regulating all aspects of entry to the united states have simply ceased to function in the national interest. immigration policy and national interest are terms that are rarely heard in the context of immigration. we seem to have lost sight of the fact that it is a public policy and like all public policies our immigration policies should serve the public interest. but they do not. let us talk about legal immigration. we now admit the equivalent of a major city every year without having the vaguest idea of how we will educate all the new children care for the sick, provide housing jobs, build infrastructure or tend to any of the human needs of the newcomers or those already here. mr. president, each year we admit, i repeat, the equivalent of a major city. we admit more people each year

than make up some of our states. we admit a new state with legal immigrants every year. at a time of huge budget deficits and severe financial constraints, we have no idea of how these huge costs will be borne. we just do it want. we admit the equivalent of a major city without any assessment of whether these newcomers are likely to be contributing members of our society. only a tiny fraction of those admitted each year enter because they have skills and abilities that will benefit our country. they come merely because they happen to be relatives of other recent immigrants. the result of this so-called policy that there is now a backlog of almost 3 1/2 million people, the population of a city city, who have a claim to emigrate to the united states for no other reason but they are somebody's relative. is this really a way to run immigration policy? if making it easy to be an illegal alien is not enough how

about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant? no sane country would do that, right? guess again. if you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child we reward that child with u.s. citizenship and guarantee full access to all public and social services that society provides. and that is a lot of services. is it any wonder that two-thirds of the babies born at taxpayer expense in county run hospitals in los angeles are born to illegal alien mothers? closed quote. mr. president, this is not my statement. let me clarify. this is senator harry reid's statement on the floor of the u.s. senate. i submit for the record his full speech including his strong support for an end to birthright

citizenship. i ask unanimous consent that this be a part of the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. vitter: and in closing mr. president, let me just thank senator reid for his prior words in strong support of what he yesterday called -- quote -- "vitter's stupid amendment." i yield the floor.

perfect wyden: mr. wyden: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. wyden: mr. president, this morning in the energy and natural resources committee there was a very valuable hearing on a bipartisan piece of

legislation called the sportsman's act. obviously designed to promote hunting and fishing, activities which are so important to oregonians and something that our people just enjoy immensely. and i wasn't able to go to the whole hearing because we had important business in the finance committee but i got a flavor of it kind of listening to a part here and there and when it came to my turn to ask some questions i pointed out that you can't go into the woods and hunt and fish if the woods are burning up. and my sense mr. president particularly after what i learned last weekend, is that is exactly what we are going to be facing particularly in the west

west and we are going to be facing it sooner rather than later. as we all know, the senate left on wednesday in order to avoid the snowstorm so i basically flew all night to make it to medford, oregon, for a fire briefing that next morning on thursday. mr. president, i can tell you the idea that you would need to have a fire briefing in march was pretty much unheard of years ago. the fire season was something that you faced in the summer, maybe in early summer you would have a briefing on the challenges, what resources the local officials would need and the forest service would need, tankers and the like. but now fires are a year-round proposition and they are getting bigger, they are getting hotter, they're lasting longer and they're really infernos. and what i would told last week

in my home state in medford they're facing the driest fire season in 25 years. they take out the map and they show you california which just looks bone dry. after that eye-opening briefing, i went on to lane county, which is closer to portland. it's further up the valley. they said they had the least snow in 10 years. and so they were pretty much just as concerned as -- as medford. valheir county has already asked our governor to declare a state drought emergency due to record low snowpack and below average water runoff. and these drought declarations, mr. president, usually don't come for months and months later later. and one of the reasons i wanted to come to the floor today is to

highlight how severe this fire season is going to be. this ought to be a wake-up call for all americans because this is going to put pressure on scarce resources in my view, like we have never seen before. and these firefighters as the president of the senate knows these are incredibly dedicated patriotic, you know, people. but when you have fires in multiple areas trying to move resources around, you know, quickly becomes a huge kind of challenge. and it is particularly challenging, mr. president, when the system of fighting wildfires in america is broken. and i can't describe it any other way as essentially broken and badly in need of repair. and the heart of the problem is that federal policy has

consistently shorted the prevention accounts. so what you need is to go in there and thin forests out deal with underbrush, small trees that pose the greatest risk of fire. and those accounts have been shortchanged for quite some time time. so it gets hotter and drier on the forest floor. we can have a debate about why that is. i happen to think that climate change is a part of it. others will cite other considerations. but what's indisputable is what's happening. it is hotter it's drier, you have in our part of the country frequent lightning strikes, and all of a sudden you've got an inferno on your hands an inferno that leaps across federal and state and private lines.

so when you have this huge fire on your hands often what happens is the governor runs out of money to fight that mega fire and the handful of others like it so the government then -- really the agencies -- borrow from the prevention fund in order to put the fire out. and so the problem just gets worse and worse and worse. so what senator crapo and i have proposed here in the senate -- and there is a similar bipartisan effort in the house -- is we have proposed to change that. what we have said is, it's time for the government to fight these mega fires just the 1% or so of mega fires from the disaster account and not shortchange the prevention fund

because that is how we prevent these infernos from taking place. we go in there and do the thinning, we deal with the small trees and we deal with the underbrush you prevent those big fires. and the budget office has actually given us an analysis that this is pretty close to a wash from the budget standpoint. because if you only fight from the disaster fund those mega fires, the 1% or 2%, and you get solid, substantial benefits from prevention because you've prevented the mega fires you really haven't added to the budget. and so prevention, clearing away the fuels and reducing both the number and intensity of future fires, reducing the amount of fuel on the ground simply makes it easier for our firefighters these courageous firefighters to stop a fire in its tracks.

so i have brought to the floor this afternoon mr. president this poster. it's not too hard to tell what the benefits are when you actually go out and receive these fuel treatments. and it's clear that a tool for holding down the damage for communities and taxpayers or fuels treatments and they can be particularly beneficial for reducing wildfires and protecting our populated areas. so my hope is that now that we're finally starting to see what this fire season is going to be like that focusing on prevention and not raiding the prevention fund to deal with those 1% of the mega fires will

help us get out ahead of the problem instead of spending substantially more money trying to play catch-up as the infernos rip their way through the west. and i'll close mr. chairman, by saying that i think the bill senator crapo and i have introduced is not the only answer to what we're going to be dealing with this fire season but it is an important one. another approach that i think makes a great deal of sense is the forest service collaborative forest landscape restoration programs because again these help bring together people of differing political views and the differing philosophies to clear flammable materials from our forests while producing saleable timber for the mills. on the malhure forest in my home

state for one the southern blues collaborative project is a real success story. the stewardship contracts there not only help clear the forests of unhealthy snags and hazardous wildfire fuels they help bring the malhure lumber mill back from the brink of closure at least once. so there is an effort at the u.s. department of agriculture to encourage these collaborative partnerships across the country. i want to commend the department of agriculture chief tidwell in particular for these collaboratives because they are vital to the health and vitality of our country's forests and they are a solid foundation for wildfire response. i'd also like to thank the president and the forest service for supporting the bipartisan efforts of senator crapo and i and the similar one that is underway in the house because to me the bottom line is if we

can pass the legislation that i've described here today and shore up our priority as being prevention while at the same time making better use of existing money by saying that the mega fires you deal with from the disaster fund that gets us off to the races in terms of having a more sensible system for fighting wildfire. then if we support the collaboratives that i've just described that are really flowering across the country we're seeing more of them, we're seeing bigger collaboratives that's the kind of policy that helps us get out in front of what is going to be in my view, mr. president, another dangerous fire season. just crossing our fingers and hoping somehow that this fire season isn't going to

be as bad as i was told last week in medford and in eugene. that doesn't make any sense to me. and particularly, given some of the other activities here in the senate that have been bipartisan priorities and it's why it made me want to come to the floor this afternoon because of the hearing this morning on sportsmen, we want to have those opportunities for sportsmen and fishermen and all the people who want to use our great natural resources. they are a part of our heritage and they are a big shot in the arm economically as well. you're not going to be able to go into those woods this summer to hunt and fish this they're burning up. so i'm very hopeful that we can quickly pass bipartisan legislation to change the way in which we fight wildfire, that we can shore up our collaborative which dollar for dollar are as

as -- are about as useful as anything that's done in the natural resources area, and i encourage my colleagues this afternoon, given what is looking us in the eye with respect to this fire season to join me in fixing the wildfire budget and encouraging collaborative partnerships that get us out in front of the fires and end this catastrophic growth of wildfires, particularly in the western united states. mr. president, with that, i yield the floor and i note one of my colleagues is ready to speak next. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you very much, mr. president. i thank the colleague for yielding. mr. president, a good friend from wyoming was on the floor. yesterday i believe he is a frequent critic of the

affordable care act. he made a pretty simple point that was reported in the press yesterday. critical of the administration for holding so many events talking about the success of the affordable care act. the suggestion was that we shouldn't be celebrating the administration shouldn't be celebrating the success of the affordable care act in terms of the number of people who are gaining access to it, the stabilizing cost curve of health care expenditures all across the country and the number of people whose emotional well-being is just much better today because they don't have to worry about ever losing their health care simply because they get sick or losing all of their savings simply because their child comes down with an expensive illness. and, mr. president i guess i would beg to differ because i talked to people all across my state of connecticut who are celebrating today because the a.c.a. works. they are celebrating because

their lives have been transformed by the fact that we now have finally made a commitment as a nation to make sure that if your son gets sick, that you won't lose your savings, your college 529 your house, your car just because of an illness. and so i think that the affordable care act is something to celebrate because a lot of my constituents believe the same thing. like betsy from lynchfield, connecticut. she said without the affordable care act she would not have health insurance at all due to her preexisting condition. one month before the a.c.a. was implemented, she was sick with stage four cancer and her insurance company gave her two weeks notice that it was going to end her coverage early. luckily, betsy was able to resolve that issue but she says -- quote -- the bottom line is that before the affordable care act, health insurance companies could and did kick sick people

off their insurance rolls and preexisting conditions let many uninsured indefinitely. she says if you're not insured and have to pay the outrageous costs of u.s. health care out of pocket, you will quickly spend down all of your retirement savings and possibly have to sell your house to boot. this was the situation i was facing in december, 2013, and it was an unsettling prospect. for linda from winstead, connecticut, who says she is grateful for her affordable care act because she has multiple chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension osteo arthritis. she was unable to buy health insurance at any price because the health insurances were charging more because of her preexisting conditions. in linda's view, this boils down to people having basic rights, the freedom to be healthy the freedom for her to live a life in which she knows she is going to be able to afford coverage for herself. she said this in an email to

me -- quote -- "there is no freedom in poverty and certainly none in needless human suffering." so betsy is celebrating today. linda is celebrating today. and there are millions others like them all across the country who know that the affordable care act is working but it's not just those individuals. it's newspapers from "the new york times" to "usa today," "the washington post" on down who are saying with a clear voice the affordable care act has achieved nearly all of its ambitious goals. 11.4 million americans are now signed up for health care. this is a success story all across the country. but, mr. president a success story that is at risk, at risk because of a supreme court which is considering an evisceration of the affordable care act that would be a stunning, stunning act of judicial overreach if the

plaintiffs were to succeed in the king v. burrwell case. their intention is simply this -- that it was the intent of congress to only provide insurance subsidies to states that had state exchanges and not federal exchanges. i haven't found a single senator or representative who voted for that law who says that it was their intent to punish states that didn't establish state exchanges by withholding subsidies from millions of americans, and in fact there is no way to plainly read the statute without coming to the conclusion that subsidies were not just intended but written into the law to go to every single state no matter what kind of exchange they decided to establish. the law says that because it specifically states that states that don't choose to set up their own exchange will have a federal exchange take the place of that state exchange.

but the totality of the law is clear as well. if the federal government had intended to set up exchanges -- give subsidies only to states that had state exchanges they would have also made the insurance reforms contingent upon those state exchanges being established. instead, the insurance reforms are nationwide, meaning that clearly the statute would set -- was set up to make subsidies nationwide because the insurance reforms cannot exist cannot exist without those subsidies being available to people to be able to buy affordable insurance. and it's not just the individuals who voted for this law who are clear that subsidies should be available. it's the congressional budget office. the congressional budget office reads statutes we pass, independently interprets them and then assesses a cost to the laws that we passed. well doug elmendorf was before the appropriation committee

yesterday, and i asked him a simple question. when you independently reviewed the affordable care act, did you come to the conclusion that it allowed for subsidies to go to state and federal exchanges? his answer was clear -- yes. we read the affordable care act as to provide insurance subsidies to both state exchanges and federal exchanges and thus we priced the bill accordingly. the law is clear the law's intent is clear. the voices of those that voted for it are clear. the independent congressional budget office is clear. the affordable care act only works if subsidies flow to both states that have federal exchanges and states that have state exchanges. and for families like those of betsy in litchfield, connecticut, and linda in winstead connecticut to continue celebrating the success of the affordable care act on the ground floor for the

millions of lives that have been transformed, then this body needs to continue to stand up for the premise that the affordable care act continues to work. that mr. president is absolutely something to celebrate. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you mr. president. mr. president, i would ask my friend and colleague from connecticut, we worked closely together on a number of items if a question or two relating to the fact that the c.b.o. report recently came out just monday, and mentioned that the benchmark policy next year is going to be up 8% across the board. the benchmark policy 8% higher premiums. and not just next year, but the year after that another 8%. and another 8%. and i just know as a senator representing people and as a doctor how many people in his state believe that that's actually a good deal.

the president promised the people from his state that premiums would drop by $2,500 per person, per family. nancy pelosi, speaker of the house, my friend from connecticut was a member of the house at the time. she said premiums would drop for everyone. so we're talking about specifically people buying policies on the exchange and yet the numbers that came out monday that the president of the united states is celebrating. my friend and colleague has a sign out there about how this health care law is supposedly working, how that works for people when next year they are going to pay 8% more, and these are people that are actually getting subsidies who are buying the insurance the benchmark insurance through the exchange. so i know we're running very short of time, mr. president but i ask my friend and colleague to address that specific component because i hear about it every day. mr. murphy: i appreciate my friend's question, and i'll be quick in the answer because i know we are running short on time.

but i actually asked the c.b.o. director yesterday a question very similar to the one that the senator proposes. i said explain to me why your report actually says that the affordable care act is going to cost 10% less than you originally estimated and explain to me why the insurance subsidies are going to cost 20% less than you originally estimated. his answer was very clear. it's because premiums have come in lower than c.b.o. initially estimated. in fact, this year, kaiser just reviewed -- just reviewed premiums within these exchanges all across the country and said that the average premium increase from last year to this year is 1% all across the country. in connecticut our biggest insurer increased their premiums by 1%. one of the other offerers on the exchange decreased their premiums by nearly 10%. the reason that the affordable care act is costing much less today is because our actual experience not our estimated experience into the future, is that premiums are being stabilized in large part because of the reforms in this act. so if you want to talk about

actual experience, what's happening on the ground today it's that we are seeing premiums coming in almost exactly where they were last year this year. in comparison to years five years ago and ten years ago where we were seeing double-digit increases in premiums from year to year. so part of the reason that i am celebrating this law quite frankly, to my good friend is because the actual experience from last year to this year is that premiums are remaining stable and in some places like connecticut are actually coming down and the affordable care act is costing less money than was initially estimated by c.b.o. in large part because premiums are lower than expected. mr. barrasso: well, i would just point out to my friend that the actual reason -- and he never addressed -- is that they are going up next year. the c.b.o. has suggested that they are going to go up 8% next year and 8% the year after that and 8% the year after that. the other issue as he says,

that the amount of money spent is because fewer people are signing up. people realize it's not a good deal. i think the c.b.o. at one point thought there would be 14 million people signed up by this point. now it's only 11 million. so the fact that people are deciding to not sign up, to not sign up is one of the reasons that the government, while still spending more money than they were in the past, are spending not quite as much as they thought they might have to had all of the people that the president thought would sign up for his idea signed up. so that's -- that seems to be the situation when you actually go into the c.b.o. report. i agree that the total dollar figure is less than the high figure anticipated that's come down some, but it's because fewer people have actually chosen to participate which because the health care law continues to be unpopular many people think it's not a good

deal for them. that even though they have subsidies, they can't afford to meet their co-pay, meet their deductible. many have insurance but they can't see a doctor. they have lost their doctor. so those are some of the things that i think were highlighted in that c.b.o. report that the president ought to be honest with the american people and the reason for the celebration i think, is very premature and actually in error because so many people have been harmed by this law. mr. murphy: if the gentleman would yield briefly -- the presiding officer: would the senator suspend? under the previous order the senate will proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations which the clerk will report. the clerk: nominations national transportation safety board. christopher a. hart of colorado to be chairman. tho dinh-zarr czar of texas to be a member. the presiding officer: under the previous order there will be