[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7846-7847]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            WORK TO BE DONE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this week work continues on the farm bill, 
which will create jobs, cut taxpayer subsidies, and reduce the deficit. 
Chairman Stabenow and Ranking Member Cochran have worked very hard to 
come up with a finite list of amendments. They are still trying to do 
that. I hope they can complete that today. I will give the managers as 
much time as we can to reach an agreement to consider a finite number 
of amendments to the farm bill.
  I will not file cloture unless I have spoken more than once, before 
the day is out, to Senator Stabenow and Senator Cochran. I hope I don't 
have to file cloture on this legislation tonight, but we need to move 
forward. It is important to have ample time for debate on the 
immigration bill reported just a few weeks ago by the Judiciary 
Committee.
  The Senate must move forward before the end of June to protect 
students from the rising cost of education by keeping the loan rates 
low. If we don't do something about that before the end of this month, 
it is going to more than double the rates. If we do nothing, it will 
double the rates. If we do what the House wants, it will triple the 
rates, so we cannot do that. College is already unaffordable for too 
many young people, and if Congress fails to take action this month, as 
I have indicated--and I have certainly underlined and underscored the 
fact--the pricetag will go up significantly for them.
  What is suggested by the House and the legislation they passed, it 
will add about $6,500 to the average student's loan bill. Their 
proposal would be worse than doing nothing at all--worse than letting 
rates double next month.
  I hope my Senate Republican colleagues will instead support our 
efforts to give middle-class families security by freezing interest 
rates at current levels for 2 years without adding a penny to the 
deficit. This is exactly the kind of commonsense proposal we need to 
keep our economy growing, and I will do everything I can to have a vote 
on the student loan bill this week.
  If the Republicans in the Senate want to put forward what they think 
should be done, I will be happy to have a vote on theirs, and then we 
will vote on ours.
  Even if we have not completed action on the farm bill or student loan 
proposals, we will bring immigration to the floor next week. The 
immigration system is broken and it needs to be fixed.
  I am grateful Senator McConnell said he would not oppose moving to 
the bill--at least that is the way I read it in the press. He doesn't 
believe we will need to have cloture on the bill. I hope we do not need 
to do that, but if we need to do it in order to get on the bill, I will 
do that.
  I know the Republican leader cannot control virtually every 
Republican, but I hope we can move forward and start the debate on this 
bill.

[[Page 7847]]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  During the recess I had the opportunity to appear at a number of 
events in Nevada, and the topic at each one of those events was 
immigration.
  I appeared at an event in Las Vegas, where we had between 1,000 and 
2,000 people on the street. It was a very moving event. This has always 
been a personal issue for me. As I have said many times, my father-in-
law emigrated from Russia.
  I have seen firsthand a huge increase in the number of people coming 
to Nevada over the last 15 to 20 years. These people have been 
devastated by our broken immigration system. I have personally devoted 
more time to immigration reform than any other issue over my career in 
Congress. Each time I meet with my constituents, they are desperate for 
commonsense reform. Each time I meet with them, my passion for fixing 
our broken immigration system is renewed.
  This is personal for a lot of reasons. I will always remember when 
there was a lot of anti-immigration stuff going on in Congress, I went 
home--to my Washington home--and my wife said: Remember who I am; 
remember why I am here. My dad came from Russia.
  Her words were to that effect. As a result of that brief conversation 
with Landra, I got the message and I became an advocate for fixing our 
broken immigration system.
  My father-in-law contributed a lot to this country, but the one most 
important contribution was his only child who is now the mother of my 5 
children and the grandmother of 16 grandchildren. So this issue is 
something that is important to me.
  I admire and respect the work of the eight Senators--four Republicans 
and four Democrats. We need to move forward on this legislation. It is 
so very important.
  I appeared not only at that huge event in Las Vegas, where there were 
thousands of people, I appeared in a Catholic Church last week in Reno. 
There were 1,500 people who filled the church and people were standing 
outside. The 1,500 didn't count toward the people who were outside.
  This was organized by faith leaders, not just Catholics. All faiths 
that believe immigration reform is not a political issue but a moral 
issue were there. They don't believe it is an economic issue or 
political issue. I repeat, they believe it is a moral issue, and I 
agree. A Catholic priest from Carson City shared the story of his 
grandparents who emigrated from Italy.
  As I have already indicated, my wife's parents emigrated from 
Russia--my father-in-law at least. My mother-in-law barely made it 
here; she almost was an immigrant, but she was a little baby born 
someplace in Canada.
  Families who come here from other countries need to understand what 
the law is, and we are trying to determine that as that is our job. 
Today immigrant families come seeking the same as generations before 
them. My father-in-law Israel Goldfarb came here and changed his name. 
He became Earl Gould, and that was the only person I ever knew. He died 
as a young man. He didn't get to enjoy his grandchildren.
  So there are lots of reasons why we have to fix our broken 
immigration system and help the many people who are undocumented here 
get right with the law. It is time for reform that helps them 
contribute fully to their communities by learning English, paying 
taxes, and starting down the pathway to earn their citizenship.
  The bill we have from the Judiciary Committee is not a perfect bill, 
but we don't have that here. In my more than three decades in Congress, 
there has never been a perfect bill. The Founding Fathers could 
envision nonperfect bills. They knew that is how we would get things 
done, by compromise. Legislation is the art of compromise. It is up to 
us to ensure America remains the land of opportunity for people born 
within our borders as well as those who seek a better future on our 
shores.
  Finally, on another subject, ads have been run on TV, the radio, and 
in the newspaper about how the Democrats need to follow regular order 
in the Senate, and we have done that. But now my Republican colleagues 
are silent. We have been waiting for months now to allow them to allow 
us to go to conference for regular order. They are refusing to go to 
conference so we can come up with a budget that we can negotiate with 
the House as to what we should do.
  It is obvious why we are not able to go to conference. It is so 
obvious. The Speaker does not want us to go to conference and the 
Republicans in the Senate are trying to protect him and the unwieldy 
job he has over there. He is trying to protect his job, and the tea 
party people are wreaking havoc with our country.
  We should be able to go to conference. Republican Senators have said: 
Let's go to conference. What is stopping us from going to conference? I 
just talked about what is stopping us from going to conference, and it 
is truly detrimental to our country.

                          ____________________