[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 149 (Thursday, September 18, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8966-S8967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am always both amused and amazed to hear 
my friends on the other side of the aisle talk about taxes, because 
they are always talking about cutting the corporate tax rate. They 
always say our corporate taxes are higher than anyplace in the world. 
But that is on paper that they are the highest. The effective tax rate, 
what corporations are paying, is much lower. They know that and we know 
that.
  It is so often a smokescreen. Senator McCain and my friends on the 
other side of the aisle always want to talk about tax cuts. It is 
always a smokescreen to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans while 
the middle class, again, bears the brunt. The Obama tax cuts are all 
about the middle class. He wants to cut taxes on people making $30,000 
and $50,000 and $100,000 and $150,000 a year.
  Certainly people making $300,000 a year can afford a little more, and 
that is exactly the way Senator Obama has looked at it, and the way so 
many of us have looked at it as well.
  We want to get our fiscal house in order. We have seen what happens 
with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. We have seen what 
happens with the Federal budget. We are spending close to $3 billion 
every week on this war in Iraq. These tax cuts, which have gone 
overwhelmingly to the richest citizens, have put us behind the eight 
ball. And we have seen our budget surplus--the day George Bush was 
sworn in--go to more than a $1 billion a day budget deficit. That is 
because of tax cuts for the rich. Not for the middle class, tax cuts 
for the rich. We want to move some of that money to middle-class tax 
cuts. And as we exit the war in Iraq and we begin to free up money, we 
want to use that for the domestic needs many of us have talked about.
  The real reason I came to the floor, though, was to talk about what 
has occurred this week, what has happened on Wall Street. I am fairly 
incredulous that some in this body would still be saying we have too 
much regulation. It is pretty clear the cowboys on Wall Street and the 
deregulation of the Bush era--the Bush years--have led us to these 
problems. Not that this leads us to a Great Depression. I don't believe 
that. But it has led us back to some of the same kinds of unparalleled

[[Page S8967]]

zealous greed on Wall Street which we haven't seen since the 1930s.
  But what concerns me is that I remember 3 years ago, in early 2005, 
George Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain barnstormed the United States 
and campaigned all over the country for Social Security privatization. 
They worshipped at the mantle of how important it would be to have 
these private accounts; that if only people on Social Security invested 
in the stock market, think how much better off they would be. That was 
in 2005. Imagine if Bush and Cheney and McCain, and others around here, 
had succeeded in that endeavor. Imagine what people would be doing 
today if we had privatized Social Security. When people opened their 
statements--if they had private accounts--imagine what they would be 
feeling today with what has happened in the stock markets.
  That, to me, is the biggest contrast between the direction the 
country is going in now, the direction John McCain and George Bush 
wanted to take also, and the direction so many senators, such as 
Senators Whitehouse, McCaskill, and others in this body want to take 
us. Do we want to privatize Social Security, put senior citizens at the 
mercy of Wall Street? What would happen to their solid, guaranteed 
Social Security payments? Do we want to do that or do we want to make 
sure we will protect those Social Security payments?
  I can't get Social Security out of my mind this week as I have seen 
what has happened with AIG, and what happened a few weeks ago with Bear 
Stearns, and what happened with Lehman Brothers and the stock market, 
and that we would possibly put people into private Social Security 
accounts. That is what John McCain wants to do. That is what they tried 
to do in 2005.
  That is why I am so thankful that enough people in this body and in 
the House of Representatives, where I was in those days--and, more 
importantly, enough people in the United States, enough citizens--
pushed back and said no to the Bush-Cheney-McCain privatization of 
Social Security. It wouldn't have worked then, and it clearly won't 
work now. It is a bad idea. It is one of the major issues I think we 
will see in the fall campaign, this whole idea of privatizing: 
privatizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security, privatizing the 
military, and all these contracts that Halliburton-Bechtel have.
  Senator McCaskill, who will speak in a few moments, has done a great 
deal of work in trying to root out all the waste and all the 
illegalities, if you will, in some of these private military contracts. 
This whole effort to privatize has clearly cost taxpayer money. It has 
caused great risk for far too many people in Medicare. Thank God we 
were able to stop the Social Security privatization. If they had had 
their way in 2005, seniors would be much more worried about the cuts 
and the decline and the disintegration and the disappearance of their 
dollars if we had instituted private accounts, coupled with higher gas 
prices and food prices, and all that we have seen.
  So again, I remind my colleagues that they have not given up on their 
idea in 2005. We know they will try it again. If they have a majority, 
and if Senator McCain is elected, we know they will try privatization 
again. It was a bad idea then, it is a bad idea now.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Georgia.

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