John Cornyn: “I know things seem like they are speeding by us at the speed of light on this bill. We received an announcement of a…”

“I know things seem like they are speeding by us at the speed of light on this bill. We received an announcement of a breakthrough on the part of some of our colleagues that is going to give this bill the momentum to pass and come out of here with a bunch of votes. But I think there are some questions we need to ask. First of all, I see the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee. I know he has probably looked at this. The underlying bill provides that $8.3 billion is immediately appropriated as emergency spending to fund the trust fund that will fund at least some of the operations in this immigration reform bill. But when I started to look at it a little more closely and consider the fact that even though the underlying bill had zero funds for new Border Patrol personnel, this new bill--this new proposal, I should say, that we have yet to see-- supposedly it is going to come around 6 o'clock--has an additional 20,000 Border Patrol. That is doubling the size of the Border Patrol. Senator Hoeven, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota, said earlier in response to a question I asked him, that would cost an additional $30 billion. So we have $8.3 billion, if my arithmetic is correct, and $30 billion. That is $38 billion. I noticed on page 48 of the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate, the CBO estimates that implementing this bill, the underlying bill, would result in net discretionary costs of about $22 billion more.…”