[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     ECONOMIC INEQUITIES IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and May 23, 1994, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from Vermont, [Mr. Sanders] for the 60 minutes.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, as the only Independent in the United 
States Congress, I accept the responsibility to raise issues that my 
Democratic and Republican colleagues often choose not to deal with. We 
talk a whole lot of things on the floor of the House, but it always 
amazes me that some of the most important issues facing the American 
people are not addressed.
  Let me briefly touch upon a few of these issues this evening. Mr. 
Speaker, the newspapers and the United States Congress talk about 
economic issues a great deal. But I think that the most important 
trends within our economic system are in fact not honestly addressed or 
faced. And that is that to a very great extent, the United States of 
America today is increasingly becoming an oligarchy. An oligarchy, a 
nation in which a small number of people control a significant part of 
our wealth, and also control a great deal of the power in our country.
  I think sometimes within the schools of America, the young people are 
taught that we live in a democracy; that all people have power; that 
all people can make the key decisions that affect our lives. But the 
day-to-day experience of human existence tells us in fact that that is 
not the truth, and it is time that we brought that out into the open 
and discussed what we might do about that.
  For example, Mr. Speaker, according to the Federal Reserve Board, the 
richest 1 percent of our population now owns 37 percent of the wealth. 
The richest 1 percent owns 37 percent of the wealth, while the bottom 
90 percent of our people only own 32 percent of the wealth. That means 
that the wealthiest 1 percent of the population owns more wealth than 
the bottom 90 percent of our people. We have today among all nations of 
the industrialized world the most unequal, unfair distribution of 
wealth.
  Mr. Speaker, the chief executive officers of the Forbes 500 
corporations, the major corporations in America, now earn 157 times 
more income than the workers whom they employ. One hundred fifty times 
more. In Japan, for example, the ratio between CEO and worker is 30 to 
1. We also have the widest gap between CEO's and worker in the 
industrialized world.
  Since when is it appropriate that the people at the top are worth or 
have needs that are 157 times greater than the average worker? I do not 
think that that is appropriate.

                              {time}  2300

  I also find it especially interesting that many of the CEO's the 
corporate executives who have brought forth the most significant 
layoffs in recent America are precisely the same CEO's who are enjoying 
the highest incomes. One almost gets the feeling that they are being 
paid to lay off American workers.
  Mr. Speaker, the gap between the rich and the poor in America is 
wider today than at any time since the 1920's. During 1983 to 1989, 55 
percent of the increase in family wealth accrued to the richest one-
half of 1 percent of families. The very wealthiest people have become 
much wealthier while the lower middle and lower classes lost during 
that period over $250 billion of wealth. In other words, what we have 
been experiencing for the last number of years is the Robin Hood 
proposal in reverse. We have taken from the poor and we have given to 
the rich.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about rich and poor, we should understand 
that we are not just talking about somebody who has a big house, 
somebody who is rich, and somebody who is poor who has a small house. 
We are not talking about somebody who has a big car and somebody who 
has a small car. That is not what it is about. In many instances, Mr. 
Speaker, when we talk about rich and poor, we are quite literally 
talking about life and death. This is not just that somebody has a 
little bit more than somebody else.

  A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year 
showed very clearly the correlation between income and mortality, how 
long we live. What the study concluded, not too surprisingly, is that 
the more you earn, the larger your income, the more wealth you have, 
the longer you are likely to live.
  Statistically, those who earn $14,000 a year live longer than those 
who earn $9,000 a year; just as those who earn $30,000 a year live 
longer than those who earn $20,000 a year.
  The authors of the study conclude that the widening difference in 
mortality rates is largely caused by ``the broad social changes in this 
country since 1960.'' They cite ``increasing inequalities in income, 
education and housing and a falling standard of living for a large 
segment of the U.S. population.'' Obviously, the fact that tens of 
millions of low-wage workers are unable to afford health insurance is 
also at the heart of the problem.
  In other words, what this study is saying is that the wider the gap 
between the rich and the poor, the wider the length of time that people 
can actually stay alive. What we are seeing in this country is more and 
more people suffering terribly because of the decline in their income. 
They are working longer hours. They are living under more stress. They 
are working in unhealthy jobs.
  Thirty-seven million Americans lack any health insurance. Tens of 
millions of Americans lack full insurance. They have large deductibles. 
They cannot get to the doctor and the hospital when they want to.
  What poverty is doing, what low wages are doing is, in fact, killing 
large numbers of Americans and causing a great deal of suffering.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about oligarchy and a grossly unfair 
distribution of wealth, we are also talking about power and 
powerlessness. This is an extremely important issue that I am afraid we 
do not discuss terribly much here in Congress; the corporate media also 
does not discuss this terribly much.
  Almost all Americans agree that if somebody robs a store or mugs a 
person or physically assaults a human being that that is unacceptable 
behavior. It is a crime and we have laws which punish people for 
committing that type of illegal behavior. But what do we say when 
American corporate leaders, who own profitable companies, throw 
American workers out on the street as they move our industrial base to 
China, to Mexico, to Haiti, to Indonesia and to other desperately poor 
Third World countries?
  Somehow or another we have not taken a close look at that type of 
behavior and have not condemned it as loudly as we should.
  Let me not at this moment talk about the fact that 27 major U.S. 
corporations have laid off a total of 630,000 workers since March of 
1991. Let us not talk about that right now. Let us not talk about the 
fact that IMB, AT&T and General Motors have each laid off more than 
74,000 workers since March of 1991.
  Let me talk, if I might, for a moment about what I see closer to home 
in my own small state of Vermont. Let me give you one example of what 
in fact is happening all over America.
  In Bennington, Vermont, a few months ago, over 200 workers in that 
small town were dismissed, were thrown out of their jobs when the 
factory owned by Johnson Controls was shut down at the same time as the 
company was moving production to Mexico. These were good-paying jobs 
done by skilled Vermont workers who produced high-quality automobile 
batteries.

  Let me tell you what powerlessness is about. Powerlessness is about 
that last year, on a Sunday during the summer, I marched in a parade 
with those workers who were members of the United Automobile Workers 
Union. We marched in a parade celebrating a Vermont holiday. We had a 
really good time.
  On the next day, the very next day, a Monday, without a prior word of 
warning, these same workers were told that their plant was going to be 
shut down. These were dedicated workers. These were men and women who 
had given years of their lives to this company. Mr. Speaker, they were 
treated like garbage.
  That is what powerlessness is about, and all over this country today 
there are millions and millions of workers who go to work and are 
scared to death that before the work day is over they are going to be 
given a pink slip. They are going to be told by the owners of the 
company that their jobs are going to Mexico, that their jobs are going 
to Asia.
  I would argue, Mr. Speaker, that if this country were truly a 
democracy, if working people truly had democratic rights, that type of 
behavior would be illegal. You just cannot say to somebody, thank you 
for working for this company for 30 years. We do not need you anymore. 
You are out on the street. We are going to China, where we can hire 
people for 12 cents an hour. We are going to Mexico where we can hire 
somebody for one dollar an hour.
  These companies are making decisions which totally disregard the 
feelings of these workers, the needs of their children, the obligations 
that these workers have toward their own parents. These feelings, these 
needs are totally irrelevant as these corporations pursue every bloody 
nickel they can possibly make. That is what powerlessness is about.
  Powerlessness means that millions of people in this country have no 
control or very little control about what is happening in their lives, 
because their day-to-day existence is dependent upon people who have 
large sums of money and who in many respects have total contempt for 
the people who have enriched them over the years.
  That is what happened in Bennington, VT, and that story is being 
repeated a thousand times from one end of this country to the other.
  Mr. Speaker, in another plant in Vermont, in southern Vermont, senior 
citizens had been guaranteed, as part of their union contract, lifetime 
health insurance paid for by the company. That is what they had 
negotiated as workers. That is what they had been promised. But one day 
within the last year, that promise was rapidly taken away from them. On 
a day's notice, the elderly workers who had been employed by that 
company were told that their insurance was no longer going to be 
maintained by the company. The workers had to organize, fight hard and 
at least were successful in getting the company to retain some of their 
health insurance payments. And also, that is a reality that is taking 
place all over America, to senior citizens, workers who had negotiated 
contracts, workers who have been made promises by the company now find 
that those promises are not worth the paper that they were printed on. 
And on and on it goes.
  Good-paying jobs which paid American workers a living wage with 
decent benefits are closed down and shipped to Third World countries 
where workers there are exploited. So what do we say about those people 
who have destroyed the dreams, the hopes, the lives of millions of 
American workers?

                             {time}   2310

  Basically, we do not, as a nation, as a Congress, stand up and say to 
the people that ``your behavior is socially unacceptable; despite the 
fact that you own a company, you have certain moral responsibilities to 
the people who work for you; that you cannot simply throw people out on 
the street because you can make a few bucks more; that you have got to 
treat workers with dignity and respect.''
  More and more I think it is becoming apparent to the workers of this 
country that corporate America could care less about them, that many of 
the corporations that consider themselves American corporations are 
really international corporations. They originally made their money in 
this country, but they are willing to go to the Third World to hire 
slave labor as quickly as they can pack their bags.
  Mr. Speaker, the United States in many respects, and we do not talk 
about this as often as we should, is becoming a Third World economy. 
The standard of living of the average American worker continues to 
decline. The real wages of American production workers have dropped by 
20 percent during the last 20 years as millions of decent paying jobs 
have disappeared. The new jobs that are being created are largely 
temporary, part-time, low-wage jobs with few benefits.
  There was an article that appeared on the front page of the Wall 
Street Journal a few months ago, Mr. Speaker, and I think it was 
indicative of a trend which is taking place from one end of this 
country to the other. The article described the good news that 
factories in the Midwest were being reopened, factories that had closed 
down during the early 1980's. The good news is that factories were 
being reopened, that workers, many of them the same workers who had 
formerly worked in those factories were now going back to work. That 
was the good news.
  The bad news is that the same workers who were going back to the same 
factories that had been closed down were going back to work at 50 
percent of the wages that they received 10 years previously.
  Mr. Speaker, articles in major newspapers tell you that fully 25 
percent of the jobs that Americans now have are contingent jobs. That 
means that workers are not employed by a company, they do not have 
security, they do not have the capability of moving up the ladder and 
gaining more income, they do not gain benefits, they are contingent. 
They work for a certain period of time and then they are out and they 
have to go looking for another job and another job and another job.
  The ranks of contingent workers are growing so rapidly that some 
estimate they will outnumber permanent, full-time workers within the 
next 10 years.
  Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago the United States led the world in terms of 
the wages and benefits our workers received. I wonder how many of the 
viewing audience knows what place we are in now. The answer is that we 
are in 12th place. We went from 1st to 12th in 20 years. Our wages, our 
health care benefits, our vacation time, our parental leave, our 
educational opportunities lag behind much of the industrialized world.
  People read in the newspapers that European companies are coming to 
invest in the United States, and people say, rightfully, that is good, 
we would encourage other countries to invest in the United States. But 
the sad reality is that many European companies that are coming to 
invest in the United States are coming here because we are now, for 
them, a cheap labor nation. We have become, for some of the European 
countries, what Mexico and China are for us. I think that is a very sad 
state of affairs.
  In my own State and throughout this country, we have skilled, 
intelligent, hard-working people who are working for $6 an hour, $7 an 
hour, $8 an hour, without benefits. In many of the European countries, 
workers there have driven up wages that are significantly higher than 
are the wages that American workers receive.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about such issues as vacation time, it is 
important to know that over the last many years, workers in the United 
States today are working longer hours, significantly longer hours, 
taking less vacation time than they used to take. Is there any wonder 
why so many millions of Americans feel stressed out? They need to work 
longer hours, they need to work overtime in order to compensate for the 
real decline in their wages.
  In terms of vacation time, we rank almost at the bottom of the 
industrialized world. There are countries in Europe, in Scandinavia, 
where young workers entering the work force get 5 or 6 weeks off with 
full pay, 5 or 6 weeks off in Scandinavia and in Europe. Our young 
workers are very, very lucky to get 1 week off or 2 weeks off.

  In terms of parental leave, the rights that befall workers when they 
have a baby, when somebody in the home is critically ill, the Congress 
and the President were very proud that finally the U.S. Congress and 
the President signed and passed a parental leave bill, which means that 
if a worker is having a baby, she will not be fired for the crime of 
having a baby, if you like. Everyone says, ``What a great deal. You 
have 3 months off when you have a baby. You get to know your baby.''
  The fact is that compared to parental leave programs throughout 
Europe and Scandinavia, that is the weakest parental leave program in 
the industrialized world. For many new parents, what does it mean that 
you can have 3 months off if you do not get a paycheck coming in? Many 
of the European countries, the Scandinavian countries, not only allow 
longer periods of time for parental leave, but provide and mandate 
significant income coming in to those parents.
  It terms of educational opportunity, there was a time not so many 
years ago in this country where great State university systems and 
college systems provided inexpensive higher education for large numbers 
of people, but increasingly, as we become a poorer nation, as the cost 
of collage education goes up, we face a situation where millions of 
working-class young people, low-income people, are simply unable to 
afford the high cost of college education.
  If you are poor, if you are working-class, you cannot go to college, 
in many instances. If you are upper-income, well, I guess you can pay 
the $25,000 or $30,000 a year that it takes to go to Harvard or to 
Yale.
  Mr. Speaker, while the rich have grown much richer, while the middle 
class has shrunk, the poor in fact have grown much poorer. I wish very 
much that I could tell the Members that the U.S. Congress was actually 
engaged in trying to wipe out poverty, that we were going to war 
against poverty. Unfortunately, it seems to me that many of the 
policies that are talked about on the floor of this House are really a 
war against the poor, not a war against poverty.
  At the same time as we have seen an increase in the number of 
billionaires in America, 22 percent of our children live in poverty. 
Mr. Speaker, we not only have the highest rate of childhood poverty in 
the industrialized world, we have twice the rate of childhood poverty 
than any other nation in the industrialized world. That is a national 
disgrace. Billionaires ride around in their big limousines and they go 
through neighborhoods where the vast majority of the kids are living in 
poverty. That tells us something about our national priorities.
  Mr. Speaker, what a disgrace it is that in the United States of 
America today, some 5 million children go hungry, at least 2 million 
people now lack permanent shelter or sleep out on the streets, and some 
recent studies indicate that number may even be greater than that.
  Mr. Speaker, 1 in 10 American families now puts food on the table 
only with the aid of Food Stamps, because we have seen a significant 
increase in poverty in America. How many millions and millions of 
working families exist paycheck to paycheck? If their job stops, they 
are on welfare, they are on Food Stamps.
  Mr. Speaker, in more and more abandoned neighborhoods throughout our 
country a lack of jobs, a lack of income, a lack of educational 
opportunity, or perhaps, most importantly, a lack of hope has created 
an extraordinary climate of savagery and violence surpassing that of 
many communities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. What we have 
created is an underclass without hope, an underclass alienated from 
mainstream America.
  The suffering and the desperation in the Third World that we have 
distantly observed is now coming home as we in many, many ways become a 
Third World economy.
  The suffering and the desperation in the Third World that we have 
distantly observed is now coming home as we in many, many ways become a 
Third World economy.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about power and when we talk about 
powerlessness, we should not forget that in November 1994, when this 
entire House comes up for election, when one-third of the Senate comes 
up for election, State legislatures come up for election, we should not 
forget that when that national election takes place, the estimate is 
that over 60 percent of the American people are not going to come out 
and vote.

                              {time}  2320

  And the evidence is very clear that the overwhelming majority of poor 
people no longer vote. I recently had the privilege and the honor to go 
to South Africa with the U.S. Delegation to attend the Inaugural of 
Nelson Mandela as president of that country. What a joy it was to see 
so much excitement in terms of the rebirth of democracy in South 
Africa. Yet in our own country over 60 percent of the people will not 
be voting in the national elections in 1994.
  Why is that? What does that tell us about people's faith in 
government, and what does it tell us that millions of poor people do 
not believe in any way, shape or form that government represents their 
interests? I think what it tells us, in fact, is that the majority of 
the American people understand that to a very large degree what 
Congress does, what the President does is not reflective of the needs 
of ordinary Americans, of working people, of the elderly and of the 
poor, but is in fact reflective and represents the needs of those who 
have the money.
  There was an amazing article that appeared I believe in yesterday's 
Washington Post, and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee 
was negotiating with the insurance companies trying to have them take 
their ads, the anti-health care ads off the air. They had apparently 
put some $10 million of TV ads on, and they were able to negotiate some 
type of an agreement. The clarity of how money buys power was obvious 
to all.
  I sit on the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, and it 
is amazing to me when we get together how many members of the Banking 
Committee are there to represent not consumers, not ordinary Americans, 
but the very, very wealthy. If you want to know why things do not 
happen in this country, if you want to know why the rich get richer and 
the poor get poorer and the middle-income people get squeezed, why we 
ignore the needs of the veterans and the most vulnerable people in our 
society, I would urge the viewers to get the information from the 
Federal Elections Commission and find out who is buying and selling 
Members of the United States Congress. Enormous amounts of money are 
coming in here from very, very wealthy people.
  That is why after 50 years of discussion we still do not have a 
national health care system. That is why workers have virtually no 
rights at all as our jobs are being taken away from us and taken to the 
Third World.
  So what do we do? What can we do? We know that people throughout this 
country have already thrown up their hands. They have given up. They 
feel helpless and they feel hopeless.
  I think all I can say is the following: That is, that this Nation has 
the potential to be an extraordinary nation. We are an intelligent 
people, we are a hardworking people. But what has gone on for a number 
of years is that the power has gone away from ordinary people and is 
now in the hands of the very few, and they are using their wealth, and 
they are using their power to enrich themselves, and they are ignoring 
the needs of the vast majority of the people.
  So I think clearly that if we are going to make changes in this 
country, people have got to stand up and fight for their own rights, 
they have to fight for their kids, they have to fight for their 
parents.
  We could have national health care in this country which guarantees 
health care to every man, woman and child without out-of-pocket 
expenses. We could have that. That is not a Utopian vision. That exists 
in Canada. That exists in one form or another in many countries on 
Earth.
  But we will never have it so long as people do not stand up and fight 
for health care as a right for all people. So long as the insurance 
companies are able to dictate what happens in the United States 
Congress, what we will continue to see is the insurance companies 
becoming rich, the doctors becoming rich, the drug companies making 
huge profits, and ordinary people lacking health care that they 
desperately need.
  The way to resolve that is for people to stand together, to come 
together, to participate in the political process, to tell the 
candidates that if they are not prepared to stand up and fight for a 
single-payer national health care system which takes on finally the 
insurance companies and the drug companies, and the AMA, they are not 
going to get voted in here.
  People have got to stand together. They have got to organize. We can 
in fact create an economy which creates decent paying jobs for all of 
our workers. But we are not going to have that unless working people 
come together and put their eyes on the prize.
  We do not have to see automation come in and throw American workers 
out on the street. Automation ought to be used to improve the lives of 
ordinary people, not to throw people out on the street and to increase 
human suffering.

  We can have quality college education for all people, but we need to 
change our priorities. And the American people have got to come forward 
and stand together and say no, now that the Cold War is over we do not 
have to spend $260 billion a year on the military, we do not have to 
spend $100 billion a year defending Europe and Asia against a non-
existent enemy. We do not need more nuclear weapons. Let us take some 
of that money, bring it back home, and put it into education so that we 
can have the best educational system in the world. We can do that.
  Instead of spending so much money on the military, most of which is 
not needed, we can put that money back home into a jobs program. And I 
am happy to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I and other Members of Congress 
are working on a major $60 billion a year jobs program which will 
rebuild this country, our physical infrastructure and our human 
infrastructure and put millions of workers back to work at decent wages 
doing so.
  It is insane that we continue to have millions of workers unemployed 
while our roads, our sidewalks, our wastewater plants, our sewer 
systems, our schools, our libraries deteriorate. Let us invest in this 
country, and let us put our people back to work doing so.
  It is absurd that we have unemployed teachers when our educational 
system is in crisis, when our child care system is totally inadequate. 
We can employ large numbers of people working with our children and 
educating our people.
  Mr. Speaker, it is not acceptable to me that we continue to see 
millions of workers working for inadequate, low wages. A minimum wage 
today at $4.25 an hour is grossly inadequate. It is a poverty wage. The 
purchasing power of the minimum wage worker has declined significantly 
in the last 20 years. Let us stand up as a people and say that if you 
are going to work 40 hours a week you are entitled to a living wage. It 
makes no sense for people to be working 40 hours a week and finding 
themselves deeper and deeper in poverty. We must raise the minimum 
wage. Some of us are supporting legislation which will raise the 
minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5.50 an hour.
  Lastly, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about how we can re-empower the 
American worker, the ordinary people, we must talk about rebuilding the 
trade union movement in this country. It is amazing to me how many 
people in this Congress, how many people in the business community keep 
telling us how terrible unions are, what an awful thing it is that 
workers come together to stand up for their rights and to be able to 
negotiate a decent contract.
  I always find it amazing that the same people who tell us how bad 
unions are belong to unions themselves. What is the American Medical 
Association? It is a union of doctors. What is the American Bar 
Association? It is a union of lawyers.

                              {time}  2330

  What is the American Manufacturers Association? It is a union of 
manufacturers.
  What is the Chamber of Commerce? It is a union of business groups. 
That is OK.
  But when poor people come together, when people who make 5 bucks an 
hour or 6 bucks an hour come together so that they can approach their 
employer united and as one rather than one by one, oh, it is a terrible 
thing; oh, unions are bad.
  We need to make sweeping changes in labor law in this country.
  Right now, it is very difficult for workers to form a union. Despite 
the current law, employers very often fire workers who try to organize 
a union, and 5 years later, the NLRB will slap the owner on the wrist, 
give him a small fine. In many instances, workers, after enormous 
effort, are able to bring forth a union, and then they sit down to 
negotiate a first contract, and the employer refuses to do that.
  I will soon be introducing sweeping labor law reform which will grant 
those workers who want to join a union the right to do so in a fair 
manner.
  But the bottom line of that is that if we are going to improve the 
standard of living of working people, if we are going to protect our 
jobs, workers have got to come together. I think rebuilding the trade 
union movement, bringing forth labor law reform is very, very 
important.
  Let me conclude, Mr. Speaker, by just saying this: I think clearly in 
this country politically there is a deep sense of demoralization. Poor 
people, as I mentioned a moment ago, do not bother voting. They no 
longer believe that the government represents their interests. They 
understand quite clearly that the government works for the wealthy and 
the powerful. They do not vote.
  Young people, to a large degree, do not vote. They do not see much 
sense in that either.
  I think that if we are to turn around this country, which has such 
enormous potential, if once again we are to have the highest standard 
of living, if once again we are to have a vibrant democracy where 
decisions which affect their lives, then clearly people are going to 
have to wake up and stand up and fight for their rights.
  People did not fight and die throughout the history of this country 
so that a handful of large corporations and their wealthy owners should 
make the decisions for all of us. People fought and died for democracy, 
the right of all people to be able to control their lives, and I hope 
at this terribly critical juncture in our history that working people 
and poor people and elderly people and people today who feel 
disenfranchised, who feel alienated will come together as one to stand 
up and fight for their dignity, for their rights, for the rights of 
their kids and their parents.
  We are a great Nation. We can in fact provide well for all of people. 
We can live in dignity, and I would hope that that becomes the goal of 
the vast majority of the people of this country.

                          ____________________