless, he took a job similar to so many other immigrants before him, washing dishes, making 50 cents an hour. I will say the food service industry has provided such an opening portal for millions of Americans and for millions of immigrants from throughout the world.

Yet if the Gang of 8 bill had been law in 1957, along with ObamaCare--my father who couldn't speak English, who was very glad to make 50 cents an hour so he could take that money and pay his way through the University of Texas, go on, get a higher paying job, start a business, and work toward the American dream--my father very well might have been fired because of the Gang of 8 bill, because the impact of this legislation would have been to cost his employer $5,000 for hiring him, a legal immigrant.

I have to tell you, my father's skills at age 18, I wouldn't characterize him as a high-skilled dishwasher. He told me he got that job because he couldn't speak English, and one didn't have to speak English to wash dishes. You had to be able to take a dish and stick it under the hot water.

This incentive would have been a massive incentive on his employer to say: Raphael, I am sorry, you are out of a job because we are going to hire someone who didn't follow the rules, didn't come here legally, came here illegally, because Congress penalizes us $5,000 for you, but it puts zero penalty on that individual who is here illegally. I cannot think of a more irrational, a more indefensible system than a statutory authority for hiring U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.

If this bill passes, a number of things will happen. If this bill passes, African-American unemployment, Hispanic unemployment will almost surely go up. It will be the Senate's fault because this bill will penalize hiring African Americans, U.S. citizens or legal immigrants and, instead, will incentivize hiring those who are here illegally.

If this bill passes, Hispanic unemployment will almost surely go up because this bill penalizes hiring Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or Hispanics who are legal immigrants who followed the rules.

If this bill passes, youth unemployment will almost certainly go up because it is young people in particular who are just beginning the journey up the economic ladder who will be most impacted by Congress deciding to put a $5,000 penalty on hiring that U.S. citizen, hiring that legal immigrant and, instead, give a preference for hiring those here illegally.

If this bill passes, union households' unemployment will very likely go up because it is working-class households that are facing the most direct competition. If that happens, it will be the fault of the Senate.

If this bill passes, unemployment among legal immigrants will almost certainly go up. What this bill says, if you hire an illegal immigrant, the IRS is going to impose a $5,000 penalty on you, the employer. If you don't hire that legal immigrant, if you reduce that legal immigrant's hours, if you hire instead someone who is here illegally, that penalty will go away.

I would suggest that is utterly and completely indefensible. Nobody in this body wants to see African-American unemployment go up. Nobody wants to see Hispanic unemployment go up, youth unemployment go up, union household unemployment go up, legal immigrant unemployment go up. Yet every one of those will happen if this Gang of 8 bill passes without fixing this problem. If that happens, all 100 Members of the Senate will be accountable to our constituents for explaining why we voted to put a Federal penalty on hiring U.S. citizens and hiring legal immigrants. In my view, it makes no sense, and it is indefensible. I very much hope this body will choose to pass my amendment and fix this gray defect in the Gang of 8 legislation.

Thank you. I yield the floor.

Madam President, we are about to vote to end debate--a debate that never really began on an amendment that is 1,200 pages and was filed on Friday afternoon after many Senators left town. We are now voting at 5:30 p.m. on Monday as many Senators are stepping off the airplane.

This is the 1,200-page amendment. We have seen this play before. It is reminiscent of ObamaCare--yet another bill we were told we have to pass to find out what is in it. Unfortunately, it seems there are some Republicans eager to go along with the Democrats in the mad rush to pass this bill.

In the 2007 immigration debate, close to 50 amendments were considered. In this debate, only nine amendments have been debated. I introduced seven substantive amendments to improve this bill. Not a single one of those amendments has been considered on the floor of the Senate.

I would happily yield except we have 5 minutes left.

Assuming that the time does not come out of my own, I have no objection.

As my friend from New York knows well, the amendments are interspersed through a very complicated bill. Analyzing where waivers have been given and what the intersection is of new provisions with old provisions is not a simple endeavor. Indeed, in this particular body, it is not unbeknownst to this body to slide something in text.

My point is very simple: What is the rush? Why are we proceeding gangbusters? The only explanation that makes sense is that it seems there are many Senators in this body--perhaps on both sides of this aisle--who very much want a fig leaf. They want something they can claim they are supporting border security when, in fact, this bill does not do that.

I suggest that if we contrast this amendment to the amendment I introduced, we can see the difference between a bill that actually would protect border security versus something that is merely meant to tell gullible constituents that we have done something.

The first and most important difference is that this amendment provides legalization first and then border security maybe at some time in the future. We have seen this before. In 1986 it was the same promise Congress made. We got the legalization, we got the amnesty, and we never, ever got border security. In contrast, the amendment I introduced reflects the will of the American people to have border security first and only then the possibility of legalization.

Secondly, this amendment does not require operational control of the border. Current law requires that. This amendment weakens current law on operational control. My amendment would require that the problem actually be solved.

Thirdly, this amendment does not require a biometric entry-exit system. It weakens current law. Current law requires that; this amendment takes that out. Instead, it requires essentially a photo ID. For anyone who perhaps has known a teenager, they know that the difficulty of securing a fake ID with a picture on it is not very high. Any flea market in the land will allow it.

Fourth, this bill weakens the requirements of statutes on secure fencing, and it weakens the current law on border security.

Fifth, this amendment is not offset. My amendment was offset. So there is brandnew spending in this amendment with no offset.

Sixth, this amendment has no real enforcement. The amendment I introduced said: If the changes within it on border security were not implemented within 3 years, 20 percent of the salary of political appointees at DHS would be reduced, 20 percent of the budget would be reduced, and it would be block granted to the State to fix the problem.

Fundamentally, this is about political cover. It is not about solving the problem. I suggest the approach is one with which we are all familiar. It is the approach that perhaps in childhood we knew well. It is an approach that says: I will gladly secure the border next Tuesday for legalization today. Now, if we were naive and had not been through 1986 together and had not seen Congress play this same show game with the American people, perhaps we would fall for it, but I don't think the American people are that gullible. Everyone wants to fix our broken immigration system, but at the same time we should not replicate mistakes of the past.

This amendment and the underlying Gang of 8 bill grant immediate legalization. The border security changes will never be implemented, and the border will not be secured. That is not a solution of which the American people can be proud. I urge this body to reject the amendment, to vote against cloture, and reject the underlying bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong concern about President Obama's decision to arm the rebels in Syria. That decision was signaled last week by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. According to Mr. Rhodes the United States will start supplying arms to selected rebel groups.

I fully understand the seriousness of the situation in Syria. Bashar al-Asad is a brutal dictator. Syria has been on the State Department's state sponsor of terrorism list since 1979. For 2 years this brutal civil war has raged, leaving at least 93,000 dead--100 reportedly through chemical weapons attack. The humanitarian situation in Syria is a calamity. Millions of people have been displaced.

Iran and Russia stand to gain a major strategic victory if Asad remains in power, and we have to be concerned about the danger this war poses to our allies Israel and Jordan.

All Americans would like to see secular, democracy-minded forces in Syria come to power, but President Obama's failed policy over the last 2 years has left us with no good options at this time. In the beginning of the uprising, there was a moment when the peaceful protesters could have used the vocal energetic support of the United States. Instead, the Obama administration stood by for months apparently in the hopes they could make Asad see reason. Before long, military hostilities broke out, but President Obama chose not to act, hoping instead to lead from behind.

In the course of the war, Asad has benefited from weapons from Iran, Russia, and fighters from Hezbollah. Our repeated entreaties to the Russians to help us resolve this crisis have fallen on deaf ears--most recently this week when President Obama tried to reach a diplomatic solution with President Putin, to have him once again refuse to be the good-faith partner the administration seems to think he could be.

Meanwhile, the most effective, organized Syrian rebels are affiliated with al-Qaida. There are two main al-Qaida entities active in Syria: Jabhat al-Nusra and the resurgent al-Qaida in Iraq. While recent plans to merge them have foundered, they are both powerful and well armed.

In recent weeks a training video has been posted on an al-Qaida Web site showing young rebel recruits in Syria singing not only about overthrowing Asad, but how ``the World Trade Center was turned into rubble.'' To commemorate the 65th anniversary of the founding of Israel on June 6, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video calling for Syrians to unite, bring down the Asad government, and to create a radical Islamic state.

On June 9, Zawahiri posted a letter on Al-Jazeera announcing that Jabhat al-Nusra would be acting on his direct orders. As many as seven of the nine rebel groups that have been identified may have ties to al- Qaida. Yet these murky connections make them all the more difficult to properly vet.

As is normally the case when al-Qaida moves in, more and more stories are spreading about the desecration of churches, kidnappings, rapes, and beheadings. These forces are engaged in a deadly struggle with the Asad regime, and President Obama has chosen this moment to signal that it is now suddenly in our vital national security interests to intervene in Syria. It seems far more likely a recipe for disaster.

We are told the United States will provide only small arms and ammunition and only to the more secular democracy-minded rebels, and that they will not fall into the hands of those who attacked us on September 11--not to mention more recently in Fort Hood, Benghazi, and Boston--although there are no details as to how the President plans to differentiate between good and bad actors.

Even if we could clearly identify the good rebels, so to speak, we would be backing the weakest of the factions in Syria, and the support the Obama administration has proposed will not be sufficient to bring down Asad and put them in power. Once committed to this path, we risk either being forced to incrementally increase our support or face the humiliation of losing to either al-Qaida groups or Asad or both, which would delight both Iran and Russia. We could also see the factions of the opposition use our weapons to turn on each other and see Asad triumph in the chaos.

It is far from clear we could get the weapons to the so-called good rebels, even if we could figure out who they were. President Obama has just announced another $300 million in humanitarian aid for Syria, but only about half of the aid already pledged has been delivered. The other hasn't been delivered because of logistical issues and the challenges of keeping these resources out of the hands of bad actors. How on Earth can we expect to deliver guns if we cannot even get MREs into the country?

Regardless, let me suggest a simple rule: Don't give weapons to people who hate us. Don't give weapons to people who want to kill us. U.S. foreign policy should be directed at one central purpose: protecting the vital national security interests of the United States. Arming potential al-Qaida rebels is not furthering those interests, but there is something that is: preventing Syria's large stockpile of chemical weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.

We know Asad has used these weapons, and there is good reason to suspect the al-Qaida affiliated rebels would use them as well if they could get their hands on them. This poses an intolerable threat not only to our friends in the region but also to the United States. Right now we need to develop a clear, practical plan to go in, locate the weapons, secure or destroy them,

and then get out. We might work in concert with our allies, but this needs to be an operation driven by the mission, not by a coalition.

The United States should be firmly in the lead to make sure the job is done right, but our British allies, for example, are actively bolstering the units that could be used for chemical weapons removal. President Obama needs to assure us that the dangerous, arbitrary cuts to our defense budget caused by sequester have not eroded our ability to execute this vital mission.

News reports suggest that what planning has gone on involves outsourcing parts of this work to the rebel groups. This makes no sense. Moreover, it is deeply disturbing that President Obama has chosen not to communicate his decision directly to Congress or the American people and, I would note, communicating not through a junior staffer or a spokesperson. He, himself, needs to communicate to the American people.

According to a Pew poll taken over the weekend, 70 percent of Americans oppose arming the Syrian rebels--quite sensibly. In a case where his policy is so at odds with the will of the people, it is beholden on the President to make his case and persuade us this proposed intervention is necessary. But just yesterday in his long speech on national security at the Brandenburg Gate, President Obama did not even mention his planned intervention in Syria. He told us he is a ``citizen of the world,'' but he is also President of the United States, and he owes the American people an explanation.

President Obama needs to explain why arming the Syrian rebels is now worth our intervention when it wasn't 2 years ago. He needs to explain how he has established which rebels are the appropriate recipients of this support. He needs to explain how this limited support will make a material difference in Syria, and he needs to assure us that his team is proactively planning to protect our national security by keeping Syria's chemical weapons out of the hands of either Hezbollah or al- Qaida. But we don't know any of these specifics. We are apparently just supposed to trust the President to manage Syria policy more effectively than he has over the last 2 years and more effectively than he has managed events in Iran, Libya, and Egypt.

During the Green Revolution in 2009, the Obama administration stood by and allowed the Supreme Leader of Iran to brutally suppress his people as they protested in the streets. Four years later, we have witnessed the installation of the Supreme Leader's most recent selection for President of Iran. Some of the mainstream media refer to him as a ``moderate,'' but he is a man who has referred to Israel as ``the great Zionist Satan,'' and who vows to continue Iran's nuclear program. That is some moderate.

During the uprising in Tahrir Square in Cairo, President Obama cheered on the demonstrators but refused to take a leading role in helping Egypt make the difficult transition to democracy, thereby opening the door to a Muslim Brotherhood regime that is now taking systematic steps to hollow out that country's fragile constitution while turning a blind eye to the persecution of Christians and the discrimination against women. Just like the rebels in Syria, President Obama is also working to arm the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

During the revolution in Libya, President Obama decided removing Muammar Kaddafi was a vital national security issue, and he participated in NATO's mission to overturn him. But his strategy of leading from behind meant Kaddhafi's weapons stockpiles went unsecured and had been transferred to militants from Lebanon to Mali. The new government in Libya, however well intentioned, proved incapable of managing the security threat from terrorist militias in the country, and tragically 9 months ago four U.S. personnel were brutally murdered in a terrorist attack. We have yet to track down and punish any of the terrorists who killed our personnel in that attack in Benghazi. With this track record of incoherent and indecisive action resulting in setback after setback to the United States, we are supposed to just trust President Obama to do a better job managing the situation in Syria?

It seems to me if we are determined to confront Iran's nuclear program, we would do so better in Iran. Even if Hezbollah is defeated in Syria, there is little prospect that this would halt Iran's nuclear program.

I am also concerned about our ability to successfully negotiate what seems to have become a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Syria. It seems to me we have no business in the middle of such a civil war. From what we know of the President's policy, it seems we are backing into an intractable crisis where there are no good actors but plenty of bad outcomes for America.

Let me close with two simple observations: No. 1, don't arm al-Qaida. Don't arm those who hate us, and don't arm those who want to kill us. That is basic common sense.

No. 2, when it comes to matters of vital national security, the President of the United States needs to come to the American people. We, the people, hold sovereignty in this country, and it is not acceptable for the President to simply send out staffers to pass on his decision. He needs to come before Congress and the American people and explain those decisions.

All of us have deep concerns about arming the rebels in Syria, and I hope the administration will reconsider its policy.

I yield the floor.

I thank my friend from Louisiana. I was handed that list about an hour and a half ago today. I looked at the titles on the list but I have not had the time to study the specifics. I don't know if I have any substantive objections to those specified amendments.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending amendment so that I may call up my amendment No. 1320 which is at the desk.

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

Madam President, central to any debate over immigration is the need to secure our borders. The American people are overwhelmingly unified on that proposition. We must secure our borders. Unfortunately, the bill before this body--the Gang of 8 immigration bill--does not secure our borders.

Right now our borders are anything but secure. In fiscal year 2012 there were 364,768 apprehensions along the southwest border. Forty-nine percent of those apprehensions were in Texas.

The Border Patrol reported in 2012 463 deaths, 549 assaults, and 1,312 rescues. And this is just a tiny fraction of those actually harmed crossing the border illegally. In fiscal year 2012 there were 2,297,662 pounds of marijuana and nearly 6,000 pounds of cocaine seized at the southwest border.

The trafficking we are seeing is not just human life, but it is also drugs that are destroying the lives of countless young people and Americans across our country. From April 2006 to March of 2013 over 9 million pounds of marijuana, cocaine, meth, and heroin has been seized just in Texas, $182 million in currency has been seized, over 4,000 weapons have been seized. Madam President, 392 cartel members have been arrested in Texas since 2007, 33 cartel-related homicides in Texas just since 2009, and 78 instances where shots were fired at law enforcement officers in Texas.

The insecurity of our borders is causing human tragedies in our country, many of which are occurring in my home State of Texas. A brutal example can be found in the situation faced by my constituents in Brooks County, TX, a county in South Texas 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi, 90 miles from Laredo. Seemingly far removed and peaceful, Brooks County is the site of an extreme problem: hundreds of thousands of people coming here illegally, many of them from countries other than Mexico, attempting to cross the harsh terrain on foot, cutting across private property to avoid detection by the understaffed Border Patrol.

According to news sources, 400 to 500 illegal immigrants cross Brooks County on foot every single night--400 to 500 a night. The Washington Post recently wrote a piece about Brooks County and described the situation as follows:

There has been a surge in illegal migrants, mostly from

Central America, trying to sneak around the checkpoint by

cutting through the desolate ranches and labyrinths of

mesquite brush that parallel the highway.

They arrive in South Texas by riding the freight trains up

through southern Mexico and along the gulf coast. Smugglers

float them across the Rio Grande to safe houses and border

cities such as Brownsville and McAllen, then drive them north

toward Houston and San Antonio along U.S. Route 281.

Several miles before the Falfurrias Border Patrol

checkpoint, the smugglers pull over, and that's where the

migrants start walking.

Because they are either paid in advance or based solely on how many people they successfully deliver, smugglers often leave illegal immigrants in places such as the sometimes 30-mile overland hike, which is undertaken at a brutally fast pace, and sadly the harsh land and climate lead to the death of many.

The Washington Post interviewed one of my constituents, Mr. Presnall Cage, on that point. He said:

``I don't want the bodies here anymore,'' said Presnall

Cage, whose family's 43,000-acre property is directly west of

the highway checkpoint. ``A more secure border would mean

fewer deaths,'' he said.

The system we have is not humane. It is cruel, and it results in terrible human tragedies.

The Washington Post went on to describe the situation Mr. Cage faces.

Some of the migrants find their way to Cage's ranch house,

as three groups of people had done the week before. ``I feel

so sorry for them,'' he said. ``They have no idea what

they're getting into.'' Cage has placed dozens of water

faucets around his property. But a sinking feeling sets in

whenever he sees a pair of sneakers laid across a path or a

shirt tied to a branch near the road, typical last-ditch

distress signals.

When winter arrives and quail hunters come to his ranch with dogs, more bodies show up. Last year 16 bodies were found on Cage's ranch. Sixteen men, women, and children lost their lives because of our broken immigration system.

Sadly, the 16 found on Mr. Cage's ranch represent only a small fraction of the 129 bodies found in just Brooks County last year. The county spent $159,000 last year to recover and bury those who went unclaimed. They are buried at the Sacred Heart Burial Park. They are spread across three sections of the cemetery. In those three sections, the graves do not have names.

The remains of a human being lie marked only by simple aluminum markers carrying serial numbers or sterile descriptions: ``Unknown Female,'' ``Bones,'' or ``Skull.''

No one who cares about our humanity would want to maintain a system where the border isn't secure, where vulnerable women and children entrust themselves to corrupt coyotes and drug dealers and are left to die in the desert. This is a system that produces human tragedy, and the most heartbreaking aspect of this Gang of 8 bill is that it will perpetuate this tragedy. It will not fix the problem. It will not secure the borders.

Linda Vickers, who is a constituent from Brooks County, wrote me about the situation she faces:

In all the years I have lived here (since 1996) I have

never seen or been confronted by so many illegal immigrants.

Since May of last year the numbers have continued to rise. .

. . But I have never seen it like this! Nor, have I ever felt

this unsafe in my own home and on my own ranch as I do right

now. I have had so many gang members (MS-13, Pistoleros,

etc.) around my house that I now feel it is not ``if'' I will

be assaulted, but ``when.''

Linda Vickers' husband is a veterinarian, Dr. Mike Vickers. Like many other ranchers in Brooks County, Mike speaks Spanish and he worked for Mexican ranchers for years as a vet until the travel became too dangerous. Dr. Vickers gave the following statement of his own:

I live on a Brooks County ranch with my wife, Linda. In

2012, 129 bodies of deceased illegal aliens were found in our

County on private ranch land. Most of these bodies were found

within 15 minutes of our front door in any given direction!

We believe these bodies represent only 20-25% of the actual

number of illegal immigrants dying in this area. . . . In one

week of last July, I personally rescued 15 people (most were

Central Americans) that were lost and close to dying from

dehydration and heat exhaustion. . . . This same week I found

a deceased person that had been laid across a dirt road in

order to be found. He was a 31 year old man from El Salvador.

A system that perpetuates these human tragedies is cruel. It is the opposite of humane. Yet the bill before this Senate, the Gang of 8 bill, encourages illegal immigration now and more in the future if it is passed.

Apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley are projected to be higher in fiscal year 2013 than in any year since 2000, and the number of apprehensions to date, after only 8 months, is already more than the total apprehensions in fiscal years 2002 to 2004 and 2007 to 2011.

This is a chart of the apprehensions of what Homeland Security refers to as OTMs--those who are other than Mexican--because a significant number of people coming into this country illegally are not from Mexico but are from other nations.

The black line represents apprehensions of OTMs along the southwest border, and the white line represents apprehensions in Texas. You see two clear spots--one in the mid-2000s, coming up right upon the consideration of the last major amnesty bill, and we saw apprehensions spike dramatically as people were incentivized by that offer of amnesty to risk their lives coming here illegally, and we see again a second spike happening right now.

DHS statistics show apprehensions on the southwest border are up 13 percent versus the same time last year--from 170,223 in 2012 to 192,298.

The Gang of 8 bill encourages illegal immigration in many ways, one of which is by prohibiting immigration law enforcement from detaining or deporting any apprehended illegal immigrant if they ``appear to be eligible for instant legalization'' and requiring that they be allowed to apply for amnesty. In other words, what this bill does is it handcuffs law enforcement from enforcing our immigration laws. We should not be surprised that when you handcuff law enforcement, the result is more and more breaking the law.

The Gang of 8 bill allows illegal aliens who have been previously removed to, in the Secretary's discretion, be eligible for legalization even if they have illegally reentered the country yet again. And neither the Gang of 8 bill nor many of the alternative border security proposals that have been introduced do enough to meaningfully secure our borders.

The last time this body passed major immigration reform was 1986. In 1986 the Federal Government made a promise to the American people. The Federal Government said: We will grant amnesty to some 3 million people who are here illegally. In exchange, we will secure the borders. We will stop illegal immigration. We will fix the problem. The American people accepted that offer. What happened in 1986 was that the amnesty happened, 3 million people received it, and yet the border security never happened.

I was struck last week when the senior Senator from New York stood at his desk and said: When this bill passes, illegal immigration will be a thing of the past. It was an echo from the debate in 1986. In 1986 that same promise was made to the American people: Just grant amnesty and illegal immigration will be a thing of the past. Do you know what we have learned? If legalization comes first, border security never happens.

One of the major questions before this body is, Which should come first, legalization or border security? I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, want border security first before any legalization. Yet the Gang of 8 bill and the alternatives before this body don't require even a single additional Border Patrol agent prior to legalization. The Gang of 8 bill does not require that a single foot of fencing be built along the border prior to legalization. The Gang of 8 bill does not require a biometric exit-entry system prior to legalization.

Unlike the Gang of 8 bill, the amendment I have called up does provide real border security. It does what we have been telling the American people, but it actually follows through on it. Prior to legalization, my amendment would do a number of things. No. 1, it would triple the number of Border Patrol agents on the southern border. Today there are a little over 18,000 Border Patrol agents on the border, but our border is not secure. This bill triples that. This bill quadruples the number of cameras, sensors, helicopters, fixed-wing assets, technology, and infrastructure on the border. This bill requires that we complete all 700 miles of the fencing required by law in the Secure Fence Act. This bill requires real-time sharing of information among Federal law enforcement agencies. This bill requires that we complete and fully implement the US-VISIT system, including biometric exist- entry. And this bill requires that we establish operational control over 100 percent of the southern border.

Proponents of the Gang of 8 bill suggest that we don't need additional border patrol. I have to say that it is interesting seeing Senators who represent States that are very, very far away from the border standing up with complete confidence and sharing what we need to do to secure the border.

I can tell you, every time I have been to the border in my home State of Texas, the No. 1 answer that has been given from people on the ground--how do we fix this? How do we secure the border? How do we make it so you are not at risk from Mexican drug cartels and from the constant human tragedy of illegal immigration? The No. 1 answer you get over and over from law enforcement on the ground is this: More boots on the ground.

Let me put things in perspective in terms of what exactly we are talking about with boots on the ground. We need to have sufficient resources to secure the border. And let's take as a comparison the border versus New York City. In New York City, there are 34,500 NYPD officers. The area those 34,000 officers are policing is 468 square miles. That is a density of about 73 officers per square mile. By contrast, the border has 18,516 Border Patrol agents, but instead of policing 468 square miles, they are policing approximately 200,000 square miles. That is a density of 0.1 agents per square mile.

Let's look at it in a different way to get a sense of the differential there is right now. In New York City, 34,500 NYPD officers, as represented by this chart, are policing about 470 square miles--that little dot. By comparison, roughly half this number of Border Patrol agents are policing a square that large. And that is why law enforcement on the border says that whenever you spot those who are coming here illegally--even if you spot them, even if you find them, there is a delay in getting Border Patrol agents there to apprehend them, and by the time they are there, many of them have escaped and fled into the interior.

Why focus on inputs? One of the reasons to focus on inputs is that this administration in particular has demonstrated both a willingness to disregard the law and less than complete fidelity to truth. Proponents of the Gang of 8 say there are provisions in this statute that require that DHS fix the problem. I would like to point out a couple of provisions of current law.

If you look right now at current law, current Federal law requires:

Ports of entry shall use equipment and software to allow

the biometric comparison and authentication of all travel

documents.

That was enacted in law in 2002. Has it happened? No. It is one of the things in the civics classes we teach our kids: Congress passes a law, the President signs it, and suddenly it occurs. It doesn't occur if the Executive doesn't implement it. And the statement of the head of the travel entry programs at CBP in 2011 was:

The operational costs of a biometric program at this time

would be inordinately expensive and the benefits not

commensurate with the costs.

Despite the fact that the statute, the words on the paper say we have to have a biometric system, we do not, and the Obama administration made it perfectly clear they do not intend to change that.

Look at another provision of current law. Current law provides the DHS Secretary shall--not may, not might--``shall provide for at least 2 layers of reinforced fencing'' over 700 specified miles.

How much of that has happened? Madam President, 36.6 miles of double- layered fence is currently standing. The statute says there shall be 700. DHS has built only 36. Words on a paper don't secure the border.

A third example of current law right now that the Obama administration is disregarding, current law provides DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano must ``achieve and maintain operational control'' over the entire border.

What does Janet Napolitano say? She says: ``Look, operational control, it's an archaic term.''

DHS doesn't even measure it anymore, much less require it.

Why? Because when they were measuring it they found it wasn't being achieved, the border wasn't secure. So rather than enforce it, they just erased the metric that demonstrated they are not fixing the problem.

There are two fundamental questions this body needs to consider when it comes to border security. No. 1, do we have real border security? Do we fix the problem, stop providing empty promises? The Gang of 8 bill has empty promises that will do nothing to secure the border. I think the American people are tired of empty promises.

The amendment I have offered will put real teeth in border security: triple the number of Border Patrol agents on the southwest border; quadruple the cameras, sensors, drones, helicopters, and other technology and infrastructure as appropriate; ensure that we fix the problem.

No. 2, there is a fundamental question: Which comes first, legalization or border security? The Gang of 8 bill says let's have legalization first and then border security is a promise that will happen in the future. We have been down that road. That was the exact same path we took in 1986. In 1986 Congress told the American people we will grant legalization now, and on Tuesday I will pay you the cost of a hamburger. In the future, we will secure the border. Three decades later it still has not happened.

The only way to make it happen is to require border security first, to put the incentives on the Federal Government. Talk is cheap. We need to fix the problem.

In closing, I ask you, Madam President, and I ask the American people to focus on the cost, the human tragedy of our current system. In 1986 there were 3 million people here illegally. They were granted amnesty and the Federal Government promised the problem would be solved. Three decades later the border is still not secure, and there are 11 million people here illegally.

If this body passes the Gang of 8 bill, it will grant immediate legalization and it still will not secure the border. In another 10 or 20 years we will be back here, but it will not be 3 million or 11 million; it will be 20 million or 30 million people here illegally. If that happens, there are going to be a lot more graves like this, a lot more little boys, little girls, a lot more men and women who will never achieve the potential they could because of our system. It is a perverse system that encourages good people who just want a better life--they want a better life for their kids--and with our system, because we do not enforce the law, they risk their lives, they entrust themselves to human traffickers who assault them, who sexually violate them, who leave them to die in the desert.

The American people are overwhelmingly unified that, No. 1, we need to secure the border. And, No. 2, any bill that this body passes should have border security first and then legalization, not the other way around. There is an old saying that is popular in Texas: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

In 1986, Congress asked the American people: Trust us with legalization first and border security later. We learned it never happened. You know what. I don't think the American people are ready to be fooled a second time. I hope this body will adopt the amendment I have introduced to provide real border security and to ensure that border security occurs first, before legalization.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on Friday, the people of Iran head to the polls to make a false choice. Ostensibly participating in a democratic process to select a new President, they are really affirming their existing extremist theocracy. They will be forced to select not the candidate of their choice but the candidates that have been chosen for them by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei--candidates guaranteed to continue the Supreme Leader's policies of political and religious oppression in pursuit of nuclear capability at all costs.

In the United States we are now engaged in a national dialog about how we can best preserve our God-given rights guaranteed to us by our Constitution. We are taking a serious look at the role of government in our lives and revisiting the balance government is striking between security and privacy. But even as we debate these vital issues at home, we should remember those who are denied their liberty in Iran.

Today, in Iran, the economic picture is grim. Forty percent of Iranian citizens now live below the poverty line, almost double the rate in 2005. The rial has lost 50 percent of its value. The official rate of inflation is 32.2 percent. The real rate is considerably higher. The national rate of unemployment is 11.2 percent, and it is as high as 20 percent in certain regions.

Basic freedoms--political, religious, speech, the Internet--are under systematic attack by the regime. Sadly, persecution and oppression are the norm in Iran. Iran's political opposition has been effectively silenced. Key 2009 opposition leaders, such as Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been imprisoned without charge in their own homes for 2 years with locked doors and windows. The list of Presidential candidates has been hand-selected by the Supreme Leader, not by the Iranian people. American-Iranian Pastor Saeed Abedini is right now serving an 8-year sentence in Iran's brutal Evin prison for simply professing his faith.

In January, I was proud to sign a letter, along with 11 other Senators, to Secretary Clinton advocating for Pastor Abedini's release and to Secretary Kerry on February 12, thanking him for his statement in support of Pastor Abedini.

There has been a crackdown on Christians in the lead-up to this election, including the closing of the Central Assemblies of God Church in Tehran and the detention of Pastor Robert Asserian. Iranian Pastor Behnam Irani may face the death penalty for organizing a 300-strong congregation of the Church of Iran. Iran's 100,000-plus Evangelical Christians are suffering brutal oppression right now.

In an imitation of China, Iran is attempting to create a sort of internal Internet that will block access to international news and social media. Since the 2009 uprising, the Supreme Leader has instituted four new entities to restrict Internet freedom: The Supreme Council on Cyberspace, the Committee Charged with Determining Offensive Content, the Cyber Police, and the Cyber Army.

Iran has continued to aggressively expand its influence in the region and beyond. Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terrorism and is increasing its activity. Iran has been so hostile toward the nation of Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu recently expressed fears of ``another Holocaust'' from Tehran, regardless of any election that may take place. Iran's proxy army, Hezbollah, is supporting Asad's murderous attacks on his own people in Syria.

Today, the United Nations estimated that 93,000 people have been slaughtered in Syria since the uprising began in 2011. Iran's fingerprints are on those murders. Iran is not only expanding its own influence in the region through closer ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but it is also expanding its influence in Latin America. Most troubling, Iran is proceeding undeterred in its pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

In my judgment, there is no greater threat to the national security of the United States than the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and we need to be unequivocal and speak with absolute clarity that the United States will do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability.

Unfortunately, the message from the United States has at times seemed muddled. On the one hand, Secretary of State John Kerry has asked Congress to relax sanctions around the Iranian Presidential elections so his diplomatic efforts have a ``window'' to work. On the other hand, the Obama administration recently announced new sanctions on Iran's currency and a new initiative to get communications devices to the Iranian people. But both efforts, however well intentioned, came too late to have any real impact on this election.

Today, the Senate is taking encouraging action. I am pleased the Senate hopes to pass a resolution, S. Res. 154, reaffirming our call for free and fair elections, a resolution I fully support.

The resolution also condemns the widespread human rights violations of the Government of Iran, calls on the Government of Iran to respect its peoples' freedom of expression and association, and expresses our ongoing support to the people of Iran for their calls for a democratic government that upholds freedom, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

The Iranian people may well be confused about where the United States stands, especially after we stood silently by when they took to the streets 4 years ago during the Green Revolution. But it was not always this way. Twenty-six years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall that divided the eastern and western halves of the city. No more important words have been spoken by a leader in modern times.

Today, I ask all Americans to join me in likewise urging the regime in Iran to tear down the walls of political and religious persecution, to relieve the pain of the unnecessary economic hardship, and to renounce the isolation caused by Tehran's aggressive and belligerent policies.

To those right now imprisoned and being persecuted in Iran, I would repeat the words of encouragement President Reagan gave when he knew the tyranny represented by the Berlin Wall would not stand. As President Reagan observed: ``For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth; it cannot withstand freedom.'' That is the very same message we should convey to the people of Iran as they suffer under tyrannical theocracy.

To the Supreme Leader I would say: Stop oppressing your people. Stop persecuting Christians. Stop pursuing nuclear weapons capability. Stop stifling freedom of speech and allow real and free elections. Free the Iranian people.

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

I thank my friend and note that a number of Senators have raised this objection and we have focused on one thing and one thing only, which is whether the Senate can raise the debt ceiling with just 50 votes or instead whether the Senate can do so with 60 votes. That is the issue.

We are perfectly prepared to go to conference on the budget, right now, today. That is a red herring. That is not what this procedural fight is about. Every time this motion has been asked by the majority, the minority has risen to protect the rights of the minority because ordinarily to raise the debt ceiling it would take 60 votes, and if it takes 60 votes, what that means is that the 54 Democrats are not able to do so on a straight party-line vote, freezing out Republicans.

Right now the Democrats have stated they believe the debt ceiling should be raised with no preconditions, no negotiations, no structural changes to our out-of-control spending that is bankrupting our country.

What the minority Senators have said is that, at a minimum, if we are going to raise the debt ceiling it should be subject to a 60-vote threshold so that we have a conversation about fixing the deep fiscal and economic challenges in this country. It is indeed the majority that--I will give credit for candor--does not wish to say no, we will take the debt ceiling off the table. Because it is, I believe, the Democrats' intention if this budget process goes to conference committee to use reconciliation as a backdoor procedural trick to raise the debt ceiling on 50 votes. I think that would be a travesty. But I think much of this debate is clouded in smoke and mirrors. Much of this debate is clouded in obfuscation. This is a simple question: Should the debt ceiling be able to be raised with only 50 votes or should it require 60 votes, which will necessitate some compromise, some discussion?

On that question I am quite confident the American people are with my friend from Utah, are with the Members of the minority who believe that if the debt of this country is going to go higher and higher and higher, we need leadership in this body to fix the problem rather than simply putting more and more debt on our kids and grandkids.

The 60-vote threshold, as my friend from Utah knows well, was designed to protect this institution that has been called the world's greatest deliberative body and to ensure that the minority has a role in the discussions. On this issue I think that is critically important. There are few if any issues we will address that are more important than the question of the unsustainable debt that is threatening the future of our kids and grandkids.

The natural reason why the majority would want to get around the 60- vote threshold is because without a 60-vote threshold the majority does not need to listen to this side of the house. President Obama has been very explicit. The President has said he wants the debt ceiling raised with no negotiations, no discussions, no conditions, ``no nothin' '' to fix the problem.

In the last 4\1/2\ years our national debt has gone from $10 trillion to nearly $17 trillion. What we are doing is fundamentally irresponsible and the majority wishes to be able to keep doing it without making any prudent decisions to stop the out-of-control spending, stop the out-of-control debt, fix the problem. The only way they can do it is to use a procedural trick to shut down the minority.

I do not believe that is consistent with our obligations to the constituents who elected us, and I don't believe it is consistent with the responsibility of all 100 Senators to take seriously the obligation of protecting the fiscal and economic strength of this Nation for the next generations.

I thank the junior Senator from Utah for his overly generous comments and kind characterizations. I think the analogy he drew is quite apt, that any lawyer, in representing a client, has an obligation to zealously represent that client; that he owes a fiduciary duty to that client.

I suggest all 100 of us owe that same fiduciary duty to the men and women in our States who entrusted us with the obligation of coming here and fighting for them. Because the 3 million citizens of Utah could not all be on

the floor of the Senate fighting, the junior Senator from Utah steps in their shoes to fight on their behalf. I feel confident that the citizens of Utah, like the citizens from Texas, would be horrified at the notion that this body would continue raising the debt ceiling over and over again without even trying to fix the underlying problem.

This Senate floor has a long and storied history. There have been great men and women, great leaders of this country who have walked on this floor. Yet each generation, going back for centuries, has managed to avoid saddling the next generation with crushing debts. I am reminded of the very distinguished late father of the Senator from Utah, Rex Lee, who was the Solicitor General of the United States, who was widely considered one of the finest Supreme Court advocates to have ever lived. He was an individual who took the obligation of zealously representing his client deeply and near and dear to his heart.

Your father's generation, my father's generation, did not leave us with crushing debts, did not leave us with debts from which we could never escape. What has happened in the last 4\1/2\ years is qualitatively different, qualitatively different from what has happened in the last 2\1/2\ centuries in this country. No other generation has said to their kids, their grandkids, and to their grandkids' grandkids, we are going to rack up so much debt that you are never going to be able to escape.

My wife and I are blessed. We have two little girls at home, 5 and 2. The idea that Caroline and Catherine are going to spend their adult days working to pay the taxes to pay off the debt we are spending recklessly right now I think is profoundly immoral, is profoundly irresponsible. I cannot tell you how many thousands of Texans, men and women across the State, have said the exact same thing: Stop bankrupting the country. Stop bankrupting our kids and grandkids. That is the fiduciary duty we have to fight for, to defend--to stand for the 300 million Americans for whom this body, Congress, has been racking up a massive credit card debt that threatens to imperil the security of this country and the future generations in America.

Of course we shouldn't halt the issuance of treasuries, and of course we shouldn't forswear any and all debt. The Constitution provides that the Federal Government can incur debt, and there has been a long history of incurring debt, particularly to meet extraordinary circumstances. In wartime we have had a history of incurring debt and then paying that down.

What is important to emphasize is that there is a qualitative difference in what has happened in the last 4\1/2\ years. We have always had some degree of debt in this country, but one of the challenges is that at times $1 million, $1 billion, and $1 trillion can seem like the same number. They all end in ``illions,'' they all sound big, and yet the difference of $10 trillion, where the national debt was 5 years ago, and just shy of $17 trillion, where we are now, is fundamental; it is structural. Our national debt exceeds the size of our entire economy.

The nations of Europe are collapsing because their elected officials were not able to be responsible. They spent money they did not have, and they built up so much debt they could not repay. Eventually, there comes a point where every decision to address the debt is an ugly one. There comes a point where the debt hole is so deep--as some of the nations in Europe are discovering--that the answers are either drastic cuts to spending or massive tax increases or massively inflating the currency. Every one of those outcomes is ugly, which is one of the reasons we have seen rioting in the streets of Europe.

Thankfully the United States is not yet in as deep a hole as some of the nations of Europe, and that is why we need leadership now to stop the out-of-control spending by addressing the deep structural problems. If we keep spending money we don't have--if any of us ran our families, our households, our businesses the way the Federal Government is run, we would be bankrupt. We would be sleeping under a bridge.

What it takes, I believe, is responsible leadership, and I hope bipartisan responsible leadership. We need Republicans and Democrats to come together to say: Let's live within our means. That is not a terribly conservative principle. That is a principle that has been common sense in this country for centuries, and it is one, sadly, we have gotten away from in the last 4\1/2\ years.

My friend from Utah asks a terrific question. It is a question of procedural rules--whether in a courtroom or in the Senate-- designed to protect substantive rights. Ultimately, the 60-vote threshold is designed to protect the substantive rights not of the Senators--we are not here in our own stead. We are instead representing the constituents who sent us here.

What the majority is asking us to do by asking for unanimous consent to allow this to go to conference and to set it up for them to raise the debt ceiling with 50 votes--the majority is asking for the 46 Republicans on this side of the aisle to give away our right to speak. They are asking us to say we will cede to the majority the ability to do whatever it wishes on the debt ceiling. In giving away our right to speak, what we are giving away is not anything that belongs to us, it is the right of 26 million Texans to have their voice heard.

For us to agree with the majority and say, yes, we will hand over the ability to make this decision on the debt ceiling without ever again consulting this side of the aisle would be very much like the situation the Senator from Utah asked about. I don't know how the Senator from Utah would answer a constituent in Utah who said: Senator Lee, why did you give away my voice? Why did you simply hand to the Democrats the ability to decide how much debt the United States should have, to raise it? And why did you essentially give away my seat at the table?

It is not the seat of the Senator from Utah; it is not my seat. It is the seat of the millions of constituents in Utah, Texas, and each of our home States that sent us here. The idea that we would willingly give up their right to speak is inconsistent with the obligation we owe the men and women of Utah and the men and women of Texas.

I think that is a reasonable question to ask. There are a number of points that are relevant. No. 1, there is a considerable history of the debt ceiling being raised through reconciliation, and, indeed, it has been done in 1986, 1990, 1993, and in 1997. So the danger that we are acting to prevent is not a hypothetical danger, it is a danger that has proven accurate.

Those who say we will simply trust the House--the House Members were elected to represent their constituents, and each of the 435 Members of the House has an obligation to exercise their best judgment to represent their constituents. Whatever they choose to do--and I would note a number of Members of House leadership have publicly on the record suggested they might well be amenable to raising the debt ceiling through reconciliation. So given their public statements, the scenario we are raising is a possibility that the House leadership has suggested may well be on the table.

But more fundamentally, regardless of what the House chooses to do, the Senator from Utah has an obligation to the 3 million citizens of Utah to represent their views. I don't think it would be responsible for him to give up his very eloquent voice or for me to give up my voice or for any of us to give up the voice of the citizens we are representing.

I am reminded of meeting an individual at a gathering of Republican women back in Texas about a month ago, and this individual was a veteran who had fought in World War II. He was there, introduced to everyone, and received a standing ovation. A story was told about how he had been grievously injured in World War II. As a result of that injury, he was in a hospital and two doctors were debating about where to amputate his leg. They were debating whether to amputate the leg above the knee or below the knee.

This soldier was unconscious, and he awakened in the middle of this conversation between the two doctors about where to amputate his leg. This soldier began to participate in that debate. And, unsurprisingly, he had a very strong view that he would very much prefer they not amputate the leg. He expressed that view vociferously to the doctors who were having that debate. As he expressed his view, he ended up prevailing in that argument and they chose not to amputate his leg below or above the knee.

To this day he walks with a limp. He doesn't walk as well as he might if he had not been injured, but he was able to save that leg because he had a voice in that debate, because he spoke up and his interest concerning his leg was acutely different from the two doctors who were debating it without his voice. I think he had every right to participate in that debate because it affected him, it affected his future, and it affected his life. And just so, I think the 3 million citizens of Utah have every right to participate in this debate and not simply to be told to trust the other body of Congress. They have an independent obligation. My friend the Senator from Utah has an obligation to his constituents to make sure their voice is part of this debate.

Mr. President, I very much want commonsense immigration reform to pass. This bill is going to pass the Senate. But, as written, this bill will not pass the House. As written, this bill will not pass into law. And if this bill did become law, it would not solve the problem--indeed, it would make the problem of illegal immigration that we have today worse rather than better.

If you likewise want to see commonsense immigration reform pass, then you have reason to be both optimistic and pessimistic. You have reason for optimism because there is widespread bipartisan agreement on many aspects of immigration.

Outside of Washington, DC, there is widespread bipartisan agreement that, No. 1, our current immigration system is broken, it is not working; No. 2, that we have to get serious about securing the borders, about doing everything we can to stop illegal immigration--that in a post-9/11 world it does not make any sense that we do not know who is coming into this country; we do not know their history; we do not know their background--and, No. 3, that we need to improve and streamline legal immigration, that we need to remain a Nation that does not just welcome but that celebrates legal immigration.

On those basic principles there is widespread bipartisan agreement. If this body were to focus on those areas of bipartisan agreement, that is how we would get an immigration bill passed into law--not just by one Chamber of Congress but actually passed into law.

The reason, however, for pessimism is that to date the conduct of the White House and the Senate Democrats, who have been driving this process, suggests they are more interested in finding a partisan issue to campaign on in 2014 and 2016 than in actually passing a bill to fix our broken immigration system.

Of all of the issues swirling about this bill, the path to citizenship for those who are here illegally is the single most divisive issue; and that is the issue on which the Obama White House and the Senate Democrats insist. By insisting on that division, I believe they, by design, destine this bill to be voted down. I think if we do not end up fixing our immigration system, that would be a very unfortunate outcome.

I would note in the Judiciary Committee we spent considerable time considering amendments to this bill. At the outset of the markup, I observed that I hoped it would be a real markup, that the majority had the votes, if they wanted, to reject every substantive amendment, but I very much hoped they would not, that they would be willing to work with the members of the committee to improve the bill to make it fix the problem.

Sadly, at the end of the markup, I was forced to observe it had played out exactly as I feared it might at the beginning; namely, that the majority of Democrats on the committee voted down just about every single major substantive amendment that was presented, one after the other after the other. What they repeatedly said was there had been a deal that was cut--a deal that was cut with the union bosses, with the interest groups--and that deal could not be changed. Well, if that is the case, that deal is not going to get passed into law.

In my view, this legislation has two major problems. The first is it does not fix the problem. In 1986, Congress passed major immigration reform--the last time we addressed and successfully passed immigration reform--and that bill had two major components: No. 1, it granted amnesty, explicit, full-out amnesty for some 3 million people who were then here illegally. The American people were told: This amnesty will be in exchange for securing the borders. In 1986 Congress told the American people: We are granting amnesty, but in exchange we will fix the problem so illegal immigration will go away as a problem. Once these 3 million get amnesty, there will be no more.

Now, sadly, we are here some 30 years later and instead of 3 million there are roughly 11 million people here illegally. Because what happened in 1986 is the amnesty happened and the borders never got secured. If this bill were to pass into law, in 10, 20, 30 years we would be back here talking about another 10, 20, 30 million people here illegally. Because, like the 1986 bill, this bill will not fix the problem, and, indeed, it will exacerbate it.

This bill is enormously complicated. Indeed, this bill, as currently written, is 1,076 pages--1,076 pages. It is longer than the Dodd-Frank bill, which was 848 pages. It is roughly half the size of ObamaCare, which was over 2,000 pages. In these 1,076 pages, there are, right now, over 1,000 waivers given to the

Secretary of Homeland Security and other members of the executive branch to waive law enforcement provisions, to waive border security, to give to the executive more standardless, unreviewable discretion. That, unfortunately, would only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Illegal immigration is an enormous problem. It is an enormous problem in my home State of Texas, where I have spent real time down on the border visiting with ranchers, with farmers, with people living on the border, who every week have people coming illegally across their property, who no longer lock their doors at home because they have discovered if they lock their doors, they just get broken into. So it is simpler not to lock the doors rather than deal with the damage of the locks being broken or the doors kicked in.

If you look at the numbers, in fiscal year 2012, the Border Patrol reported 463 deaths, 549 assaults, and 1,312 rescues.

Let me point out, this current system is the opposite of humane. This current system ends up having vulnerable people coming here seeking freedom, entrusting themselves to coyotes, to drug cartels, to traffickers, and being left--sometimes women and children--to die in the desert, being left sometimes subject to sexual assault, to exploitation, to trafficking.

The U.S. Department of State estimates that 14,000 to 17,000 people are trafficked into the United States every single year. And when it comes to the drug cartels and their role in facilitating illegal immigration, the volume is staggering. Between 2006 and 2013, there were 9.28 million pounds of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin seized in Texas alone. To put that in perspective, the space shuttle weighs about 4.5 million pounds, which means there was twice as much--two space shuttles' worth--of illegal-drugs-seized traffic across the border.

But the second major failing of this bill: It is not likely to pass. There are not 218 votes in the House of Representatives to pass a pathway to citizenship. My friends on the Democratic side of the aisle know that, but I think they have made a political judgment that they want to campaign on this issue rather than rolling up their sleeves and saying: How do we actually get a bill that can pass into law? That is what I hope this body does.

In the course of the markup, I worked very hard to try to improve this bill because I want to see a bill that fixes the problem passed into law. Specifically, I offered five amendments to fix the bill, to fix the problem. Those amendments were all voted down, with every Democrat on the committee voting against them.

On the floor of the Senate, I hope to offer the same amendments. If they are voted down again, and this body passes that bill, I very much hope the House of Representatives will look to these amendments as providing a pathway to fixing this bill, to actually addressing the problem.

The first amendment I offered was an amendment to actually secure the borders. The amendment I offered, unlike the current bill, which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to prepare a plan--and the trigger is, when the Secretary prepares a plan, that triggers the legalization provisions of this bill. Well, a plan to plan is, by design, toothless. Instead, the amendment I offered would have tripled the size of the U.S. Border Patrol to put manpower on the ground, boots on the ground, to solve the problem. It would have increased fourfold the helicopters and fixed-wing assets and technology on the ground to solve the problem. It would have put in place a biometric entry-exit system because 40 percent of the illegal immigration we have comes from visa overstays.

Unfortunately, every single Democrat on the committee voted against that amendment.

I offered two amendments to improve and substantially increase legal immigration. On this point, let me pause for a second to note there is no more enthusiastic advocate of legal immigration in the Senate than I am. I am the son of an immigrant. I am the son of one who had been imprisoned and tortured in Cuba, who came to this country with nothing, seeking freedom, and we need to welcome and celebrate legal immigrants. So I offered two amendments focusing on improving legal immigration so we can continue to welcome those from all around the world coming here seeking freedom.

First, I offered an amendment concerning temporary high-skilled worker H-1B visas. H-1B high-skilled worker visas are overwhelmingly progrowth. The economic data indicates that for every 100 H-1B high- skilled workers who come into this country, 183 jobs are created for U.S. citizens. The amendment I offered would take the current cap of H- 1B visas, which is at 65,000, and increase it fivefold to 325,000. The current bill, the Gang of 8 bill, goes up to 110,000. That is a step in the right direction, but it does not go nearly far enough. There is far more demand than that.

Right now, every year, we educate tens of thousands of foreign students at our universities. They get graduate degrees in mathematics, in engineering, in computer science. They get Ph.D.s, and then we send them back to their countries, where they start businesses there, they create businesses there, they create jobs there, and they compete against us. It makes absolutely no sense. I think we need to expand dramatically high-skilled workers, and my amendment would increase it fivefold.

Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.

I would note that the proponents of the bill often find themselves in Silicon Valley telling our friends in the high-tech industry how they are champions for helping get more programmers, engineers, computer scientists into this country. Yet I note again every single Democrat on the Judiciary Committee voted against increasing H-1B high-skilled workers. We need to increase that cap.

The second amendment I offered that would increase legal immigration would double the overall cap on legal immigration from 675,000--the current statutory cap--to 1.35 million per year so we can have a legal system that has employment-based immigration. When people have jobs, they can meet areas of need, whether in agriculture or elsewhere. And they can also come for family unification.

I am sorry to say many of my friends on the left side of the aisle-- who often describe themselves as advocates of the Hispanic community, advocates of immigrants--every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee voted in party line against increasing legal immigration and against doubling the caps of legal immigration.

Finally, I introduced two other amendments that were both directed at respecting and maintaining the rule of law. One amendment simply eliminated the pathway to citizenship. What it provided is those people who are here illegally shall not be eligible for citizenship.

It is important to note that under the existing bill, if my amendment had been adopted, those who are here illegally would be eligible for what is called RPI status, a legal status, and, indeed, in time would be eligible for legal permanent residency.

So the underlying bill gives legal status to the 11 million people who are here illegally. The amendment I introduced simply said there needs to be a consequence for having violated the law. It is unfair, in my opinion, to the millions of legal immigrants who followed the rules--who stayed in line, who stayed in their home country years or decades--to reward those who broke the law with a path to citizenship. I believe it is also critical to passing this bill to remove the path to citizenship, and yet every single Democrat on the committee voted party line against this amendment.

The final amendment I introduced was an amendment that provided that those who are here illegally shall not be eligible for State, local, or Federal means-tested welfare payments. This is an interesting issue because the advocates of the Gang of 8 bill frequently go on television and tell the American people: None of those granted amnesty in their bill will be given welfare. I have seen that. That is a central talking point.

If that talking point were true, this should have been a very easy amendment to adopt. Yet every single Democrat on the committee voted against this amendment. One of the reasons is, although the Gang of 8 bill for a period exempts those here illegally from Federal welfare, roughly $300 billion a year is spent in State welfare, and those

given amnesty under this bill would be eligible for a great portion of that State welfare immediately, means-tested welfare.

In my view we should welcome people from across the world, but the people we should be welcoming are those who are coming here to seek the American dream, to work hard. I believe that is the vast majority of immigrants who are coming here for a better life. We should not be putting into place systems where the hard-working American taxpayers are being taxed to provide welfare for those who are here illegally. I think that respects the rule of law to say we will welcome you here if you are working to provide for your family.

Each of those amendments was rejected. Often my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle would say something like: I may agree with this particular amendment, but there was a deal cut. I may agree, but the union bosses, the special interests, the people in the closed-door rooms who negotiated this deal, we agreed on a level and we cannot increase it. It may be good to increase high-skilled workers to 325,000, but we cut a deal with the union bosses and we cannot change it.

That is not how legislation should be drafted. We should be fixing the problem. We should be making our economy stronger. Right now, in my opinion, this bill is headed for failure. There should be no drama. There should be no confusion.

Let's be clear. This bill, I am convinced, is going to pass the Senate. In fact, I think it is going to pass the Senate with a substantial margin. In all likelihood, near the end of this process there will be an amendment or two directed at border security that the American people will be told: OK, this finally puts teeth into the border security provisions.

I hope those representations prove true.

Regardless of what happens on that, I believe the votes are already precooked that this bill is going to pass the Senate. Absent major revisions, absent revisions along the lines of the amendments I introduced in committee and intend to introduce on the floor again, this bill will crash and burn in the House. It is designed to do so. So how do we save it? If we actually want to fix the problem, not have a political game but fix the problem, the answer is the American people. The American people have to speak. If you want to see the border secured, pick up the phone and let your elected Representative know. Let Senators know, let Members of the House know. Speak out online, speak out publicly. When the American people speak out and speak out loudly, their voices are heard.

If you want legal immigration improved so that we welcome high- skilled workers, we welcome those seeking the American dream, speak out. If you want to respect the rule of law and not grant amnesty without securing the borders, speak out and speak out loud. Let me say, what needs to happen to change this dynamic is the key stakeholders need to decide that failure is not an option. The high-tech community, the business community, farmers and agricultural leaders need to decide that they are not willing to have this entire bill held hostage to a provision providing a pathway to citizenship that is certain to fail and designed to fail.

I want to speak finally to the Hispanic advocacy groups, to the many who passionately pour their hearts into trying to improve the conditions of those in this country, including the 11 million who are here illegally. I believe the current path this bill is on is a path that is, by design, going to yield it to being voted down. I think that is why the Obama White House is insisting on a pathway to citizenship.

I would note in 2007 then-Senator Obama stood on the floor of this Senate and played a key role in killing immigration reform then for the same reasons, for partisan reasons. Indeed, I would suggest a moment of clarity came in the Judiciary Committee markup when a senior Democrat, who is one of the sponsors of this bill, said: If there is no path to citizenship, there can be no reform.

I think that sentence summed it up. I certainly thank that senior Democrat for his candor because he made clear there was one overwhelming partisan objective, which is a path to citizenship. In his judgment, if that partisan objective could not be accomplished 100 percent, he was willing to do nothing, zero, to improve the border. He was willing to do nothing, zero, to improve legal immigration--nothing, zero, to expand high-tech immigration; nothing, zero, to improve farmers and agricultural workers; and most telling, nothing, zero, to improve the condition of the 11 million people currently here illegally because, based on the Obama White House position that with no path to citizenship we will take our marbles and go home, we will crater this entire bill. That outcome means those 11 million remain in the shadows, have no legal status. Whereas, if the proponents of this bill actually demonstrate a commitment not to politics, not to campaigning all the time, but to actually fixing this problem, to finding a middle ground, that would fix the problem and also allow for those 11 million people who are here illegally a legal status with citizenship off the table.

I believe that is the compromise that can pass. But, at least right now, the partisan advocates of this bill are not willing to accept that. The only thing that can change that is if the American people speak out. The only thing that can change that is if the stakeholders make clear to the Obama White House, to the Senate Democrats, failure is not an option; that if this fails, because as a political matter you insisted on a path to citizenship and threw everything else overboard, that failure would be unacceptable.

I very much hope we work together in a bipartisan manner to fix this problem in a way that secures the border, in a way that respects the rule of law, and in a way that improves legal immigration so we remain a nation that welcomes and celebrates legal immigrants.

Mr. President, in ``Gulliver's Travels,'' Swift told us of two fictional lands--Lilliput and Blefuscu--that had been at war for years over which end of the egg to open first. In Lilliput they opened the big end of the egg, and in Blefuscu they opened the small end of the egg, and the big-enders and little-enders battled endlessly. I am sorry to say that satirical depiction often reflects what occurs in this august body. We spend a great deal of time arguing about procedural niceties, about motions to commit or not commit that do not matter to the American people, and all the meantime we are bankrupting our children and our grandchildren.

If I could, I wish to cut through all of the arguments back and forth because in my view most of the arguments are by design missing the point of this disagreement. This disagreement is over one issue and one issue only: Can the Senate raise our debt limit with only 50 votes or does it take 60? Everything else that is being talked about is smoke, is a side issue. The central fight is, Should the Senate be able to raise the debt limit with 50 votes or 60?

I will note that my friend from Arizona questioned the knowledge of those who are objecting, and he suggested that perhaps our knowledge was lacking because this could not be done. Well, I know my friend from Arizona is a long veteran of this body, and he surely knows it was done in 1987 and 1990. This is not a hypothetical. In 1995 and in 2004 it was attempted. It didn't quite get accomplished, but it was attempted.

What occurs under the Budget Act of 1974 is that when a conference report is adopted and reconciliation instructions are sent, that raises the debt ceiling, and that can then be passed by this body with merely 50 votes. This is all an avenue to allow a debt ceiling increase to be raised with 50 votes. And I

know my friend from Arizona is well aware of that because he is such an esteemed historian of this body, he knows not only that it can be done but that it has been done.

We don't need to hypothesize over whether that is what this is about because for 62 days we have asked the majority leader: Simply say we won't use this as a procedural trick to raise the debt ceiling with 50 votes and then we can go to conference. For 62 days the majority leader has said: No, no, I will not do that; I will not do that. And those protestations make absolutely clear what this is about.

I think that on both sides of the Chamber there are different things at work. On the Democratic side of the Chamber--President Obama has been very explicit. He wants to raise the debt limit, and he has said he wants no debate about it. He is unwilling to debate. He wants to shut down the discussion. He simply wants a blank check. He simply wants an unlimited credit card to keep digging the debt hole this Nation is in deeper and deeper and deeper. He said this publicly, repeatedly from the White House.

What our friends the Democrats are doing is standing shoulder to shoulder with the Democratic President in fighting to enable the Senate to raise the debt limit with just 50 votes, which means, if that happens, that would then allow the 55-Member Democratic majority to vote to do so without listening to a word from the minority. That is what this fight is about, and there is no other issue being contested here.

What is happening on the Republican side? Well, some have suggested we ought to just have a motion to instruct. The problem with the motion to instruct is that a motion to instruct is nonbinding, so it is a purely symbolic gesture. But even a motion to instruct not to raise the debt ceiling would lose. Why? Because there are 55 Democrats, and the 55 Democrats would vote against it.

Here is the dirty little secret about some of those on the right side of the aisle: There are some who would very much like to cast a symbolic vote against raising the debt ceiling and nonetheless allow our friends on the left side of the aisle to raise the debt ceiling. That, to some Republicans, is the ideal outcome because they can go to their constituents and say: See, I voted no, and yet at the same time, wonderfully, they lost, and they did not actually have to stand up and stop what was happening. That is an outcome I believe some on this side of the aisle desire.

I do feel obliged to rise in defense of my colleagues, the Republicans, because the senior Senator from Arizona has impugned the Republicans by claiming repeatedly it is only a minority of Republicans who are opposed to raising the debt ceiling on 50 votes. He has repeatedly suggested on the floor of the Senate that, in fact, it may be a small minority, that the overwhelming majority of Republicans, the senior Senator from Arizona said, stand with Harry Reid in wanting to be able to raise the debt ceiling on 50 votes.

Let me suggest to the senior Senator from Arizona that, No. 1, in saying that, he is impugning all 45 Republicans in this body, but, No. 2, it has been suggested that those of us who are fighting to defend liberty, fighting to turn around the out-of-control spending and out- of-control debt in this country, fighting to defend the Constitution-- it has been suggested we are wacko birds. Well, if that is the case, I will suggest to my friend from Arizona there may be more wacko birds in the Senate than are suspected. Indeed, I would encourage my friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, that if he were to circulate to Republicans a simple statement that said: We, the undersigned Republican Senators, hereby state we support giving Harry Reid and the Democrats the ability to raise the debt ceiling with 50 votes instead of 60, I believe he will find his representation to this body that it is only a minority of Republicans who oppose that is not accurate.

This issue gets obscured by the procedural complexities, and that is not by accident. Washington is very good at speaking doublespeak that makes the citizens' eyes glaze over. But as its heart it is very simple. Majority Leader Reid and the Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling. They have stated they want to raise the debt ceiling, and they want to do so consistent with President Obama's instructions to do so without debate because he does not want to debate this issue, without conditions, without anything to fix our out-of-control spending, our out-of-control debt--simply give him an additional blank credit card because going from $10 trillion to $17 trillion has not been enough. That is the desire of the Democrats, and it is candid.

We could go to conference right now, today, if the Democrats would simply say: We will not raise the debt ceiling with just using 50 votes. We will debate it on the floor with a 60-vote threshold and actually be forced to find some bipartisan agreement. But that is not what the majority wants to do.

Those who are arguing that Republicans should accede to that demand are arguing that all of us who have told our constituents we are going to fight to solve this economic problem, we are going to fight to stop out-of-control spending, we are going to fight to stop bankrupting our kids--that those promises are hollow, those are just what we tell constituents at home, that is not actually what we do when we are on the floor of the Senate.

I would note, indeed, when the senior Senator from Arizona said it is only a small minority that believes this on the Republican side, if my friend, the senior Senator, is able to produce a written letter with the signature of a majority of Republicans, I will offer here and now to go to a home game of my Houston Astros wearing an Arizona Diamondback hat. And I can guarantee you, in Houston that will not be well received. But yet I stand in complete comfort that I will not find myself in that situation because I do not believe it is right that a majority of the Republicans in this body have given up the fight on spending, have given up the fight on reining in out-of-control Washington bipartisan spending, deficits, and debt. I believe we are seeing leadership in this body stand together to fix the problem. That is what the American people want.

Let me say this in closing: It is easy to get confused by all of the procedural discussions back and forth. This issue is about one issue alone: Should Majority Leader Harry Reid be able to raise the debt limit an unlimited amount with just 50 votes or should it require 60? If it requires 60, there will have to be some positive steps made to fix the problem. If it is just 50, the majority leader has the votes right now, today, to write a blank check for the Federal debt.

That is the issue, and I think the American people are not conflicted in the answer to that issue. The American people want us to fix the problem and stop digging the debt hole deeper and deeper, stop putting our kids and grandkids on the path to Greece.

I am proud so many Senators are standing here working very hard to honor our commitments to our constituents because that is exactly what our job is.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank my friend from Illinois, and I would ask him, if the position he is championing is the regular order, then why is it the Democrats are asking unanimous consent to set aside the regular order to go to conference?

The only reason unanimous consent is needed is because you are endeavoring to circumvent the regular order, and by doing so opening the door for a procedural trick to raise the debt ceiling with 50 votes rather than 60.

Would the Senator yield for another question?

Will the Senator yield for an additional question?

So if I understand correctly, we are agreed now this is not the regular order. The Senate is not following the regular order that would have been taking up the House budget resolution and voting on that. That is not what is being pursued here, which is why the majority is seeking unanimous consent to set aside the rules.

But let me ask the question, if I might----

I would suggest that unanimous consent is used to circumvent the regular order----

And in particular the debt ceiling was not contained in the budget, it was not debated in the budget, it is not part of the budget, and the only question here--we could have gone to conference 60 days ago if the Democrats had simply agreed not to use reconciliation as a backdoor trick to raise the debt ceiling, which has happened three times in the past. So this is not a hypothetical risk. This is, I believe, the intention of the majority, and it is why we are objecting to raising the debt ceiling--to issuing an unlimited credit card--and digging the hole deeper without actually fixing the problem.

Madam President, the senior Senator from Arizona urged this body to trust the Republicans. Let me be clear: I don't trust the Republicans and I don't trust the Democrats. I think a whole lot of Americans likewise don't trust Republicans and the Democrats because it is leadership in

both parties that has gotten us in this mess.

My wife and I have two little girls at home. They are 5 and 2. When Caroline was born, our national debt was $10 trillion. Today it is nearly $17 trillion. In her short 5 years of life, the national debt has grown by over 60 percent. What we are doing to our kids and grandkids is immoral.

I commend the Democrats in this body for their candor. The Democrats and President Obama have been very explicit. It is their intention to raise the debt ceiling, and to do so with no conditions whatsoever--to keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing money without any structural reforms to fix the problems. That is an intellectually consistent position. I think it is a dangerous position but it is at least candid. That is the reason why every day, for 60 days, the Democrats have opposed taking the debt ceiling off the table in this discussion.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons we got into this mess is because a lot of Republicans were complicit in this spending spree. That is why so many Americans are disgusted with both sides of this body, because we need leaders on both sides to do as my friend from Virginia said, to roll up our sleeves, to compromise and to work together and fix the problem--fix the enormous fiscal and economic problems and stop bankrupting our country.

What this issue is all about is very simple: Will we allow the debt ceiling to be raised in an unlimited amount with a 50-vote threshold? And if the answer to that is yes, we have, in effect, just voted to raise the debt ceiling because the Democrats hold a majority of this body--55 seats--and the Democrats are explicit that they want to raise the debt ceiling. If we go to conference without the debt ceiling being taken off the plate, it is a 100-percent certainty the debt ceiling will be raised. It has been done three times in recent history. Every Republican who stands against holding the line here is saying: Let's give the Democrats a blank check to borrow any money they want, with no reforms, no leadership to fix the problem. I don't think that is consistent with any of our responsibilities.

A final point. Much has been said about the budget was debated, the budget was considered, and that is surely true. But the budget contains nothing about the debt ceiling. The budget did not consider the debt ceiling. When all of us were here all night debating the budget, we didn't debate the debt ceiling. The question here is whether the majority of the Senate will be able to bootstrap the debt ceiling--a totally different issue--onto the budget. And the reason for doing it is to use a political trick. It would allow the majority to pass a debt ceiling increase on just 50 votes.

I think it would be profoundly irresponsible for this body to raise the debt ceiling without fixing the problem--without getting the economy going, without getting jobs back, and without stopping the path we are on of bankrupting this country. That is what this fight is about.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

The issue before this body is not a budget. The issue before this body is not going to conference. The issue before this body is one thing in particular: It is the debt ceiling and whether the Senate will be able to raise the debt ceiling using a procedural back door that would allow only 51 votes.

My friend from Nevada, my friend from Washington State, both of them could go to conference on the budget right now today if they would simply agree this budget would not be used as a back door to use a procedural trick to raise the debt limit--not on 60 votes but on 50 votes.

I commend their candor, because neither one of them is willing to make that representation, and that is commendable. But I would point out that nothing in the budget we debated raised the debt ceiling. I would suggest the American people are not interested in procedural games. I think they are tired of games by the Democrats and tired of games by the Republicans. What they are interested in is leadership in this body to address the enormous fiscal and economic challenges facing this country.

Our national debt is nearly $17 trillion. It is larger than the size of our entire economy. In the last 4 years our economy has grown 0.9 percent a year, with 23 million people struggling to find jobs. This body should be debating every day how we get the economy moving, how we get people back to work, how we stop our unsustainable debt. Instead of doing that, 2 weeks ago we spent a week voting to add $23 billion in new taxes to small retailers online, creating an Internet sales tax-- going backwards, killing economic growth and killing jobs.

This issue is very simple: Will the Senate allow a procedural back door to raise the debt ceiling and doing so while not fixing any of the problems?

My friends on the Democratic side of the aisle believe we should raise the debt ceiling with no conditions, with no changes, with no spending reforms, with no progrowth reforms, with nothing to stop this unsustainable spending. The President likewise has said: Raise the debt ceiling with no conditions. That is why, I would submit, the majority leader is not willing to agree: No, this budget conference report will not be used to raise the debt ceiling, because it is precisely the hope to do so. This body may well vote to raise the debt ceiling. But if this body votes to raise the debt ceiling, we should do so after a fair and open debate, where the issue is considered and where the threshold is the traditional 60-vote threshold and we can address what I think is imperative--that we fix the problem.

When I travel across the State of Texas, men and women stop me all the time and say: Enough of the games. Go up there, roll up your sleeves, work with each other and fix the problem. Getting a new credit card--jacking up the debt ceiling--with no spending reforms, no structural reforms, no progrowth reforms is a mistake and it is the wrong path.

I will be happy to yield.

I thank my friend from California for that question. She may well be right, that one of the reasons spending is out of control is that we no longer have Bill Clinton as President and a Republican Congress. Instead we have President Obama who has expanded spending more than any other President in modern times.

I thank my friend from California, but I have been quite vocal that both Democrats and Republicans have contributed to getting us in this mess, and we need leadership from both parties to turn it around.

I would note in the question the Senator from California raised, she did not say one word about not raising the debt ceiling using 51 votes. And everything else about this debate is all smoke. It is all about one thing, which is do we give an unlimited credit card to the Federal Government to raise the debt ceiling $1 trillion, $2 trillion, $5 trillion, $10 trillion.

If the result of reconciliation was raising the debt ceiling $10 trillion, it would come back----

I am happy to yield as soon as I finish this point. I will be happy to yield after that.

If we went to a conference committee and it came back on reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling by $10 trillion, then under reconciliation rules, 51 Senators--only the Democrats--could vote to do so, and the Republicans would be utterly silenced from participating in anything there. It may well be----

What I expect is that each of us is obliged to carry out our responsibility to defend the interests of our States. I have 26 million Texans who I am not willing to go to and say, if they ask me: Why did you go along with the procedural game to raise the debt ceiling, to allow Republicans in the Senate to be shut out, to give up any ability to force progrowth reforms, to get jobs back, to get the economy back, to get people working, why did you give up----

We may well have a vote, but if we had a vote----

The vote would be a 51-vote threshold, which would mean-- and my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle have been very explicit that in their collective judgment the debt ceiling should be raised with no conditions. Given that----

I appreciate the efforts of my friend from Washington to defend the prerogative of the Republican House. What I would suggest is that each of us has a responsibility to our States.

With our vote, but also to defend the ability to have our vote matter, to have it make a difference. Because if this procedural trick is allowed to go forward, what it would mean--this fight right now is the fight over the debt ceiling. Because what it would mean, if we go to a conference committee, as sure as night follows day, we would find ourselves in a month or two with a debt ceiling increase coming back and the Democrats in this body voting to raise the debt ceiling with no conditions whatsoever, which is what the President has asked for.

I will be glad to yield.

I thank my friend from Kentucky, and that is exactly what I am hearing from men and women throughout Texas.

I would note for the Senator from California and the Senator from Washington that I respect the sincerity of their beliefs, that they genuinely believe the Democratic budget passed by this body is the proper course for this country; that the proper course is to raise taxes yet another $1 trillion on top of the $1.7 trillion that taxes have already increased. They genuinely believe the proper course is never to balance the budget and allow massive deficits to extend into perpetuity.

I respect the sincerity of their views, but at the same time I believe those views are inconsistent with the best interests of this country; that the best interests of this country are to restore economic growth, are to get back to historic levels of growth that allow small businesses to thrive and, in particular, allow the most vulnerable among us to work and to achieve the American dream.

In the last 4 years, under President Obama, we have had 4 consecutive years of less than 1 percent average growth in the economy. I refer to this period as the ``great stagnation.'' The people who have been hurt the most during the great stagnation have been young people, have been Hispanics, African Americans, and single moms. Right now, if we look at unemployment, unemployment for those without a high school degree is over 11 percent, for Hispanics it is nearly 10 percent, for African Americans it is nearly 14 percent, and for young people it is over 25 percent.

When this country has massive spending, massive debt, massive regulation, and massive taxes, the result is that small businesses are strangled and die, and the people who lose their jobs are the single moms who are struggling to provide for their kids at home, like so many moms now seeing their hours forcibly reduced to 29 hours a week because of the burdens of ObamaCare. I believe we have an obligation to the American people to focus every day on turning the economy around, on getting jobs back, and stopping our unsustainable debt.

My friend from California made reference to the prospect of a default. I absolutely agree the United States should never, ever, ever default on its debt, and that is the reason why I strongly support the legislation introduced by the Senator from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, the Default Prevention Act, which says: In the event the debt ceiling is not raised, the United States will always pay its debts, pay the interest on its debts, so we never default.

I would note my friends on the other side of the aisle right now could join together in taking default off the table entirely.

(Several Senators addressed the Chair.)

I am happy to yield to the Senator from Washington.

Would the Senator from Utah yield for a question?

Madam President, I wish to ask a question but will start by laying a predicate and ask the Senator's views on that predicate.

I rise to support the resolution offered by Senator Lee calling upon the Senate to investigate and hold hearings about the late-term abortion practices in this country.

This is especially important given the fact we are seeing allegations of similar conduct to that of Dr. Gosnell potentially being performed in other locations across the country. Indeed, there have been allegations of similar conduct in my hometown of Houston, TX, which I understand are being investigated by the local district attorney and other authorities and that need to be fully and thoroughly investigated.

The crimes committed by Dr. Gosnell are almost unspeakable. The harm inflicted to the mothers and to the babies who were born alive and had their lives willingly extinguished--unthinkable. The actions detailed in the grand jury report depict a house of horrors.

Knowing what we know now about what happened, everyone in this body should be supporting conducting an investigation to make sure there are not other Dr. Kermit Gosnells across this country. We need to make sure it is not happening to other unsuspecting mothers, that other newborn babies are not being murdered as they were in Dr. Gosnell's clinic.

Specifically this resolution states:

Congress and States should gather information about and

correct abusive, unsanitary and illegal abortion practices

and the interstate referral of women and girls to facilities

engaged in dangerous or illegal second- or third-trimester

procedures.

This body should be concerned what referrals were made to Dr. Gosnell and who else might be performing these late-term abortions in such horrific conditions.

This resolution goes on to say:

Congress has the responsibility to investigate and conduct

hearings on abortions performed near, at, or after viability

in the United States, public policies regarding such, and

evaluate the extent to which such abortions involve

violations of the natural right to life of infants who are

born alive or are capable of being born alive and therefore

are entitled to equal protection under the law.

In my judgment this is a resolution everyone should support. Everyone who proclaims himself or herself to be a champion for women and children should enthusiastically support this resolution.

Many of these late-term abortion clinics serve under-privileged populations. Anyone who proclaims himself a champion dedicated to helping the most vulnerable should be supporting this resolution. The Senate has an obligation to conduct oversight.

Planned Parenthood, the Nation's largest abortion provider in 2001 performed 333,964 abortions in the United States. From 2011 to 2012, Planned Parenthood received 45 percent of its revenue from taxpayer- funded sources. Almost half of its income comes from the taxpayer. This body has an obligation to make sure there are not other Gosnell houses of horror practicing today.

The conditions described in the grand jury report shock the conscience. They describe how doctors and nurses worked without proper licenses.

My question to the Senator is, does he see how any Senator of good faith, given these facts, could oppose this resolution?

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

Mr. President, I rise in praise of Majority Leader Harry Reid. He said the following:

My friend from Texas . . . is like the schoolyard bully. He

pushes everyone around and is losing, and instead of playing

the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball

home with him but he changes the rules.

Today Leader Reid continued his demonstration of civility by referring to me as the ``very junior Senator from Texas.''

As I noted yesterday, the Senate is not a schoolyard. Setting aside the irony of calling someone a bully and then shouting them down when they attempt to respond, today I simply wish to commend my friend from Nevada for his candor.

Yesterday I expressed my concern that sending the budget to conference could be used to pass tax increases or a debt ceiling increase through reconciliation--a backdoor path that would circumvent the longstanding protections of the minority in the Senate. And I observed that I would readily consent to the leader's request if he would simply agree that no such procedural tricks would be employed. It is perhaps rare for a so-called bully to offer to waive all objections if the other side will simply agree to abide by the rules, but I commend the majority leader for his response.

He did not disagree that he hoped to use reconciliation to try to force through tax increases or a debt ceiling increase on a straight party-line vote. He did not pretend that his intentions were otherwise. When the economy is struggling so mightily, as it is now--for the past 4 years our economy has grown at just 0.9 percent a year--it would be profoundly damaging to millions of Americans to raise taxes yet again, on top of the $1.7 trillion in new taxes that have already been enacted in the last 4 years. And with our national debt approaching $17 trillion--larger than the size of our entire economy--it would be deeply irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling yet again without taking real steps to address our fiscal and economic crisis.

If done through reconciliation, the majority could increase taxes or the debt ceiling with a 50-vote threshold rather than needing 60 votes. The American people already saw ObamaCare pass through backroom deals and procedural tricks. It should not happen again.

The majority leader could have claimed that he had no intention of trying to undermine the protections of the minority or of forcing through tax increases or yet another increase in the debt ceiling. But, in a refreshing display of candor, he did not do so, and I commend him for his honesty, so that our substantive policy disagreement can be made clear to the American people.

Let me be explicit. We have no objection to proceeding to conference if the leader is willing to agree not to use it as a backdoor tool to raise the debt ceiling. If not, he is certainly being candid, but the American people are rightly tired of backroom secret deals to raise the debt ceiling even further. And we should not be complicit in digging this Nation even further into debt on merely a 50-vote threshold.

Finally, I would note that the leader made a plea to regular order, and yet he was seeking unanimous consent to set aside regular order, granting that concept could open the door to even more tax increases and crushing national debt, and in my judgment the Senate should not employ a procedural backdoor to do so.

For reasons unknown, the majority leader deemed my saying so out loud as somehow ``bullying.'' Speaking the truth, shining light on substantive disagreements of our elected representatives, is not bullying; it is the responsibility of each of us. It is what we were elected to do. All of us should speak the truth and do so in candor. All of us should work together to solve the crushing economic and fiscal challenges in this country. All of us should exercise candor, and I commend the majority leader and thank him for his willingness to do so.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak out against the so- called Marketplace Fairness Act. In my view, during a time of economic challenge, as we are in today, the very top priority of every elected official, whether Republican or Democrat, should be to restore economic growth, to get our economy moving, to get back to the economic dynamism, the economic strength that has lifted so many millions out of poverty and toward the American dream. This bill, if enacted into law, would hurt economic growth and would be a mistake.

First of all, more taxes will hurt economic growth, and this bill, if enacted, would in effect create a national Internet sales tax. It would subject small online retailers to paying taxes in 9,600 different jurisdictions all across this country. At a time when so many are hurting, we should be discussing how to reduce regulatory burdens on small businesses and how to reduce tax burdens on small businesses, how to reduce the complexity of taxes on small businesses, and this bill goes in exactly the opposite direction.

In particular, those who will be hurt the most by this bill if it is passed are small mom-and-pop retailers online. The threshold for this bill is $1 million in gross online sales. That is not profit; that is $1 million in total sales, gross sales, and $1 million for a starting business is not a terribly high threshold for their gross, not their profits. That has to cover the costs and all expenses of the business. It has to cover any salary, any rent, any Web costs, communications, travel, accounting, legal services, plus the costs of goods sold. These small- and medium-sized businesses would suddenly find themselves subject to 46 different States and 9,600 local jurisdictions. They would find themselves having to pay tax filings, potentially, in all 46 States monthly or quarterly and to be subjected, potentially, to audits from each of these local counties, each of these local municipalities.

I have with me here today a listing of all of the tax rates of these 9,600 different jurisdictions. It is truly indecipherable, that you can look and pick any State and get the county and see the different tax rates. Indeed, in a lot of counties--for example, I just opened this at random. In Colorado--which I happened to open it to--if you look in Taylor Park, if it happens to come from the 81210 ZIP Code, the tax rate is 4.5 percent, but if it is in the same county that comes from the 81230 ZIP Code, the tax rate is 8.25 percent.

Small businesses--a small mom-and-pop just getting started on the Internet would be required to comply with all of these taxing jurisdictions, to send the taxes to all of these taxing jurisdictions, and to be subject, potentially, to audits from 9,600 taxing jurisdictions. That makes no sense.

I wish to point out also that this is not fundamentally about fairness. The proponents of this act point to small mom-and-pop stores that are their bricks-and-mortar retailers. But those are not the main proponents of these bills. A small bricks-and-mortar retailer right now is losing sales primarily to two different sources: No. 1, big-box bricks-and-mortar retailers. They are losing a lot of sales to big-box large retailers. This bill does nothing about that. No. 2, they are losing substantial sales to large online retailers, the giant corporations.

But here is an interesting statistic. Nine of the ten largest Internet retailers are already paying sales taxes in all 46 States that have sales taxes. Why? Because they have a physical presence in the State.

What the Supreme Court has said is, if you are physically in a State, the State can force you to collect its tax. But if you are not physically there, the Constitution does not let you haul someone in from a distant State and force them to collect your taxes because you do not have any accountability to those individuals in a distant State.

In terms of the small mom-and-pop retailers, they are losing their sales to the big-box and big Internet retailers, all of whom are already paying these taxes.

So what do we have here? We have a bipartisan coalition, unfortunately, that it appears is going to pass this bill in this Senate. But the coalition is driven by the fact that you have big business united. You have the big business bricks-and-mortar companies and the big business online retailers all together because the impact of this bill is to hammer the small business online retailers, to make it harder for the little guys to compete. So you see a strange alliance here in Washington, but one that I think is exactly backwards of what we ought to be doing.

I think it is fundamentally unfair to ask a Texas business to collect taxes for California Governor Jerry Brown or for New York City Mayor Bloomberg and a nanny State, in particular, because they cannot hold those politicians accountable. They do not have a presence there. They do not vote there. They do not have influence there. But yet they are being dragooned into collecting those taxes. I think that is fundamentally not right.

Let me give you an example of how this will hurt small businesses. There is a woman in Texas named Ann Whitley Wood who wrote a letter to our office. She lives in Dallas and had created an online consignment store. Even though it is largely a one-person operation, she may come close to doing $1

million in sales--which, keep in mind, are not profits; those are gross sales. Her letter said:

Legislators must understand that it is both possible and

common for a small seller like me to reach about $1 million

in sales with a near-one person operation.

She estimates it could take her 6 weeks a year to comply with the sales tax procedures for all of the collecting States. That impact on a small business is crushing. A giant corporation has accountants, has lawyers, has people designed to deal with that. For a small business, it hits them in particular.

I point out even more fundamentally, the Internet has been this incredible haven of entrepreneurial freedom. It has enabled people to start businesses with nothing, out of their garage, and sell all over the world. It has transformed the ability for single moms and Hispanics and African Americans and people with nothing to go and start a business. Because it used to be that you needed this big distribution network, you needed warehouses, you needed trucks, you needed all of this, so it was difficult for someone to start a small business.

The Internet has transformed all of that. There are 2.3 million Hispanic small business owners. The Internet has been critical to their being able to open those small businesses because it lets them communicate with the world and get their products out.

I believe the Senate should treat the Internet as a safe haven, that it should be treated as free from taxes and regulations that would hamper the entrepreneurial spirit and make it harder for the little guy, for small business to be created, to grow, and thrive. When they become gigantic corporations, they will have a physical presence in the State, and then they will be subject to the taxes. But do not hit them when they are getting started on the Internet. I think it would be absolutely foolish to do anything to impinge on the entrepreneurial freedom of the Internet.

In conclusion, I want to say three very simple things.

No. 1, in my judgment, we should not be taxing the Internet, period. No. 2, we should not be increasing the burdens on small businesses, particularly at a time of economic challenge, period. And, No. 3, we should not be favoring politicians and big business at the expense of the little guy, at the expense of the single mom trying to start a small business to feed her kid, at the expense of the Hispanic immigrant trying to start a small business and work toward the American dream.

We should not be standing with politicians looking for more tax revenue and big businesses looking to make it harder for their competitors to survive. Instead, we should stand up with the little guy, the small business, with the American people.

I urge the Senate to reject this bill. If the Senate does pass it, I would urge the House to listen to the American people and reject the bill as well.

I yield the floor.