Speech #1090123798

Senator GREGG. and one by the distinguished Democratic leader. Senator REID. Both of them are border security amendments. There will not be very many votes in this body. I suspect. against border se152. Pt. 5 April 26. 2006 curity. I want to speak about border security because the Gregg amendment takes very Important steps to maintain our current level of security on the border. which is a minimum level of security. I am proud to cosponsor that. And the Gregg amendment pays for it by taking money from other parts of the Presidents budget. That is the Gregg amendment. The Reid amendment. as I understand it. which we will be voting on side by side. does identically the same thing on border security the Gregg amendment does. except it pretends that money comes out of thin air. that it grows on trees. that it comes from nowhere. It is the thing we see time and time again around here. whereby someone comes up with an essential. good idea but with no way to pay for it. So we print the money. make it up. and the runaway spending goes on and on. I wish to talk this morning a little bit about those two issuesfirst. border security. the subject of the Gregg amendment and why I believe it is essential that we adopt it as part of the supplemental appropriations bill that is before us. I also want to talk about the difference between how it is paid for so the American people can get ready to make their handy list of big spenders because those who vote for the Reid amendment will be on a handy list of big spenders because that amendment is not paid for. Let me start with the Gregg amendment and the condition of border security. Americans are angry about border security. or the lack of it. They have a right to be angry about border security. or the lack of it. That is not the responsibility of the Governor of the State of Arizona or the Governor of Texas or the Governor of California. It is a Federal responsibility. Immigration is our job. Border security is our job. It is a Washington job and it is a job that has been neglected for a long period of time. At least to the credit of the majority leader. he has forced this Senate to deal with this issue and we are in the middle of it and we ought not rest nor go home again until we deal with the issue of border security. There are a lot of other issues that do not have to deal with immigration. How many temporary students do we want here in the United States? We have 572.000 of them today.