[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 163 (Friday, December 10, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8735-S8781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my friend from 
Virginia for doing what is very important. I think the essence of what 
he is saying is that today there are millions of Federal employees, 
people in the Armed Forces, who are doing the very best they can. In 
many instances, they are doing a great job to protect our country, to 
keep it safe. And very often, to be honest with you, these folks get 
dumped on. So it is important that people such as Senator Warner come 
here and point out individuals who are doing a great job, people of 
whom we are very proud. So I thank Senator Warner for that.
  Mr. President, as I think everyone knows, President Obama and the 
Republican leadership have reached an agreement on a very significant 
tax bill. In my view, the agreement they reached is a bad deal for the 
American people. I think we can do better.
  I am here today to take a strong stand against this bill, and I 
intend to tell my colleagues and the Nation exactly why I am in 
opposition to this bill. You can call what I am doing today whatever 
you want. You can call it a filibuster. You can call it a very long 
speech. I am not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle; 
I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the 
American people the fact that we have to do a lot better than this 
agreement provides.
  Let me enumerate some of the reasons I am opposed to this agreement.
  First, as everybody knows, this Nation has a recordbreaking $13.8 
trillion national debt at the same time as the middle class is 
collapsing and poverty is increasing. And I think it is important to 
say a word--because I am not necessarily sure a lot of Americans know 
this--about how we got to where we are today in terms of the national 
debt.
  I know there are some people who think this all began the day 
President Obama took office. Well, that is not quite the case. When 
President Clinton left office, this country was running, in fact, a 
very significant surplus, and the projections were that we were going 
to continue to run a surplus. During the 8 years of President Bush's 
administration, for a number of reasons--the primary reasons being the 
war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, huge tax breaks for the wealthiest 
people in this country, a Medicare Part D prescription drug program, 
the Wall Street bailout, among other things, all of which were not paid 
for--we saw an almost doubling of the national debt. Since President 
Obama has been in office, we have passed a stimulus package which has 
also added to the deficit and national debt.
  But here we are today with a $13.8 trillion national debt, a $1.4 
trillion deficit, and almost all Americans are in agreement that this 
is a very serious issue. So the first point I would make is that it 
seems to me to be unconscionable--unconscionable--for my conservative 
friends and for everybody else in this country to be driving up this 
already too high national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and 
billionaires who don't need it, and in a number of cases they don't 
even want it.
  Here is one of the interesting ironies. There are lists of many very 
wealthy people who have come forward and said: Sure, I want a tax 
break. Everybody wants a tax break. But you know what, there are other 
priorities in this country, and I don't need it. Two of the wealthiest 
people in the world--and these are billionaires--Bill Gates of 
Microsoft and Warren Buffett of Berkshire, say: It is absurd. We don't 
need a tax break.
  All over the country, you hear a lot of folks who have a lot of money 
saying: Don't drive up the deficit and force our kids to pay higher 
taxes to pay off the national debt in order to give tax breaks to the 
richest people in this country. We have been told not to worry too much 
because the extension of these tax breaks for the wealthy will only 
last 2 years--not to worry. Maybe that is the case. But given the 
political reality I have seen in Washington, my guess is that 2 years 
from now these tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country 
will be extended again. What happens around here is that the argument 
will be made that if you end these tax breaks you are raising taxes. 
That is what we are hearing right now. I see no reason why, in the 
middle of a Presidential election, those arguments will not be made 
again and I see no reason not to believe that those tax breaks will be 
extended again.

  (The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore assumed the chair.)
  Mr. SANDERS. Clearly, we have a number of Republicans who want to 
make that extension permanent. Whether it will ever be made permanent I 
don't know. But the point is, when you hear folks say it is only a 2-
year extension, I suggest you take that with a grain of salt.
  Let me say, if in fact we do what the Republicans have wanted to do 
right now as we enter this debate--they wanted a 10-year extension--
that would add $700 billion to our national debt. I have four kids and 
I have six grandchildren. None of them has a whole lot of money. I 
think it is grossly unfair to ask my kids and grandchildren and the 
children all over this country to be paying higher taxes in order to 
provide tax breaks for billionaires because we have driven up the 
national debt. That is plain wrong. I think the vast majority of the 
American people, whether they are progressives like myself or whether 
they are conservatives, perceive that concept of giving tax breaks to 
billionaires when we have such a high national debt makes no sense at 
all.
  Furthermore, it is important to point out that extending income tax 
breaks to the top 2 percent is not the only unfair tax proposal in this 
agreement. This agreement between the President and the Republican 
leadership also calls for a continuation of the Bush era 15-percent tax 
rate on capital gains and dividends, meaning that those people who make 
their living off their investments will continue to pay a substantially 
lower tax rate than firemen, teachers, nurses, carpenters, and 
virtually all the other working people of this country. I do not think 
that is fair. That is wrong. If this agreement were to be passed, we 
would be continuing that unfair arrangement.
  On top of all that, this agreement includes a horrendous proposal 
regarding the estate tax. That is a Teddy Roosevelt initiative. Teddy 
Roosevelt was talking about this in the early years of the 20th 
century. It was enacted in 1916 and it was enacted for a couple of 
reasons. Teddy Roosevelt and the people of that era thought it was 
wrong that a handful of people could have a huge

[[Page S8736]]

concentration of wealth and then give that wealth, transmit that wealth 
to their children. He did not think that was right.
  Furthermore, it was a source, a progressive and fair source, of 
revenue. Under the agreement struck between the Republican leadership 
and the President, the estate tax rate, which was 55 percent under 
President Clinton--and let's all remember, we had problems with the 
economy under President Clinton but very few will deny that during 
those years we were creating a heck of a lot more jobs than we did 
under President Bush. That is the fact--over 20 million jobs under 
President Clinton. We lost 600,000 private sector jobs under President 
Bush. During the Clinton era, the tax rate on the estate tax was 55 
percent. What this arrangement would do is lower that tax rate to 35 
percent, with an exemption on the first $5 million of an individual's 
estate and $10 million for couples.
  Here is the important point I think many people do not know. I have 
to confess my Republican friends and their pollsters and their language 
people have done a very good job. This is the so-called death tax. I 
think all over America people say this is terrible. I have $50,000 in 
the bank and I want to leave that to my kids and the Government is 
going to take 55 percent of that, 35 percent of that. What an outrage.
  Let us be very clear: This tax applies only--only--to the top three-
tenths of 1 percent of American families; 99.7 percent of American 
families will not pay one nickel in an estate tax. This is not a tax on 
the rich, this is a tax on the very, very, very rich.
  If my Republican friends had been successful in doing what they want 
to do, which is eliminate this estate tax completely, it would have 
cost our Treasury--raised the national debt by $1 trillion over a 10-
year period. Families such as the Walton family, of Wal-Mart fame, 
would have received, just this one family, about a $30 billion tax 
break.
  I find it hard to believe when we are talking about massive cuts in 
programs for working families, when we have this huge national debt, 
that anybody would be agreeing to lowering the estate tax rate to 35 
percent. That is what this agreement does and I think that is a very 
bad idea.
  Once again, while the agreement on the estate tax is for 2 years--
once again, there is very little doubt in my mind that the Republicans 
will continue to push for lower and lower estate tax rates because that 
is what they want. I think Senator Kyl has been pretty clear about 
this. They want to permanently repeal that tax. That is $1 trillion in 
tax breaks to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. I think we are down a 
bad path there and that is another reason why this agreement does not 
make a whole lot of sense.
  Third--and this is a very important point that I think has not yet 
gotten the attention it deserves--this agreement contains a payroll tax 
holiday which would cut $120 billion from Social Security payroll taxes 
for workers. There are a lot of folks out there who say: This is pretty 
good. I am a worker, my contribution will go from 6.2 percent today 
down to 4.2 percent. I will have more money in my paycheck. It is a 
good idea.
  Let's take a deep breath and let's think about it for a second and 
understand what this whole thing is about. This payroll tax holiday 
concept, as I understand it, originally started with conservative 
Republicans. I know the Vice President recently made the point this was 
originally a Republican idea. Why did the Republicans come up with this 
idea? These are exactly the same people who do not believe in Social 
Security. These are the same people who either want to make significant 
cuts in Social Security or else they want to privatize Social Security 
entirely. Here is the point: They understand that if we divert funding 
that is supposed to go into the Social Security trust fund, which is 
what this payroll tax holiday does, this is money that goes into the 
Social Security trust fund that is now being diverted, cut back, in 
order to provide financial support for workers--but that is a lot of 
money not going into the trust fund.
  What the President and others are saying is not to worry because that 
money will be covered by the general fund. That is a very bad and 
dangerous precedent. Up until now, what Social Security has been about 
is 100 percent funding from payroll contributions, not from the general 
tax base. Once again, this is a 1-year program. The loss of revenue 
going into Social Security can be covered by the general fund. But we 
have a $13 trillion national debt. How much longer will the general 
fund put money into Social Security? Is it a good idea for the general 
fund to be doing that?
  I would argue this is not a good idea. This is a very dangerous step 
forward for those of us who believe in Social Security. But this is not 
just Bernie Sanders saying this. One of the more effective and I think 
important senior groups in America is called the National Committee to 
Preserve Social Security and Medicare. I don't know exactly how many 
but they have many members all over this country. I know they are 
active in the State of Vermont. I want to read to you from a press 
release they sent out the other day. This is the headline on it, from 
the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare: 
``Cutting Contributions to Social Security Signals the Beginning of the 
End. Payroll Tax Holiday Is Anything But.''
  This is what they say. This comes from Barbara Kennelly. Barbara came 
from the House of Representatives. I have known her for years. She is 
now the president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social 
Security and Medicare, one of the strong senior groups in the country.
  Even though Social Security contributed nothing to the current 
economic crisis, it has been bartered in a deal that provides deficit-
busting tax cuts for the wealthy. Diverting $120 billion in Social 
Security contributions for a so-called ``tax holiday'' may sound like a 
good deal for workers now, but it's bad business for the program that a 
majority of middle-class seniors will rely upon in the future.
  That is what the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and 
Medicare says about that agreement and I agree with them. For all of us 
who understand that Social Security is life and death for tens of 
millions of Americans today and will be vitally important for working 
people as they reach retirement age, it is important that we understand 
that Social Security has done a great job. A few minutes ago the 
Presiding Officer was on the floor talking about the strong work that 
our Federal employees do, and he is absolutely right. Sometimes we also 
take for granted that Social Security has been an enormous success. It 
has done exactly what those people who created it have wanted it to 
do--nothing more, nothing less. It has succeeded. It has taken millions 
of seniors out of poverty and given them an element of security. It has 
also helped people with disabilities maintain their dignity. Widows and 
orphans are also getting help.
  For 75 years it has worked well. It has a $2.6 trillion surplus today 
and it can pay out benefits for the next 29 years. It is strong. We 
want to make it stronger. This payroll tax holiday I am afraid is a 
step very much in the wrong direction and that is one of the important 
reasons why this agreement between the President and the Republicans 
should be defeated.
  Included in the agreement are a number of business tax cuts. I am not 
going to be here to say that some of them may not work. Some of them 
may work. Some will work better than others. There is a whole list of 
them. But this is what I will say. Economists on both ends of the 
political spectrum believe that if we are serious about addressing the 
horrendous economic crisis we are in now, 9.8 percent unemployment, 
there are far more effective ways of creating the jobs we have to 
create than those tax proposals. With corporate America already sitting 
on close to $2 trillion cash on hand, it is not that our friends in 
corporate America don't have any money, we have to help them. They have 
$2 trillion cash on hand. The problem is not in my view that corporate 
taxes are too high; it is that the middle class simply doesn't have the 
money to purchase the goods and products that make our economy go and 
create jobs.
  I think if our goal is to create the millions and millions of jobs we 
need, and if our goal is to make our country stronger internationally 
in a very tough global economy, I would much prefer, and I think most 
economists

[[Page S8737]]

would agree with me that a better way to do that, to create the 
millions of jobs we have to create, is to invest heavily in our 
infrastructure.
  The truth is--and I don't think anyone disputes this, the 
infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, and I will go into 
more detail about that later.
  I have some very good information on it. But you do not have to be a 
civil engineer to know that. All you have to do is get in your car 
today and drive someplace in my State and all over this country. What 
you are going to see are roads that are in disrepair. You are going to 
see bridges that, in some cases, have actually been shut down. You are 
going to see water systems--I remember I was in Rutland, VT, the second 
or third largest city in the State of Vermont, and the mayor showed me 
a piece of pipe, an old piece of pipe.
  He said: You know, the engineer who helped develop this water system 
and lay this pipe, after he did this work for Rutland, he went off to 
fight in the war.
  I knew there was a catch line coming. I said: What war was it?
  He said: It was the Civil War.
  So you are talking about water pipe being in Rutland, VT--and this is 
true all over the United States--laid in the Civil War. The result is, 
we lose an enormous amount of clean water every day through leaks and 
water pipes bursting all over the United States of America.
  Well, we can put people to work improving our water systems, our 
wastewater plants. It is a very expensive proposition to develop a good 
wastewater plant. I was a mayor, you were a Governor, Mr. President. It 
is an expensive proposition for roads, bridges. Furthermore, I do not 
have to tell anybody here, our rail system, which used to be the 
greatest rail system in the world, is now falling way behind every 
other major country on Earth.
  As a result of the stimulus package, we did a whole lot of very good 
things in the State of Vermont. One of the things we were able to do 
was use $50 million of Federal funds and private money to make major 
repair on one of our important railways in the State.
  But we remain far behind most other countries around the 
industrialized world. China is exploding in terms of the number of 
high-speed rail lines they have. We have to do better. Our airports 
need work. Our air controllers need to be updated in terms of the 
technology they have and use to make our flights safe.
  The point is, what most economists would tell you is when you invest 
in infrastructure, you get a bigger bang for the buck. You create more 
jobs for your investment than, in most instances, giving a variety of 
tax breaks to the corporate world.
  Second of all, and not unimportantly, when you invest in 
infrastructure, you are improving the future of this country. You are 
making us more productive. It is not just creating jobs, it is creating 
jobs for very specific purposes, which makes our Nation more productive 
and efficient.
  Thirdly, let me tell you something. As a former mayor, infrastructure 
does not get better if you ignore it. You can turn your back, if you 
are a mayor or Governor, on the roads and the highways because you do 
not have the money to fix them today, but they are not going to get 
better next year. At some point, they are going to have to be repaired 
and fixed. We may as well do that right now.
  So I believe the money, the very substantial sums of money in this 
agreement between the President and the Republicans, which goes into 
tax breaks for corporate America, could be effectively spent on 
infrastructure.
  The fifth point I want to make in opposition to this agreement and 
what we have heard from the President and others is that this is a 
compromise. You cannot get everything you want. Well, you cannot get 
everything you want around here is true, but one of the examples of 
compromise is an extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months.
  Well, let me be very clear. In the midst of a serious and major 
recession, at a time when millions of our fellow Americans are not only 
out of work through no fault of their own, but they have been out of 
work for a very long time, it would be, in my view, immoral and wrong 
to turn our backs on those workers. Their unemployment benefits are 
going to be running out soon. It is absolutely imperative that we 
extend those unemployment benefits for the 2 million workers who would 
lose them.
  But here is the point I want to make. Some people say this is a 
compromise. Well, the Republicans gave on unemployment; the President 
gave on extending tax breaks for the rich, et cetera. But here is the 
point. I do not believe, honestly, that the Republican support now for 
extending unemployment benefits constitutes much of a compromise 
because the truth is, for the past 40 years, under both Democratic and 
Republican administrations, under the leadership in the Senate and the 
House of Democrats or Republicans, it has been bipartisan policy that 
whenever the unemployment rate has been above 7.2 percent, unemployment 
insurance has always been extended. So what we have had is 
longstanding, bipartisan policy. That is what we have always done. That 
is what we should be doing in the future. I do not regard Republicans 
now supporting what their party has always supported, extending 
unemployment benefits when unemployment becomes very high--I do not see 
that as a compromise. I see that as what has been going on in this 
country and in the Senate for four decades.
  I have talked about the negative aspects of this proposal. But I am 
going to be the first to admit that, of course, there are positive and 
good agreements in this. And what are they? What are some of the 
positive aspects of this agreement? Let me just tick them off.
  No. 1, I believe very strongly, and I know the President does, it is 
absolutely imperative that we extend middle-class tax cuts for 98 
percent of the American people. I do not think there has been any 
debate about that.
  When median family income has gone down by over $2,000 during the 
Bush years, when millions of our people today are working longer hours 
for low wages, when people cannot afford to send their kids to college 
or to take care of childcare, I think it makes absolute sense. I do not 
think anyone will argue it is absolutely imperative that we extend 
middle-class tax cuts. That is what this provision does. That is the 
right thing.
  Furthermore, in this agreement we have an extension of the earned-
income tax credit for working Americans, and the child and college tax 
credit are also in there. Every one of these agreements is very 
important. These programs will keep millions of Americans from slipping 
out of the middle class and into poverty. They will allow millions of 
Americans to send their kids to college.
  So I am not here to say there is not anything of value in this 
agreement between the President and the Republicans. There are, and we 
have to fight to make sure all of those programs remain in the final 
package when it is passed--when the final package is passed. But when 
we look at the overall agreement, we must put it in a broader context; 
that is, what will the passage of this legislation mean for the future 
of our country?
  In that area, if you look at it in that context, I think the evidence 
is pretty strong it is not just a good agreement and not something that 
should be passed. The passage of this agreement would mean we would 
continue the Bush policy of trickle-down economics for at least 2 more 
years. That is not a good thing to do because, I think, as most 
Americans know, that philosophy, that economic approach, simply did not 
work. The evidence is quite overwhelming. I do not think there is much 
debate, when median family income during Bush's 8 years goes down by 
$2,200, when we end up losing over 600,000 private sector jobs, and all 
of the job growth was in the Federal level, I do not see how anybody 
would want to continue that philosophy. But that, in essence, is what 
will happen if this agreement is passed.
  Now, I want to make another point about what happens if--if, and I 
will do my best to prevent this from happening--but what would happen 
if this agreement would pass? Does anybody seriously believe our 
Republican colleagues would then say: OK, well, we have an extension of 
tax breaks for the very richest people. We have lowered the tax rate on 
the estate tax. Those are good victories for millionaires and

[[Page S8738]]

billionaires. We are going to go home now. We are not going to continue 
the fight.
  I do not think so. We are already hearing sounds about where our 
Republican friends want to go. The President put together what I 
thought was a very poor deficit reduction commission. I thought the 
folks on it were not reflective of the American people. I thought there 
was very much a big business, corporate partiality there.
  The initiatives that came out of that commission--which, fortunately, 
did not get the 14 votes they needed--suggest to me that those of us 
who are concerned about protecting the needs of the middle class and 
working families are going to have to push back pretty hard for what is 
coming down the pike.
  I think what we will be seeing is--if this proposal negotiated 
between the President and the Republicans is passed, what you will be 
seeing within a few months are folks coming on the floor of the Senate, 
and this is what they will say: You know what. The deficit is high. The 
national debt is too high. And, yes--oh, yes--we drove the national 
debt up by giving tax breaks to millionaires. That is the way it goes. 
But we are going to have to deal with our national debt.
  The Republicans will tell you: Oh, we have a great plan to deal with 
it. We are giving tax breaks to millionaires. But now what we are going 
to have to do is start making deep cuts in Social Security, and that 
deficit reduction commission started paving the way for that, very 
substantial cuts in Social Security.
  Maybe we will have to raise the retirement age in Social Security to 
69 or 70. Maybe we will have to make cuts in Medicare. Maybe we will 
have to make cuts in Medicaid. I think we are beginning to see, in the 
State of Arizona now, what goes on when you make deep cuts in Medicaid.
  In Arizona right now there are people who are in line who need 
transplants, who will die if they do not get transplants, as a result 
of legislation they passed there. They are saying to people, young 
people: Sorry, we cannot afford to give you a transplant, and you are 
going to have to die.
  Well, is that what we are looking forward to saying all over America? 
I certainly will do everything I can to prevent that.
  We are certainly going to see a tax on environmental protection, on 
education. Some of us believe if this country is going to prosper and 
succeed in the global economy, we have to have the best educational 
system in the world from childcare through college.
  Right now, it is extremely difficult for middle-class families to 
send their kids to college. Does anyone have any doubt whatsoever that 
our Republican friends are not going to come back here and say: Oh, we 
cannot afford to raise Pell Grants as we have in recent years. We 
cannot afford to support working families who have their kids in 
childcare. Cut. Cut. Cut.
  That is insanity. I am being honest about it. So I would suggest 
their argument is that we have a high deficit and a high national debt; 
that if we pass this agreement and the national debt goes higher, it 
only gives them more impetus to go forward to cut programs that benefit 
working families and the middle class.
  Let me also say there is no doubt in my mind what many--not all but 
many--of my Republican colleagues want to do; that is, they want to 
move this country back into the 1920s when essentially we had an 
economic and political system which was controlled by big money 
interests; where working people and the middle class had no programs to 
sustain them when things got bad, when they got old, and when they got 
sick; when labor unions were very hard to come by because of antiworker 
legislation. That is what they want. They do not believe in things like 
the Environmental Protection Agency. They do not believe in things like 
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal aid to education. That is 
the fight we will be waging.
  I think to surrender on this issue is to simply say we are going to 
be waging fight after fight, starting within a couple of months.
  President Obama has said he fought as hard as he could against the 
Republican tax breaks for the wealthy and for an extension in 
unemployment. Well, maybe. But the reality is that fight cannot simply 
be waged inside the Beltway. Our job is to appeal to the vast majority 
of the American people to stand up and to say: Wait a minute. I do not 
want to see our national debt explode. I do not want to see my kids and 
grandchildren paying higher taxes in order to give tax breaks to 
millionaires and billionaires.
  The vast majority of the American people do not support that 
agreement in terms of giving tax breaks to the very rich. Our job is to 
rally those people. I would like very much to see the American people 
saying to our Republican colleagues and some Democratic colleagues: 
Excuse me. Don't force my kids to have a lower standard of living in 
order to give tax breaks to the richest people.
  What the President and all of us should be doing is going out and 
saying to those people: Call the Members of the Senate, call the 
Members of the House and say: Excuse me. How about representing the 
middle class and working families, for a change, rather than the 
wealthiest people. That is what democracy is about.
  This fight is not going to be won inside the beltway in a Senate 
debate. It is going to be won when the American people stand and say: 
Wait a second. We cannot continue to give tax breaks to people who are 
doing phenomenally well right now. We cannot give tax breaks to the 
rich when we already have the most unequal distribution of income of 
any major country on Earth. The top 1 percent earns 23 percent of all 
income in America, more than the bottom 50 percent. They don't need 
more tax breaks to be paid for by our kids and grandchildren.
  The vast majority of people are behind us on this issue, but they 
have to make their voices heard to their Senators, to their 
Congressmen. When they do, I believe we can come forward with an 
agreement which protects the middle-class and working families and is 
not a boondoggle for the wealthiest people.
  It is important to put the agreement the President struck with 
Republicans in a broader context. We can't just look at the agreement 
unto itself. We have to look at it within the context of what is going 
on in the country today, both economically and politically. I think I 
speak for millions of Americans. There is a war going on in this 
country. I am not referring to the war in Iraq or the war in 
Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the 
wealthiest and most powerful people against working families, against 
the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The 
billionaires of America are on the warpath. They want more and more and 
more. That has everything to do with this agreement reached between 
Republicans and the President.
  In 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners made 23.5 percent of 
all income. Let me repeat that: The top 1 percent earned over 23 
percent of all income; that is, more than the bottom 50 percent. One 
percent here; fifty percent here. But for the very wealthy, that is 
apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 
percent nearly tripled since the 1970s. All over this country people 
are angry, frustrated. It is true in Vermont. I am sure it is true in 
Virginia. It is true all over America. But one of the reasons people 
are angry and frustrated is they are working incredibly hard. In 
Vermont, I can tell my colleagues, there are people who don't work one 
job, two jobs; there are people working three jobs and four jobs, 
trying to cobble together an income in order to support their families. 
I suspect that goes on all across the country. While people are working 
harder and harder, in many cases their income is going down. The fact 
is, 80 percent of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to 
the top 1 percent. Let me repeat that because that is an important 
fact. It explains why the American people are feeling as angry as they 
are. They are working hard, but they are not going anyplace. In some 
cases, in many cases, their standard of living is actually going down. 
Eighty percent of all income in recent years has gone to the top 1 
percent. The richer people become much richer, the middle class 
shrinks. Millions of Americans fall out of the middle class and into 
poverty.
  That is not apparently enough for our friends at the top who have a 
religious ferocity in terms of greed. They

[[Page S8739]]

need more, more. It is similar to an addiction. Fifty million is not 
enough. They need $100 million. One hundred million is not enough; they 
need 1 billion. One billion is not enough. I am not quite sure how much 
they need. When will it stop?
  Today, in terms of wealth as opposed to income, the top 1 percent now 
owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. When we went to school, we 
used to read in the textbooks about Latin America, and they used to 
refer to some of the countries there as ``banana republics,'' countries 
in which a handful of families controlled the economic and political 
life of the nation. I don't wish to upset the American people, but we 
are not all that far away from that reality today. The top 1 percent 
has seen a tripling of the percentage of income they earn. Since the 
1970s, the top 1 percent owning 23 percent of all income, more than the 
bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the 
bottom 90 percent. That is not the foundation of a democratic society. 
That is the foundation for an oligarchic society. The rich get richer. 
The middle class shrinks. Poverty increases. Apparently, God is not 
good enough yet for some of the richest people.
  I say ``some of the richest'' because there are a lot of folks with a 
lot of money who do love this country, they are not into greed, but 
there are some who are. More, more more, that is what they need.
  For example--this galls me and galls many of the people in this 
country--the horrendous recession we are in right now, where millions 
and millions of people have lost their jobs, their savings, their 
homes, this recession was caused by the greed and recklessness and 
illegal behavior on Wall Street. These guys, through their greed, 
created the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression. 
The American people bailed them out. Now, 2 years after the bailout, 
they are giving themselves more compensation than they ever have. They 
are saying to the American people: Sorry we caused this recession 
because of our greed. Sorry you are unemployed. Sorry you lost your 
house. But that is not all that important. What is important is that I, 
on Wall Street, continue to get millions of dollars in compensation and 
in bonuses, that I have big parties. How can I get by on one house? I 
need 5 houses, 10 houses. I need three jet planes to take me all over 
the world. Sorry. We have the money. We have the power. We have the 
lobbyists here on Wall Street. Tough luck. That is the world, get used 
to it.
  The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Not enough, not 
enough. The very rich seem to want more and more and more, and they are 
prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order in order 
to get it. So we have the economics and distribution of income and 
wealth as one thing, but then we must discuss politics.
  What happened last year, as I think most Americans know, is the 
Supreme Court made a very strange decision. The Supreme Court decided 
that corporations are people and they have the right of free speech and 
the right without disclosure--all of this is through the Citizens 
United Supreme Court decision--to put as much money as they want into 
campaigns all over the country. In this last campaign, that is what we 
saw: Billionaires, in secret, pouring money into campaigns all over the 
country. Does that sound like democracy to anybody in America; that we 
have a handful of billionaires probably dividing up the country? I will 
put this amount in Virginia, California, wherever.
  That is what they were able to do. The rich get richer, and they 
don't sit on this money. What they then do is use it to elect people 
who support them and to unelect people who oppose their agenda and they 
use their political power to get legislation passed which makes the 
wealthy even wealthier.
  One of the manifestations of that is, in fact, the agreement reached 
between the President and the Republican leadership. The wealthy 
contribute huge sums of money into campaigns. The wealthy have all 
kinds of lobbyists around here through corporate America. What they are 
going to get out of this agreement are huge tax breaks that benefit 
themselves. That is not what we should be supporting.
  We should understand this agreement is just the beginning of an 
assault on legislation and programs that have benefited the American 
people for 70 or 80 years. Mark my words, there will be an intensive 
effort to privatize Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. 
Furthermore, it is part of the Republican agenda. They want to expand--
and it is not only Republicans here, some Democrats as well--our 
disastrous trade policies so large companies can continue their efforts 
to outsource American jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Any 
objective analysis of our trade policies has shown it has been a 
grotesque failure for ordinary Americans. It is hard to calculate 
exactly, but I think it is fair to say we have lost millions of decent-
paying jobs. During the Bush years alone, some 48,000 factories shut 
down. We went from 19 million manufacturing jobs to 12 million 
manufacturing jobs. Historically, in this country, manufacturing jobs 
were the backbone of the working class. That is how people made it into 
the middle class. That is how they had decent health care benefits and 
pensions. Every day we are seeing those jobs disappear because 
corporate America would prefer to do business in China or other low-
wage countries.
  I returned from a trip to Vietnam last year, a beautiful country. 
People there work for 25, 30 cents an hour. Sometimes when you go to a 
store, you may see a shirt made in Bangladesh. That shirt, in all 
likelihood, is made by a young girl who came in from the countryside to 
one of the factories there. The good news is that in Bangladesh, the 
minimum wage was doubled. It went from 11 cents an hour to 23 cents an 
hour. Are American workers going to be able to compete against 
desperate people who make 23 cents an hour?

  So my view--and I think it reflects the views of the American 
people--is that of course we want to see the people of Bangladesh and 
the people of China do well. But they do not have to do well at the 
expense of the American middle class. We do not have to engage in a 
race to the bottom. Our goal is to bring them up, not us down. But one 
of the results of our disastrous trade policies is that in many 
instances wages in the United States have gone down.
  I believe in the coming months you are going to see an 
intensification of efforts to expand unfettered free trade. I think 
that will be a continuation of a disastrous policy for American 
workers.
  Let me personalize this a little bit. This gentleman, shown in this 
picture I have in the Chamber--I have no personal animus toward him at 
all; I think I met him once in a large room. His name is James Dimon. 
He is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Over the past 5 years, Mr. Dimon, who 
is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, received $89 million in total 
compensation--a bank that we now know received hundreds of billions in 
low-interest loans and other financial assistance from the Federal 
Reserve and the Treasury Department.
  So Mr. Dimon received $89 million in total compensation. His bank was 
bailed out big time by the taxpayers. But under the legislation the 
President negotiated with the Republicans, Mr. Dimon--I use him just as 
one example for thousands; nothing personal to Mr. Dimon--will receive 
$1.1 million in tax breaks. So $1.1 million in tax breaks for a major 
CEO on Wall Street, who over the last 5 years received $89 million in 
total compensation.
  Meanwhile--just to contrast what is going on here--2 days ago, I 
brought before the Senate legislation which would provide a $250 one-
time check to over 50 million seniors and disabled veterans, who for 
the last 2 years have not received a COLA on their Social Security. 
Many of those seniors and disabled vets are trying to get by on 
$14,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year. The total package for that bill was 
approximately $14 billion that would go out to over 50 million seniors 
and disabled vets. We won that vote on the floor of the Senate 53 to 
45. But just because you get 53 votes in the Senate does not mean you 
win. Because the Republicans filibustered, I needed 60 votes. I could 
not get 60 votes. I could not get one Republican vote to provide a $250 
check to a disabled veteran trying to get by on $15,000 or $16,000 a 
year.
  But Mr. Dimon, who made $89 million in the last 5 years, will get a 
$1 million tax deduction if this agreement is passed. Now, that may 
make sense to

[[Page S8740]]

some people. It does not make a lot of sense to me.
  Again, I have no particular knowledge, animus--I do not know if I 
ever met John Mack in my life. He is the CEO of Morgan Stanley. In 
2006, he received a $40 million bonus, which at the time was the 
largest bonus ever given to a Wall Street executive.
  Two years after receiving this bonus, Morgan Stanley received some $2 
trillion in low-interest loans and billions from the Treasury 
Department. Instead of losing his job, under this agreement, Mr. Mack 
will be receiving an estimated $926,000 tax break next year. 
Congratulations, Mr. Mack. You are doing fine. We could not get $250 
for a disabled vet.
  Over the past 5 years, Ken Lewis, the former CEO of Bank of America, 
received over $165 million in total compensation. In 2008, Bank of 
America received hundreds of billions in taxpayer-backed loans from the 
Fed and a $45 billion bailout from the Treasury Department.
  What will Mr. Lewis receive if the agreement negotiated between the 
President and the Republicans goes forth? He will get a $713,000 tax 
cut.
  And on and on it goes. I did not mean to specifically pick on these 
guys. Some of the wealthiest people in the country will be receiving a 
million-dollar-plus tax break. So we as a nation have to decide whether 
that makes a lot of sense. I think it does not.
  Let me mention that a couple weeks ago the Fed, the Federal Reserve, 
published on their Web site some 21,000 transactions that took place 
during the Wall Street meltdown period. That disclosure was made 
possible as part of a provision that I put into the financial reform 
bill because I thought it was important the American people, for the 
first time, lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed and get a sense of the 
kind of money that was lent out by the Fed and who received that money.
  What is very interesting is that the American people and the media 
have focused on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout now known as TARP. 
I happen to have voted against that agreement, but, in fairness, that 
agreement was pretty transparent. The Treasury Department put up on 
their Web site all of those banks and financial institutions that 
received the money. If you want to know where the money went, it is 
right up there on the Treasury Department's Web site.
  But at the same time, a bigger transaction than TARP was taking 
place, which got relatively little attention, and that was the role the 
Fed was playing in terms of the Wall Street bailout.
  While the TARP issue was being debated during that period, Ben 
Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Tim Geithner, who was 
then the president of the New York Fed, and a handful of other very 
powerful people were sitting behind closed doors getting ready to lend 
out trillions--underline trillions--of taxpayer dollars to large 
financial institutions and corporations, with no debate going on in 
Congress, no debate whatsoever.
  On March 3, 2009--and I am a member of the Senate Budget Committee--I 
asked the Fed Chairman, Mr. Bernanke, to tell the American people the 
names of the financial institutions that received this unprecedented 
backdoor bailout from the Fed, how much they received, and the exact 
terms of this assistance. I will never forget that. I asked Mr. 
Bernanke for that information. He said: Senator, no, not going to give 
it to you, not going to make it public.
  Well, on that day, I introduced legislation to make that information 
public, working with a number of Members of the House and the Senate. 
Some strange bedfellows--conservatives and progressives--came together 
on this issue. We managed to get in the Wall Street reform bill a 
disclosure provision, and on December 1--last week--that information 
was made public. Let me talk a little bit about what was in that 
information made public by the Fed.
  After years of stonewalling, the American people have learned the 
incredible, jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multimillion-dollar 
bailout of Wall Street and corporate America--not just Wall Street. It 
is one of the things we learned. As a result of this disclosure, in my 
view--we are going to get into what was in what we learned--Congress 
has to take a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal 
Reserve functions and how we can make our financial institutions more 
responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans and small businesses.
  What have we learned from the disclosure of December 1? This is based 
on an examination of over 21,000 separate Federal Reserve transactions. 
More work, more research needs to be done. But this is what we have 
learned so far.
  As it turns out, while small business owners in the State of Vermont 
and throughout this country were being turned down for loans, not only 
did large financial institutions--and I am talking about every major 
financial institution--receive substantial help from the Fed, but also 
some of the largest corporations in this country--not financial 
institutions--also received help in terms of very low interest loans.
  So you have every major financial institution, you have some of our 
largest private corporations, but here is something we also learned, 
and that is that this bailout impacted not just American banks and 
corporations but also foreign banks and foreign corporations as well, 
to the tune of many billions of dollars.
  Then, on top of that, a number of the wealthiest individuals in this 
country also received a major bailout from the Fed. The ``emergency 
response,'' which is what the Fed described their action as during the 
Wall Street collapse, appears to any objective observer to have been 
the clearest case that I can imagine of socialism for the very rich and 
rugged free market capitalism for everybody else.
  In other words, if you are a huge financial institution, whose 
recklessness and greed caused this great recession, no problem. You are 
going to receive a substantial amount of help from the taxpayers of 
this country. If you are a major American corporation, such as General 
Electric or McDonald's or Caterpillar or Harley-Davidson or Verizon, no 
problem. You are going to receive a major handout from the U.S. 
Government.
  But if you are a small business in Vermont or California or Virginia, 
well, guess what, you are on your own because right now we know one of 
the real impediments to the kind of job creation we need in this 
country is that small businesses are not getting the loans they need.
  Furthermore, what we now know is the extent of the bailout for the 
large financial corporations. Goldman Sachs received nearly $600 
billion. Morgan Stanley received nearly $2 trillion. Citigroup received 
$1.8 trillion. Bear Stearns received nearly $1 trillion. And Merrill 
Lynch received some $1.5 trillion in short-term loans from the Fed.
  But I think what is most surprising for the American people is not 
just the bailout of Wall Street and the financial institutions, and the 
bailout of large American corporations such as General Electric, but I 
think the American people would find it very strange that at a time 
when the American automobile sector was on the verge of collapse--and 
goodness only knows how many thousands and thousands of jobs we have 
lost in automobile manufacturing in this country--the Federal Reserve 
was also bailing out Toyota and Mitsubishi, two Japanese carmakers, by 
purchasing nearly $5 billion worth of their commercial paper from 
November 5, 2008, through January 30, 2009. While virtually no 
American-made cars or products of any kind are bought in Japan, I think 
the American people would be shocked to learn that the Fed extended 
over $380 billion to the Central Bank of Japan to bail out banks in 
that country.

  Furthermore, I think the American people are interested to know that 
the Fed bailed out the Korea Development Bank, the wholly owned, state-
owned Bank of South Korea, by purchasing over $2 billion of its 
commercial paper. The sole purpose of the Korea Development Bank is to 
finance and manage major industrial projects to enhance the national 
economy not of the United States of America but of South Korea. I am 
not against South Korea. I wish the South Koreans all the luck in the 
world. But it should not be the taxpayers of the United States lending 
their banks' money to create jobs in South Korea. I would suggest maybe 
we want to create jobs in the United States of America. At the same 
time, the Fed also extended over $40 billion

[[Page S8741]]

for the Central Bank of South Korea so that it had enough money to bail 
out its own banks.
  At a time when small businesses in Vermont and all over this country 
cannot get the loans they need to expand their businesses, I think the 
American people would find it extremely--I don't know what the word 
is--maybe amusing that the Fed bailed out the state-owned Bank of 
Bavaria--not Pennsylvania, not California, but Bavaria--by purchasing 
over $2.2 billion of its commercial paper.
  Furthermore, when we cannot get support on the floor of this Senate 
to extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who are on the 
verge of seeing them expire, I think the American people would find it 
incomprehensible that the Fed chose to bail out the Arab Banking 
Corporation based in Bahrain by providing them with over $23 billion in 
loans with an interest rate as low as one-quarter of 1 percent. So 
small businessmen all over America: Maybe you have to run to Bahrain 
and work with the Arab Banking Corporation there to get some pretty 
good loans. But it would be nice if maybe the Fed would start to pay 
attention to banks in this country.
  Furthermore, the Fed extended over $9.6 billion to the Central Bank 
of Mexico.
  What is interesting about all of this is that we had a very vigorous 
debate here in the Senate and in the House over the $700 billion TARP 
program. Every person in America could turn on C-SPAN and hear that 
debate. They could hear what President Bush had to say, hear what then-
Senator Obama and Senator McCain had to say. It was all pretty public. 
But what took place at the Fed, which, in fact, amounted to a larger 
bailout, was done behind closed doors. Over $3 trillion was lent with 
zero transparency. In fact, as a result of this recent disclosure--this 
is the first time we have gotten a glimpse of the magnitude and the 
particulars, the specificities of where that money was lent, and I 
think this is not a good thing for this country. Again, I voted against 
the bailout of Wall Street, but the debate was open and public. People 
wrote to their Senators and called their Senators. That is called 
democracy. After the TARP bailout took place, all of the loans were put 
up on the Web site. Transparency--the American people knew who got the 
money. But the actions of the Fed were done behind closed doors, and, 
in my view--it is an issue we are studying right now--I think there 
were significant conflicts of interest. I think we had people sitting 
there at the New York Fed who were beneficiaries of this bailout, and 
that is an issue we need to explore. I should tell my colleagues that 
as part of the provision we got into the financial reform bill, the GAO 
is, in fact, doing just that--investigating possible conflicts of 
interest at the Fed with regard to this bailout.
  I think the question the American people are asking as they read 
about what the Fed did during the financial crisis is whether the Fed 
has now become the central bank of the world without any debate on the 
floor of the Senate or the Congress and without the knowledge of the 
American people. I think that is wrong. So I hope, out of this effort 
in bringing disclosure and transparency to the Fed, that one of the 
things that will come will be more transparency at the Fed.
  As I indicated a moment ago, the Fed said this bailout was necessary 
in order to prevent the world economy from going over a cliff. But 3 
years after the start of the recession, millions of Americans remain 
unemployed and have lost their homes, their life savings, and their 
ability to send their kids to college. Meanwhile, huge banks and large 
corporations have returned to making incredible profits and paying 
their executives recordbreaking compensation packages, as if the 
financial crisis they started never occurred.
  What this recent disclosure tells us, among many other things, is 
that despite this huge taxpayer bailout, the Fed did not make the 
appropriate demands on these financial institutions which would have 
been necessary to rebuild our economy and protect the needs of ordinary 
Americans. In other words, what they simply did was give out billions 
and billions of dollars which were used in the self-interests of these 
financial institutions rather than saying: The American people who are 
hurting are bailing you out, and now that they have bailed you out, 
your responsibility is to do what you can to create jobs and to improve 
the standard of living of the people, many of whose lives you have 
severely impacted.
  Let me give a few examples of what could have been done and what 
should be done. At a time when big banks have nearly $1 trillion in 
excess reserves parked at the Fed, the Fed has not required these 
institutions to increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses 
as a condition of the bailout. In other words, instead of the Fed just 
giving money to these financial institutions, the Fed should have said: 
We are giving you this money in order to get it into the economy. Start 
providing affordable loans to small businesses.
  At a time when large corporations are more profitable than ever, the 
Fed did not demand that corporations that received this backdoor 
bailout create jobs and expand the economy once they returned to 
profitability. So what is going on in America? Unemployment is 
officially at 9.8 percent and in a real sense probably at 15 or 16 
percent, but Wall Street is now doing fine.
  A few years ago, Wall Street earned some 40 percent of all profits in 
America, and they are doing great. But what the Fed should have done 
and should do now is to tell Wall Street: You are part of the economy. 
You are not an isolated area just living for yourselves. You have to be 
a part of the productive economy. You have to lend money to small 
businesses to start creating jobs.
  My office intends to investigate whether these secret Fed loans, in 
some cases, turned out to be direct corporate welfare to big banks that 
may have used those loans not to reinvest in the economy but, rather, 
to lend back to the Federal Government at a higher rate of interest by 
purchasing Treasury securities. Now, we don't know that. Maybe that is 
true, maybe it is not true, but we will take a look at it. In other 
words, did the Fed give one-half of 1 percent loans to a bank and that 
bank then purchased a Treasury security at 2 or 3 percent? If so, you 
have a 2-percent profit margin, and that is nothing but corporate 
welfare. The goal of the bailout was not to make Wall Street richer; 
the goal was to expand our economy and put people to work.
  Furthermore, we know that as part of the TARP agreement, there was an 
effort to say to the financial institutions: We are not bailing you out 
in order for you to get huge compensation packages. We are not going to 
give you Federal money so you can make all kinds of money. We put 
limitations on executive compensation.
  Did the Fed play the role of allowing some of the large financial 
institutions to pay back the TARP money, use the Fed money, and then 
continue with their very high executive compensation? We don't know, 
but it is worth investigating.
  Furthermore--and this is an issue I have worked on for a number of 
years. We know every major religion on Earth--Christianity, Judaism, 
Islam, you name it--has always felt that usury is immoral. What we mean 
by usury is that when someone doesn't have a lot of money and you loan 
them money, you don't get blood out of a stone. You can't ask for 
outrageously high interest rates when somebody is hurting. That is 
immoral. Every major religion, all great philosophers have written 
about this. Yet today we have millions of people in our country--and I 
hear from Vermonters every week on this issue--who are paying 25 
percent or 30 percent and in some cases even higher interest rates on 
their credit cards--20 percent, 30 percent interest rates. That is 
getting blood out of a stone. Yet many of the credit card companies 
were bailed out by the taxpayers of this country. What the Fed must do 
is say to those companies: Sorry, you can't continue to rip off the 
American people and charge them 25 percent or 30 percent interest 
rates.
  As it happens, the four largest banks in this country, which are Bank 
of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup, issue half of 
all mortgages in this country. Four huge financial institutions issue 
half of all mortgages in this country. That unto itself is a huge 
problem. They issue half of all mortgages, two-thirds of all credit 
cards. That speaks to another issue about the need to start bringing

[[Page S8742]]

up these financial institutions. But when you have a handful of banks 
that received huge bailouts from the Federal Government that are 
issuing two-thirds of the credit cards in this country, it seems to me 
to be somewhat absurd that the Fed did not say to them: Sorry, you 
can't charge people 25 or 30 percent interest rates on your credit 
cards. The same principle applies to mortgages. I don't have to tell 
anybody in this country that we have seen millions of folks lose their 
homes through foreclosure, and once again we see that the four largest 
banks in this country--Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, 
and Citigroup--issue half of all mortgages. Four banks issue two-thirds 
of the credit cards and half of the mortgages. We bail these financial 
institutions out. Don't they have some responsibility to the American 
people? How many more Americans could have remained in their homes if 
the Fed had required those bailed-out banks to reduce mortgage payments 
as a condition of receiving these secret loans?
  In terms of the interest rates on credit cards, a lot of people don't 
know this, but right now the banks are able to charge as much as they 
want to charge, but, in fact, credit unions are not.
  Right now, we are looking at a situation where over one-quarter of 
all credit cardholders in this country are now paying interest rates 
above 20 percent and in some cases as high as 79 percent. In my view, 
when credit card companies charge over 20 percent interest, they are 
not engaged in the business of making credit available to their 
customers; they are involved in extortion and loan-sharking--nothing 
essentially different than gangsters who charge outrageously high 
prices for their loans and who break kneecaps when their victims can't 
afford to pay them. So that is where we are right now.
  I get calls--and I am sure every other Senator gets calls--from 
constituents who are very upset. They are going deeper and deeper into 
debt because they can't pay 25 or 30 percent interest rates on their 
credit cards. We bailed out the credit card companies. There was no 
provision that said: Stop ripping off the American people. Stop these 
companies from committing usury.
  We are working on legislation that would say to these private banks 
not to charge any more money for the credit they provide than do the 
credit unions. It is going to be a tough fight because the lobbyists 
from Wall Street are all over this place. Wall Street spends huge 
amounts of money in campaign contributions, and it is going to be 
tough. But I think we need to pass that. I think the Fed needs to be 
much more active, in terms of what kinds of interest rates credit card 
companies should be paying.
  Today, I am going to focus a lot, obviously, on an agreement reached 
between the President and the Republican leadership, which I think does 
not serve the American people well. One of the areas, as I mentioned 
earlier, where I think we could do a lot better in addressing the 
crisis of high unemployment in this Nation is by investing the kinds of 
money we need in our infrastructure.
  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, they graded 
America's roads, public transit, and aviation with a D. They said we 
must invest $2.2 trillion over the next 5 years simply to get a 
passable grade. Unfortunately, in the agreement struck between the 
President and the Republican leadership, to the best of my knowledge, 
not one nickel is going into investing in our infrastructure.
  Let me tell you why we need to invest in infrastructure. A, that is 
where you can create the millions of jobs we desperately need in order 
to get us out of this recession. Second of all, we need to invest in 
infrastructure because, if we don't, we will become less and less 
competitive internationally.
  According to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue 
Study Commission, $225 billion is needed annually for the next 50 years 
to upgrade our surface transportation system to a state of good repair 
and create a more advanced system. The Federal Highway Administration 
reports that $130 billion must be invested annually for a 20-year 
period to improve our bridges and the operational performance of our 
highways. At present, one in four of the Nation's bridges is either 
structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. One in four of our 
bridges is either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Yet 
in this agreement struck by the President and the Republican 
leadership, to the best of my knowledge, not one nickel is going into 
our infrastructure. We need to invest in our infrastructure. We need to 
improve our infrastructure. When we do that, we can create millions of 
jobs.
  The Federal Transit Administration says $22 billion must be invested 
annually for a 20-year period to improve conditions and performances 
for our major transit systems. In Vermont, the situation is no 
different than in the rest of the country. Thirty-five percent of 
Vermont's 2,700 bridges--nearly 1,000 bridges--are functionally 
obsolete. In recent years, we have had to shut down bridges, which 
caused a lot of inconvenience to people who live in those areas, to 
workers who had to get to work using a bridge. Nearly half the bridges 
in Vermont have structural deficiencies. Rural transit options are few 
and far between, making rural, low-income Vermonters especially 
vulnerable to spikes in gas prices. In other words, in Vermont, and in 
other areas of rural America, you have one choice in the vast majority 
of cases as to how you get to work. That one choice is that you get in 
your car, you pay $3 for a gallon of gas, and that is it. That is 
because rural transportation in this country is very weak.
  We can create jobs building the buses and vans we need, making it 
easier and cheaper for workers in rural America to get to work. In 
urban areas, it is no different. Transit systems in Chicago, New York, 
and even here in Washington, DC, are in disrepair. Let's improve and 
repair them. That makes us more efficient, more productive, and more 
competitive, and it creates jobs now. Not one nickel, as far as I can 
understand, has been invested in our infrastructure in this agreement.
  The United States invests just 2.4 percent of GDP in infrastructure; 
whereas, Europe invests twice that amount.
  Here is something I think every American should be keenly aware of 
and very worried about. I don't have to tell anybody that the Chinese 
economy is exploding every single day in almost every way. In China, 
they are investing almost four times our rate--or 9 percent--of their 
GDP annually in their infrastructure. Years ago, I was in Shanghai, 
China. I was coming from the airport to downtown as part of a 
congressional delegation. While we were on the bus coming in, my wife 
noticed something. She said: What was that? There was a blur that went 
by the window. Of course, I didn't notice it; she did. It turned out 
that blur was an experimental train they were working on--high-speed 
rail, which is now operational there, and other similar prototypes are 
being developed in China. Here we are, the United States of America, 
which for so many years led the world in so many ways, and now you are 
seeing a newly developing country such as China with high-speed rail 
all over their country, making them more productive and efficient, and 
in our cities, our subways are breaking down. Amtrak is going 50, 60 
miles an hour, and the Chinese and Europeans have trains going hundreds 
of miles an hour.
  This is the United States of America. Maybe I am old-fashioned. I 
think we can do it too. I think we can rebuild our rail system, make 
our country more efficient and create jobs.
  China invested $186 billion in rail from 2006 to 2009, and according 
to the New York Times, within 2 years, they will open 42 new high-speed 
rail lines, with trains reaching speeds of 200 miles an hour. That is 
China. So I think if China can do it, the United States of America can 
do it. That is the way to rebuild America, make us stronger and create 
jobs.
  By 2020, China plans to add 26,000 additional miles of tracks for 
freight and travel, as well as 230,000 miles of new or improved roads, 
and 97 new airports--97 new airports. Does anybody in America have the 
same problem I have when you go to the airport, where you are waiting 
in line and you have to deal with all the problems of older airports? 
China is building 97 new ones. We are not. If we are going to be 
effective in the international economy, and if our kids will have 
decent jobs, it is high

[[Page S8743]]

time we woke up and began investing in our infrastructure. So that is 
not only to improve the long-term strength of America, our economic 
prowess, but it is also to create jobs right now that we desperately 
need.
  Unfortunately, in this bill, this tax agreement between the President 
and the Republican leadership, there are many billions of dollars going 
into tax breaks for corporations. But there is not a whole lot of 
money--in fact, zero dollars--going into rebuilding our infrastructure.
  Similarly--and I know there has been debate since yesterday on this 
issue. There may be a small breakthrough. I don't have to tell 
Americans, least of all the people in Vermont, about what happens when 
the weather gets cold and you are forced to pay very high prices for 
heating oil. The time is long overdue for us to make the investments we 
need to transform our energy system away from coal, away from oil. We 
are spending as a nation--and everybody in America has to appreciate 
this--$350 billion every single year--$1 billion a day, roughly--
importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries, in order 
to make our economy go and in order to keep people warm.
  Let me be very clear. The royal family of Saudi Arabia, which is our 
major source of oil, is doing just fine. Don't worry about the royal 
family of Saudi Arabia. They have zillions and zillions of dollars. 
Maybe it is a good idea that we seek energy independence, that we break 
our dependence on fossil fuel, and become more energy efficient, which, 
by the way, investing in public transportation certainly will do, and 
we move to sustainable energy, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and 
biomass. Guess what. China is doing that. Many of the solar panels 
coming into this country are not made in the United States but are made 
in China. They are big into wind turbines. I think the time is now for 
us to rebuild our infrastructure and create the jobs we desperately 
need.
  Again, unfortunately, despite the enormous infrastructure needs we 
have in this country, this agreement, signed by the President and the 
Republican leadership, does not do that. When we talk about 
transforming our energy system and moving away from fossil fuel and 
making our homes more energy efficient and building solar panels, 
moving toward solar thermal power, in the Southwest of this country--
New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada--we have some of the best solar exposure in 
the entire world. There are estimates that just in the Southwest of 
this country, on Federal land, we can provide 30 percent of the 
electricity American homes need, if we move toward solar thermal. We 
need to invest in our transmission lines.
  What we are talking about is massive investment to create jobs, make 
us energy independent, clean up the environment, and deal with the huge 
amount of greenhouse gas emissions which are contributing to global 
warming. That is a win-win-win situation. Yet we are not seeing that in 
this bill.
  I wish to tell you something, Mr. President. I will get into this at 
greater length later. When we talk about our good friends in the oil 
industry--and I am not here to make a long speech about BP and what 
they have done in Louisiana, et cetera. I want everybody to know this. 
I will get into this at greater length later. Last year, our friends at 
ExxonMobil--and ExxonMobil has historically been the most profitable 
corporation in the history of the world. Last year, ExxonMobil had, for 
them, a very bad year. They only made $19 billion in profit. Based on 
$19 billion, you might be surprised to know ExxonMobil not only paid 
nothing in taxes, they got a $156 million return from the IRS. How is 
that? For those of you who are working in an office, working in a 
factory, earning your $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, you 
pay taxes. But if you are ExxonMobil, and you made $19 billion in 
profits last year, not only did you not pay any taxes this year, you 
got $156 million in return.

  It is not just the large oil companies that do not pay their fair 
share of taxes. I am going to get into this a little bit later, but 
when we try to understand why we have such a huge national debt and a 
$1.3 or $1.4 trillion deficit, it is also important to understand that 
many large and profitable corporations avoid virtually all of their tax 
responsibility.
  In August 2008, the General Accountability Office issued a report. 
According to this report, two out of every three corporations in the 
United States paid no Federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. We 
have a $13.7 trillion national debt, and according to a GAO report 
published in August of 2008 two out of every three corporations in the 
United States paid no Federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. 
Amazingly, these corporations had a combined $2.5 trillion in sales but 
paid no income taxes to the IRS.
  Furthermore, according to a report from Citizens For Tax Justice, 82 
Fortune 500 companies in America--I guess that is 82 out of 500--paid 
zero or less in Federal income taxes in at least 1 year from 2001 to 
2003. That is a report from Citizens For Tax Justice. And the Citizens 
For Tax Justice report goes on to say:

       In the years they paid no income tax, these companies 
     earned $102 billion in U.S. profits. But instead of paying 
     $35.6 billion in income taxes, as the statutory 35 percent 
     corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies 
     generated so many excess tax breaks that they received 
     outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury totaling 
     $12.6 billion.

  That is from the Citizens For Tax Justice report.
  So when we take a comprehensive look at what is going on in this 
country, why we have a $13.7 trillion national debt, it is terribly 
important to understand that while the middle class pays its share of 
taxes, there are many large corporations that not only are paying 
nothing in taxes, they are getting rebates from the Federal Government.
  I will go into greater length later on, but as a member of the Budget 
Committee I can tell you we discuss quite often how every single year--
every single year--corporate interests and wealthy individuals stash 
away huge amounts of money in tax savings in the Cayman Islands, 
Bermuda, and other countries in order to avoid paying their taxes in 
the United States of America. These are American corporations turning 
their back on the American people, saying--as Mrs. Helmsley said so 
many years ago, many of you remember--only small people pay taxes. Only 
the working stiffs out there pay taxes.
  If you are a large corporation and you have a good lawyer or a good 
accountant, you know what to do. You invest your money in the Cayman 
Islands and in Bermuda, and you don't have to pay American taxes. But, 
by the way, as the disclosure report last week indicated, no problem; 
you get bailed out. When things get bad, you will be bailed out by the 
American taxpayers. On and on and on it goes. The rich and large 
corporations get richer, the CEOs earn huge compensation packages, and 
when things get bad, don't worry; Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers 
are here to bail you out. But when you are in trouble, well, we just 
can't afford to help you, if you are in the working class or the middle 
class of this country.
  I want to return for a moment to the agreement that the President and 
the Republican leadership negotiated because I think that is the issue 
that all of America is now talking about. The President and the 
Republican leadership say it is a good deal. Democrats in the House 
yesterday said: Wait a second. It doesn't look to us like it is a good 
deal. In fact, we don't even want to bring it up on the floor of the 
House. In the Senate, I can tell you there are a number of us--I don't 
know how many--who say: Wait a minute. This is not a good deal for the 
middle class, it is not a good deal for our kids, and it is not a good 
deal for our workers. We can negotiate a better deal. The reason we are 
trying to delay passage of this agreement--and I hope very much it 
doesn't have the votes here--is we want the American people to stand 
and say: Wait a second, it makes no sense to us to be giving huge tax 
breaks to the richest people in this country--literally millionaires 
and billionaires--and driving up the national debt so our kids can pay 
more in taxes in order to pay off that debt.
  This is a transfer of wealth. It is Robin Hood in reverse. We are 
taking from the middle class and working families and we are giving it 
to the wealthiest people in this country. I believe the agreement 
struck between the President and the Republican leadership is a bad 
deal. There may be some

[[Page S8744]]

good parts to it, but, by and large, it is not a good deal. We can do 
better, and the American people must stand up and work with us. They 
must get on their phones and call their Senators and call their 
Congress men and women. They must make their voices heard and say: 
Enough is enough. The rich have it all right now--the top 1 percent 
earns 23\1/2\ percent of all income, more than the bottom 50 percent--
and it is absurd that we continue to bail out people who do not need 
any help and who are doing just fine.
  I am here to take a stand against this bill, and I am going to do 
everything I can to defeat this bill. I am going to tell my colleagues 
and the American people exactly why, in my view, this is not good 
legislation. Let me just tick off some of the reasons I think this bill 
does not serve the best interests of the disappearing middle class of 
this country.
  I don't know what kind of telephone calls the Presiding Officer is 
receiving from Colorado, but I can tell you that in the last 3 days 
alone, according to my front desk staff both here in Washington and in 
Vermont, we are over 5,000 telephone calls and e-mails, and I believe 
well over 98 percent of those messages are against this agreement. I 
don't know to what degree that is indicative of what is going on all 
over this country, but I suspect it is not radically different in other 
States. I think the American people are saying, with a $13.8 trillion 
national debt, let's not give tax breaks to billionaires and drive up 
that national debt, forcing our kids to pay more in taxes, and at the 
same time have Republicans coming forward to start slashing Medicare 
and Medicaid and Social Security because of this large debt that we are 
making larger.
  I appeal to my conservative friends. I am not a conservative, but 
many conservatives have spent their entire political careers saying we 
cannot afford to drive up the national debt, that it is unsustainable. 
I agree with that. So vote against this agreement because it is driving 
up the national debt. In a significant way it is doing that by giving 
tax breaks to people who absolutely don't need it.
  Once again, for those people who are earning $1 million a year or 
more, on average--on average--they will be getting a $100,000-a-year 
tax break, and for people earning $100 million a year, that number will 
be a lot higher. Who believes that makes any sense at all?
  Let me give some other reasons I think this agreement is a bad 
agreement. The President says: Well, yes, we are going to extend tax 
breaks for all, including the top 2 percent. But don't worry, it is 
only going to be for 2 years--not to worry, it is only going to be for 
2 years.
  Well, maybe that will be the case. But you know what. I doubt that 
very much. I have been in Congress long enough to know if you extend a 
tax break, it is very hard to undo that extension because if we can't 
tell our Republican colleagues that it is absurd to continue giving tax 
breaks to millionaires and billionaires--if we can't do it now--what 
makes you think we will do it in the midst of a Presidential election?
  I say that as somebody who admires and likes the President. The 
President is a friend of mine. But his credibility has been severely 
damaged. If he is going to go forward, and if he is the Democratic 
nominee, I suspect he will say: Yes, I extended it for 2 years against 
my will; but, don't worry, I am going to repeal them after 2 years. 
Tell me, who will believe him? His credibility has been severely 
damaged. We are caving in on this issue and we should not be.
  The polls show us the American people do not believe millionaires and 
billionaires need more tax breaks. If the calls to my office are 
indicative of what is going on in this country, there is overwhelming 
opposition to that agreement.
  So I am saying that while the President says don't worry, that this 
is only temporary, I don't like it. But it is only 2 years. I have my 
doubts. I expect in 2 years, if this agreement goes forward, it will be 
extended again. As you know, Mr. President, they wanted 10 years on 
this extension of tax breaks for the rich. I have my strong suspicion 
that is exactly what will happen, if not made permanent. This country 
cannot afford to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and 
have the middle class pay higher taxes to pay them off.
  I want to say also that while a lot of attention has been focused on 
the personal income tax issue, that is not the only unfair tax proposal 
in this agreement. This agreement continues the Bush era 15 percent tax 
rate on capital gains and dividends.
  Let me be clear about what that means. It means those people who make 
their living off of their investments--if you invest, if you earn 
dividends--will continue to pay a substantially lower tax rate than the 
average American person in the working class, middle class--our 
firemen, our teachers, our nurses. Those people are not going to pay 15 
percent. They pay a higher rate than folks who have capital gains and 
dividends. I think that is wrong. This agreement extends those 
provisions.
  Furthermore--and this is a point that has to be made over and over--
this agreement between the President and the Republicans lowers the 
estate tax rate to 35 percent. Under this agreement, the estate tax 
will decline to 35 percent. Under President Clinton, when the economy 
was much stronger, the estate tax was 55 percent.
  Now, I know the Republicans have done a very good job in trying to 
convince the American people this is a so-called death tax; that in 
every family in America, when a loved one dies, the family is going to 
have to pay 35 percent, 45 percent, or 55 percent. I have had people in 
Burlington, VT, come up to me and say: What are you doing? I have 
$30,000 in the bank that I want to leave to my kids. Why are you 
forcing my kids to pay such a large tax?
  So let me be very clear. The Republicans have done a very good job in 
totally distorting this issue. The estate tax is paid only by the top 
three-tenths of 1 percent of families in America. If you are in the 
middle class, even if you are modestly wealthy, even if you are 
wealthy, or if you are poor, if you are lower middle class, you don't 
pay a nickel in estate tax if somebody in your family were to die and 
leave you wealth--not a nickel. This applies not just to the rich but 
to the very, very rich.

  What the Republicans have been arguing for several years now is they 
want to repeal the estate tax entirely. If they were successful in 
doing that, that would mean increasing the national debt by $1 trillion 
over a 10-year period and all of the benefits--not some, all of the 
benefits--go to the top three-tenths of 1 percent; 99.7 percent of the 
people do not gain one nickel.
  What is in this agreement is not what the Republicans ideally want, 
which is a repeal of the tax entirely, but what they do get is a 
reduction to 35 percent with an exemption on the first $5 million of an 
individual's estate.
  Here is a chart which indicates just what I said a moment ago. 
``Repealing the estate tax would add more than $1 trillion to the 
deficit over 10 years.'' It is over $1 trillion, and the beneficiaries 
of it are just the very wealthy.
  Let me give an example of what the repeal of the estate tax would 
mean. I will read it right off this chart.

       Sam Walton's family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, are 
     worth an estimated $86.8 billion. The Walton family would 
     receive an estimated $32.7 billion tax break if the estate 
     tax was completely repealed.

  This is what our Republican friends want.
  This agreement between the President and the Republicans certainly 
does not repeal the estate tax, but it does significantly lower the 
rates that the richest people, the very richest people in this country, 
would have to pay.
  (Mr. UDALL of Colorado assumed the chair.)
  Two days ago, I brought to the floor of the Senate a very simple 
piece of legislation. I think how that legislation was treated speaks 
volumes about the debate we are having now. This legislation said that 
with over 50 million senior citizens on Social Security and disabled 
vets for the second year in a row not getting a cost-of-living 
adjustment, a COLA--over 50 million seniors on Social Security and 
disabled vets not getting any COLA at all--despite the fact their 
prescription drug costs are going up and their health care costs are 
going up, they got no COLA. I said I think that in these tough

[[Page S8745]]

times, it is appropriate that we provide those folks--if we cannot get 
them a COLA, let's get them the equivalent of a measly 2 percent COLA, 
a $250 check to all of our seniors and disabled vets. That is what we 
did, by the way, in the stimulus package. That is all. For over 50 
million people, a $250 check costs our government about $14 billion. 
Yet I could not get one Republican vote in support of that. Republicans 
say: My goodness, imagine a senior or disabled vet living on $15,000 or 
$20,000 a year getting a $250 check. What an outrage. We have different 
priorities, they say. We want to give a $1 million tax break to 
somebody who earns $50 million a year. That about says it all. If you 
are very, very rich, the good news is you are going to get more tax 
breaks. But if you are a senior or disabled vet, we can't get you a 
$250 check.
  I will say that the vote on the floor of the Senate was 53 people in 
favor of providing that one-time check, 45 against--53 to 45: We won. 
But here in the Senate, majority does not rule. Republicans filibuster 
almost everything, and it requires 60 votes. We did not get the 60 
votes, and seniors did not get that check. I am going to do my best to 
see that they do get it. We are going to bring that issue back and back 
again.
  I raise that issue to tell you that one of the very weakest proposals 
in this agreement, totally outrageous, is the decrease in taxes for the 
estate tax.
  There is another issue I want to touch on. I am going to spend a lot 
of time on this issue because it has not gotten the coverage and the 
attention I think it deserves.
  This agreement deals with the so-called payroll tax holiday. I know 
the Vice President and the President and others have been touting this. 
They say this is really a good thing because it will put more money 
into the pockets of the working people. What will happen--right now, if 
you are a worker, you put 6.2 percent into Social Security. It is going 
to be reduced for 1 year to 4.2 percent. You get the difference, and 
this is really a good thing. All of us want to see working people have 
more money in their pockets. That is what we do. That is what we are 
fighting for.
  But let me be clear that while on the surface this so-called payroll 
tax holiday sounds like a good idea for working people, it is actually 
a very bad idea. What the American people should understand is that 
this payroll tax holiday originated from rightwing Republicans whose 
ultimate goal, trust me, is not to put more money into the pockets of 
working families; it is the ultimate destruction of Social Security. 
What they understand is that if we divert funding that is supposed to 
go into the Social Security trust fund, this will ultimately weaken the 
long-term financial viability of Social Security. In other words, what 
we are doing is, for the very first time, diverting money which is 
supposed to go into the Social Security trust fund and we are giving it 
to workers today. It is like eating our seed.
  Rather than going into Social Security, the President says: Don't 
worry, this is going to be covered this year by the Federal Government. 
We have never seen that before. I don't want Social Security to be 
dependent on the Federal Government because the Federal Government has 
a $13.7 trillion national debt. And what I worry about is this is not 
just a 1-year provision; this also could be extended.
  Let me quote Barbara Kennelly.
  I am glad to see I am joined here on the floor by one of the 
strongest fighters for working families in the Senate, Senator Sherrod 
Brown of Ohio. I just want to say this before I ask him a question or 
before he asks me a question or whatever the protocol is.
  I want to quote what Barbara Kennelly, the president and CEO of the 
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said. This 
is one of the largest senior citizens groups in America.

       Even though Social Security contributed nothing to the 
     current economic crisis, it has been bartered in a deal that 
     provides deficit-busting tax cuts for the wealthy.

  Here is the key point:

       Diverting $120 billion in Social Security contributions for 
     a so-called ``tax holiday'' may sound like a good deal for 
     workers now, but it's bad business for a program that a 
     majority of middle-class seniors will rely upon in the 
     future.

  Barbara Kennelly, president and CEO of the National Committee to 
Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
  I am joined by my very good friend from Ohio, and I want to ask him 
his sense of this overall agreement.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. My sense is similar to yours. I was just on a TV 
show a minute ago. I was asked, the liberals or the conservatives, what 
they think about this. This really is not a liberal-conservative issue. 
First of all, the tax cuts overwhelmingly go to the wealthiest 
taxpayers. We are seeing the kinds of tax cuts that millionaires and 
billionaires get from the income tax and from the estate tax. But it is 
also equally important that it blows a hole in our budget deficit.
  In some sense, we are borrowing tens of billions of dollars every 
year now--if this agreement becomes law, we are borrowing tens of 
billions of dollars every year from the Chinese, and we are putting it 
on the credit cards of our children and grandchildren for them to pay 
off who knows when, and then we are giving these tax cuts to 
millionaires and billionaires. In those simple terms, it doesn't make 
sense. It doesn't make sense in our relationship with China. It doesn't 
make sense in the lost jobs that come from that China trade policy. It 
doesn't make sense in undermining the middle class. It doesn't make 
sense in terms of fairness in the tax system. It doesn't make sense for 
our children and grandchildren and the burden they are going to have to 
bear to pay off this debt. Giving a millionaire a tax cut and charging 
it to our kids, who are paying taxes on, unfortunately, in the last few 
years, declining wages, is morally reprehensible.
  I know Senator Sanders has been on the floor 2 hours now talking 
about this and how important it is and really analyzing it and 
educating about it and all that. I think about the economic policy, 
too, that this embodies.
  Nine or 10 years ago, Senator Sanders and the Presiding Officer, when 
he was a Member of the House, Senator Udall from Colorado, and I and 
others voted against the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, principally 
because those tax cuts overwhelmingly went to the wealthy and ended up 
adding to our national debt. We had a surplus then. We sure don't now. 
We had the largest surplus we ever had in 2001. It blew a hole in that. 
But we passed those tax cuts under the belief, those who supported it--
President Bush and Senator McConnell and so many others--under the 
belief that that kind of trickle-down economics would grow our economy.

  In the 8 years--and this is not partisan, this is not opinion, this 
is fact--from January 1, 2001, to January 1, 2009, President Bush's 8 
years, we actually had private sector job loss in this country. 
Contrast that with a different economic policy--January 1, 1993, to 
January 1, 2001, the Clinton 8 years. Again, this isn't partisan, this 
isn't opinion, this is fact. During the Clinton 8 years, we had 21 
million private sector jobs created--21 million private sector jobs 
created--and literally zero private sector jobs in the Bush 8 years of 
trickle-down economics.
  Why would we blow a hole in the budget, which this bill does, for our 
kids to pay off? Why would we continue an economic policy that clearly 
did not work for this country? It didn't work for the middle class. We 
saw middle-class wages--not only no job increase during those 8 years, 
except for the people at the very top, we saw actual wage stagnation or 
worse. Most Americans did not get a raise during the 8 Bush years. Most 
Americans simply saw their wages flat or in many cases decline. The 
superwealthy saw a big increase in their incomes and in their net 
assets. And now we are going to give a tax break to them.
  This is not class warfare. Lots of people I know have a lot of money. 
I don't have any ill will for them. But why would we help those people 
who have done so very well and then have our children pay for it?
  Senator Sanders just mentioned the letter from Barbara Kennelly from 
one of the largest seniors organizations in the country and what this 
will mean for Social Security. Here is my fear. If this is passed, we 
are going to see our budget deficit increase, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office, about $900 billion because of this 
package, $800-some billion over the next couple of years.
  As soon as it is signed by President Obama, even though it was 
negotiated

[[Page S8746]]

with the Republican Senate leadership and overwhelming numbers of 
Republicans in the Senate and House--I assume they are going to vote 
for it--they are going to say: Look at the huge budget deficit 
President Obama created. From that day on, they are going to go after 
ways to cut the budget. That is OK. I agree we need to deal with 
spending and taxes and the whole picture.
  But I also know from watching Republicans--I saw them in the House 
when they moved toward Medicare privatization in 2003, 2004, and 2005. 
They had some success. Fortunately, we were able to beat back most of 
it. I remember that in 2005, after President Bush was reelected in a 
very close race, he spoke repeatedly about privatizing Social Security. 
I know that is what they want to do. In the 1990s, Speaker Gingrich--
fortunately beaten back by President Clinton--tried to privatize 
Medicare.
  That is the way they cut the budget, they go after Medicare and 
Social Security. So this vote on this package--to me, we need to call 
the President, write the President, work with the President to say: No 
deal, and this has to be something very different from what it is now 
because it will cause huge deficits our children and grandchildren will 
have to bear. It will not help the economy appreciably because we saw 
what the trickle-down economic policies of the Bush years did. It does 
not help the middle class enough.
  So it is pretty clear to me how this jeopardizes Social Security, how 
it jeopardizes Medicare, how it will force more cuts and more pressure 
on those programs that have lifted so many people into the middle 
class. In 1965, when Medicare was first passed, half of the senior 
citizens in this country had no health insurance--half of the seniors 
had no health insurance. Today 99 percent of seniors have health 
insurance, something like that.
  I know we are a country now that has created a strong middle class. 
We have seen that middle class--because of these tax cuts for the 
wealthy, trickle-down kind of economic policy, we have seen the middle 
class shrink in the last few years. I do not want that to keep 
happening. That is why I am very concerned about this. That is why I am 
working with the Senate to say: No deal. We need to much more seriously 
focus on not running up a huge debt, on making sure Social Security is 
protected, on an economic policy that works for the middle class, on a 
tax policy that is fair to the middle class.
  That is why Senator Sanders' work is so important on the floor today, 
taking the floor for a longer period than anybody I have seen since I 
have been in the Senate, in a filibuster kind of setting, where he is 
raising these questions, asking these questions, educating the public, 
talking to people all over the country, in this Chamber and outside to 
change this policy.
  Mr. SANDERS. If I could interrupt my friend from Ohio and ask him a 
question, it is on an issue the Senator dealt with last night. Talk 
about the kind of priorities we have seen in the Senate recently, where 
just a couple of days ago the Senator and I worked very hard to try to 
make sure seniors on Social Security and disabled vets were able to get 
a $250 check at a cost of $14 billion, we could not get one Republican 
vote for that, while at the same time Republicans are pushing tax 
breaks of over $1 million a year for the richest people in this 
country. Does that seem----
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. It tells a story. I came to the floor right after 
that vote. I had supported it all along. I cosponsored Senator Sanders' 
effort to bring that to the floor, for the $250 check for all seniors 
and all disabled veterans, I might add, not just Social Security 
beneficiaries. But I came to the floor right afterwards because I was 
pretty amazed.
  I know there is partisanship here. I know some people think their 
whole view of the world is to give tax cuts to the richest people of 
the world and it will all trickle down and we will all do better, it 
will lift all boats. That is a pretty good economic theory you might 
have learned at Harvard or you might have learned at Johns Hopkins near 
here or wherever. But it does not work. It is a nice theory, but it 
does not work to lift all boats.
  So Senator Sanders' effort was to provide a $250 check, one time, at 
a cost of $14 billion. But one time, not continued $14 billion--one 
time for seniors who had not had a cost-of-living adjustment in 2 
years. It just seemed to make so much sense when the average senior in 
this country gets about a $14,000-a-year Social Security check. I think 
that is about $1,200 a month. That is not their entire income for most 
seniors, but it is a big part of it. Many seniors live only on that. 
Many more seniors live on that, but only another couple $300, $400 a 
month.
  There is not inflation maybe for people my age so much in this 
country, but if you are older and you have a lot of health care costs, 
there is inflation because the health care costs seem to go up higher 
than maybe anything but higher education, and maybe as much as that. So 
it was important that $250 be provided, we think, to every senior in 
the country and every disabled vet.
  What was so amazing about it was that 42 Republican Senators signed a 
letter saying they would do nothing, nothing in the Senate, until tax 
cuts for the rich were approved, until they were signed into law.
  Now, I have never seen Senators engage in a work stoppage or a 
strike. I mean, it was not quite a strike, which it is probably illegal 
for us to strike. I do not know, maybe. But it was a work stoppage.
  They are saying: We are not doing anything until you give tax cuts to 
my rich friends, and I might say also to many people in the House and 
Senate whose income is in that bracket too. I am not accusing them of 
that, to be sure, but they were there for their rich friends and their 
biggest contributors and the wealthiest people in this country. But 
they were not there for a senior citizen living on $1,200 a month that 
could use that extra $250.
  I have met too many seniors, and I know the Presiding Officer, when 
he travels to Colorado Springs or he goes to Cimarron or he goes to 
Denver, I know he hears seniors say: I cut my pills in half because I 
need my prescription to run for 2 months rather than 1 because I cannot 
afford it. Or I skipped my medicine today because my house is too cold, 
and I do not have enough heat. We know seniors make those choices. We 
make choices here, and the choice we made is 42 Republicans made it and 
blocked it because we need 60 votes. We had a majority of voters, an 
easy majority, for Senator Sanders' effort, 53 votes, 53 votes to do 
this, the $250, but we need 60 votes.
  So 42 Republican Senators engaged in their work stoppage saying: We 
are not doing anything until we get these tax cuts for the rich. They 
said no to seniors. I am amazed by that, the callousness. I guess I am 
even more amazed when you consider--what is today, the 10th--when you 
consider in 2 weeks it is Christmas Day. That does not seem to bother 
them. It does not seem to bother them on unemployment benefits. And 
85,000 Ohioans, a week and a half ago, lost their unemployment 
benefits--85,000. Their holiday season is ruined.
  But I guess all of us will go home. I want to go home and be with 
Connie and my kids on Christmas. My children are grown. We have one 
grandchild. I want to be with him for as much of Christmas as I can. 
But we have a job to do today, this week and next week and this month 
and this year; and that is to extend unemployment benefits to people 
who have lost them, who are looking for jobs as hard as they can in a 
great majority of cases, and extending the tax cuts for the middle 
class and doing the right thing. So far, we have not done that.
  I need to go to the airport. But I want to yield back to Senator 
Sanders for his work today. I hope next week, when we come back on 
Monday, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to say no deal on this 
one and to make this work for the middle class, make it work for Social 
Security beneficiaries, make it work for unemployed workers.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank my good friend from Ohio, one of the real 
fighters for working families in the Senate, not only for coming down 
here but for his years of efforts. But he makes a very important point. 
We have a job to do and the job is--I know some people do not believe 
it. It is a rather radical concept. But our job is to represent working 
families, the middle class, and not the wealthiest people in this 
country.
  I have four kids, six grandchildren. I look forward to spending the 
holidays

[[Page S8747]]

with them. But you know what. We have a job to do, and if it means 
staying here through Christmas Eve, through New Year's, that is our 
job. And let's pass a proposal that works well for ordinary families 
and not just for the wealthiest people in this country.
  I wanted to thank Senator Sherrod Brown for coming down.
  What I want to say now is, when you look at this agreement, we have 
talked now about the absurdity, in the middle of a time when we have a 
$13.7 trillion national debt, of giving tax breaks to people who do not 
need it. Senator Brown and I have talked about the dangers inherent in 
this payroll tax holiday and what it might mean for the future of 
Social Security. But I also wanted to make another point; that is, that 
there are many billions of dollars in this proposal going to a variety 
of business tax cuts. Some of them, in fact, might work; some of them, 
in fact, might not work. But what is very clear is, if your goal is to 
create as many jobs as possible for every dollar of investment, this 
particular approach is not very effective.

  When we talk about tax breaks for corporations and companies, what we 
should be aware of is that corporate America today--today--is sitting 
on close to $2 trillion in cash. They have that cash on hand. The 
problem is not that they do not have the money, the problem is that 
working people do not have the money to buy the products these guys are 
producing. I believe, and not just me but I think a variety of 
economists from across the board, it makes a lot more sense if we are 
serious about creating jobs to invest in our infrastructure.
  I say that for a number of reasons. When you put money into roads and 
bridges and public transportation, you are creating, for every dollar 
you spend, far more jobs than giving a variety of tax breaks. That is 
an economic fact.
  Second of all, when you are investing in our infrastructure, not only 
are you creating jobs short term, you are leaving the country with 
long-term improvement that increases our competitiveness in a very 
tough global economy. I mentioned a moment ago, and we will get back to 
it later, China is investing huge amounts of money into high-speed 
rail, into their roads, into their bridges. Yet if you drive around 
certain parts of America, you think we are a Third World nation. You 
have roads with all kinds of potholes. You have bridges which you 
cannot go across. You have rail systems where trains are going slower--
there is a study out there that I am going to get to later--where 
somebody said that decades and decades ago, it took less time to go 
from various parts of this country to the other on trains than it does 
today because our rail beds are in such bad shape.
  So if we are going to make our country competitive, we have to invest 
in infrastructure. It creates jobs. It adds long-term value to this 
country. Unfortunately, in this agreement, there is, to the best of my 
knowledge, not one nickel going into infrastructure. It is important 
that we, in fact, add provisions which do invest in our infrastructure 
and create jobs.
  Another point that should be made when we look at this so-called 
compromise agreement established by the President and the Republican 
leadership is that in the agreement there is an extension of 
unemployment benefits for 13 months. Now, there is zero question, in my 
mind; that is something that absolutely has to be done. Right now--
Senator Brown made this point--we have millions of Americans who have, 
through no fault of their own, lost their jobs. Maybe their plants went 
to China. Maybe their companies could not get the loans they needed to 
stay in business. Small businesses are going under, big businesses are 
shutting plants. No question we have to extend unemployment benefits.
  But what bothers me is that this provision in this agreement, which 
is a good provision, suggests that this is a hard-won compromise; that 
the Republicans conceded something and they agreed to a 13-month 
extension of unemployment benefits. But here is the fact. The fact is, 
for the last 40 years, when unemployment rates have gone above 7.2 
percent, Republicans and Democrats, in a nonpartisan way, have come 
together to say, of course, we are going to extend unemployment. This 
is America. We are not going to let working families who are suffering 
hard times because, through no fault of their own, they have lost their 
jobs, we are not going to let them lose their homes or not enable them 
to feed their families. This is America. We are not going to do that.
  Republicans have said that for 40 years. Democrats have said that for 
40 years. Democratic and Republican Presidents, leaders in the House 
and Senate, have said that. So to say: Oh, my goodness, the Republicans 
made a major concession; they are going to allow the extension of 
unemployment benefits for 13 months, that is not a concession. That has 
been bipartisan public policy for the last 40 years.
  Now, I have been expressing to you and to the American people why I 
think this is not a good agreement, why I think this agreement should 
be defeated and why I believe we can put together a much better 
agreement.

  I do want to be clear. There are positive aspects to this agreement 
which should be maintained in an improved proposal. Let me mention some 
of them. This proposal, in addition to extending unemployment benefits 
for 13 months, extends the middle-class tax cuts. That is obviously 
something we have to do. The reality is that the middle class is 
collapsing. During the Bush years we saw a $2,200 decline per year in 
median family income. Working families are hurting. There is no 
question. To not extend that tax cut for 98 percent of America would be 
a travesty. So we have to maintain those tax cuts, and that is a 
positive thing in the agreement which obviously any future agreement 
must maintain.
  Also in this agreement is the earned-income tax credit for working 
Americans, a very important provision, and the child and college tax 
credits are also in this agreement. These proposals will keep millions 
of Americans from slipping out of the middle class and into poverty, 
and they will allow millions of Americans to send their kids to 
college. I am not here to say to the President or the Vice President 
that there are not any good proposals and parts of this agreement. 
There are. But we can do much better.
  What the President says--and he makes a valid point--show me the 
votes; he is good at counting. We tried a proposal here, where we only 
got 53 votes, which said we are going to extend the tax breaks for the 
middle class and not the very rich. The President knows, as everybody 
else knows, that around here Republicans filibuster everything. We need 
60 votes, and he said: Show me the votes. This is what I would say: 
What our job right now is about is reaching out to the American people 
from one end of the country to the other, from California to Vermont, 
including a lot of our very conservative States. Frankly, it is not a 
conservative approach to substantially increase the national debt by 
giving tax breaks to billionaires. How many times have we been here on 
the floor hearing our Republican colleagues give long speeches about 
the danger and the unsustainability of a $13.7 trillion national debt 
and a $1.4 trillion deficit? We have heard it day after day. That is 
their mantra. If they believe that, why are they voting for a proposal 
that substantially increases the national debt for the very 
unproductive reason of giving tax breaks to the richest people who 
don't need it?
  The reason we have to defeat this proposal and fight for a much 
better one is, I would hope that people throughout this country, from 
Vermont and Colorado, and many of our conservative States, would come 
forward and say: Wait a second. I do not want to see my kids and 
grandchildren pay more in taxes because we have borrowed money from 
China to increase the national debt in order to give tax breaks to 
millionaires and billionaires who have done extraordinarily well in 
recent years and, by the way, have seen a significant decline in their 
effective tax rate.
  I know the Chair has heard wealthy people such as Warren Buffett make 
the point over and over again that what he really pays in taxes, his 
effective tax rate, is lower than his secretary's. All over this 
country we have examples where very rich people are able to stash money 
in the Cayman Islands, take advantage of all types of loopholes, and 
are paying rather low effective tax rates, in many cases lower

[[Page S8748]]

than police officers or firemen or teachers or nurses. Opposition to 
this agreement should be tripartisan. We should have conservative 
Republicans, liberal Democrats.
  I am an independent progressive. I can tell my colleagues in the last 
3 days my office has received probably close to 3,000 phone calls, 98 
percent of them against this agreement, probably higher than 98 
percent, and a huge number of e-mails also overwhelmingly against this 
agreement. I suspect--I don't know it for a fact--that this is the kind 
of message the American people are sending us all over America. But 
they have to continue to do so. They have to make it clear so we can 
win over at least a handful of Republicans and some wavering Democrats 
and say: Wait a second. We are not going to hold hostage extending 
middle-class tax breaks in order to give tax breaks to billionaires. We 
will not hold hostage extending unemployment for workers who have lost 
their jobs by giving tax breaks to people who don't need it.
  If the American people give voice to what they are feeling, that this 
is not a good agreement, that we can do a lot better, I think we can 
defeat this proposal, and we can come back with a much better proposal 
which protects the unemployed, extends unemployment benefits, protects 
the middle class, extends the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of the 
population, and protects a lot of important programs, making college 
more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and helping us 
transform our energy system.
  There is a lot we can do if we defeat this proposal. We are not going 
to do it inside the beltway. Republicans are very united. But what we 
have to do is win at least a handful of them and some wavering 
Democrats to say: Mr. President, Republican leadership, you guys have 
to involve Congress in this discussion.
  I was pleased yesterday that the Democratic caucus said: Sorry, we 
are not bringing that proposal onto the floor. I applaud Speaker Pelosi 
and the Democratic caucus for saying so. That took courage. Congressman 
Welch from the State of Vermont played an important role. Congressman 
Peter DeFazio played an important role. I congratulate him. I 
congratulate the caucus for saying we can do better than we are doing.
  Let me be frank: We are not going to do better unless the American 
people stand up and help us. We are going to need a lot of phone calls, 
a lot of e-mails, a lot of messages so that all of our colleagues in 
the House and Senate understand the American people do not want to see 
their kids having to pay off the debt incurred by giving tax breaks to 
billionaires.
  This agreement doesn't come out of the blue. It comes within a 
context that frightens many people. Many Americans have a sinking 
feeling that there is something very wrong in our country today. I know 
my father came to this country at the age of 17 without a penny in his 
pocket. He became the proudest American one could ever see. He didn't 
have much of an education, but he knew this country gave him a great 
opportunity. That is the American story. That is what it is all about. 
To millions and millions of families, whether they came from other 
countries, whether they just made it on their own--I know we have heard 
the majority leader Harry Reid talking about his experience growing up 
in a desperately poor family--that is what America is about. But there 
are a lot of folks out there who believe there is something wrong, and 
the facts back them up.
  What is going on in this country is the middle class is collapsing. 
Poverty is increasing. I have four kids and six grandchildren. I am not 
worried about me, but I am worried about what happens to my kids and my 
grandchildren. We have some wonderful young pages here, and we worry 
about their futures as well. We don't want to see our kids and 
grandchildren be the first generation in the modern history of America 
to have a lower standard of living than their parents. We don't want to 
see this country's economy move in the wrong way. We don't want a race 
to the bottom. We want to see our kids live healthier and better lives 
than we do, not have to work longer hours, not getting a lower quality 
of education or less education. That is not the history of this great 
country.
  I want to talk about one aspect of what is going on that does not get 
the kind of attention it deserves. There are obvious reasons why, 
having to do with who owns the media and corporate control of the 
media, having to do with who provides the campaign contributions that 
elect Members of the House and Senate, having to do with all the 
lobbyists who surround this institution. Wall Street and the oil 
companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on campaign 
contributions. The issue I wish to discuss is who is winning and who is 
losing in this economy. I come from New England. Everybody follows the 
Celtics. We follow the Red Sox, the Patriots. What everyone asks is, 
who won the game? Did the Patriots win or lose? That is what we want to 
know.
  In fact, in America, it is pretty clear in the economy who is winning 
and losing. The vast majority of people, working people, middle-class 
people, low-income people are losing. That is who is losing. It is 
clear who is winning. The wealthiest people are doing phenomenally 
well. They are winning the economic struggle.
  In America today--we don't talk about this too much, but it is time 
we did--we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in 
the industrialized world. I haven't heard too many people talk about 
that issue. Why not? Our Republican colleagues want huge tax breaks for 
the richest people, but the reality is the top 1 percent already today 
owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. How much more do they 
want? When is enough enough? Do they want it all? We already have 
millions of families today who have zero wealth. They owe more than 
they own. Millions of families have below zero wealth. We are living in 
a situation where the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 
percent. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. 
That is simply unacceptable.
  This is something we must be absolutely ashamed about and have to 
address, instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires. Maybe we should 
appreciate the fact that about 25 percent of our children are dependent 
on food stamps. We should understand that in the industrialized world, 
the United States, as this chart shows, has the highest rate of 
childhood poverty. Is this America? Is this America? The United States 
today has over 20 percent of its kids living in poverty. In Finland, 
the number is about 2 or 3 percent; Norway, maybe 4 percent; Sweden, 
maybe 4.5 percent; Switzerland, 6 percent, whatever it may be. But here 
we are. If people are watching on television, what they are seeing is 
the red line. Here is the United States, well over 20 percent. Here is 
the Netherlands in second place. It looks to me like about 7 percent. 
This is the future of America. So we are sitting here talking about an 
agreement which says: Let's give huge tax breaks to billionaires. And 
here is the reality. We have a rate of childhood poverty far surpassing 
any other country on Earth.
  This is the other half of the equation. What do my colleagues think 
happens when we have millions of kids living in poverty? What do my 
colleagues think happens when we have kids who are dropping out of 
school when they are 13 or 14? I talked to a fellow in Vermont who runs 
one of our jails. He said about half the kids who drop out of school 
end up in the penal system. That is what happens. The result is, the 
highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, and then 
what we end up with is more people behind bars than any other country 
on Earth.
  China is a Communist totalitarian society, much larger than the 
United States, which is a democratic society. We have more people in 
jail than China and more people in jail than any other country. So what 
we end up doing, which seems to be not terribly bright, is spending 
perhaps $50,000 a year keeping people in jail because they dropped out 
of school. They never found a job. They got hooked on drugs or 
whatever. We pay to put them in jail rather than investing in 
childcare, in education, in sustaining their families.
  So when we look at the context in which this agreement was reached, 
we have to see that it takes place at a time when the rich are already 
doing phenomenally well, while we have the highest rate of childhood 
poverty in the industrialized world.

[[Page S8749]]

  During the 8 years of President Bush, the wealthiest 400 Americans--
that is not a lot of people, 400 families--saw their income more than 
double while their income tax rates dropped almost in half. So you have 
400 families--all of whom are already multi-multimillionaires--where 
during the 8 years of President Bush their income more than doubled 
while their income tax rates dropped almost in half.
  I would say to my colleagues in the Senate, we do not have to worry 
about these guys. They are doing just fine. They do not need an 
extension of tax breaks. The wealthiest 400 Americans now earn, on 
average, $345 million a year, and they pay an effective tax rate of 
16.6 percent. How is that? All right. The top 400 wealthiest people in 
this country earn $345 million a year, and they pay an effective tax 
rate of 16.6 percent. They do not need an extension of tax breaks.
  By the way, for the United States of America, this effective tax rate 
of 16.6 percent, on average, is the lowest tax rate for the very rich 
in America that there has ever been. So we have already given the 
wealthiest people in this country the lowest effective tax rates in the 
history of our country, at least since they have been keeping records. 
That is what we have done. So the idea of giving these guys--who are 
doing phenomenally well, who already own more wealth than the bottom 90 
percent--more tax breaks is totally absurd.
  Under the 8 years of President Bush, the wealthiest 400 Americans--we 
talked about how they doubled their incomes; income is what happens in 
1 year--under the 8 years of President Bush, the wealthiest 400 
Americans increased their wealth by more than $380 billion. Four 
hundred families increased their wealth by $380 billion. That averages 
to almost $1 billion a family. Mr. President, $1 billion in 8 years. 
That is the average; some, obviously, more.
  Collectively--I know this is not an issue we talk about too much--the 
400 richest Americans have accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. If any 
of them die this year, their heirs can receive, right now, all of this 
money tax free because the inheritance tax has been eliminated in 2010 
as part of the Bush estate tax repeal this year.
  Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion 
in income--a combined $1 billion per person. OK. So if you are a hedge 
fund manager, you are doing pretty good. I mentioned a moment ago that 
we tried just the other day to get checks of $250 out for disabled vets 
and senior citizens on Social Security who have not had a COLA in 2 
years. We could not get them that check. But last year the top 25 hedge 
fund managers made a combined $25 billion in income--$1 billion per 
person. And our Republican friends say: Oh, my word, my word, we have 
to lower their taxes. Last year, ExxonMobil, Bank of America, and other 
large profitable corporations paid no Federal income taxes.
  So what you have is a tax system which is totally distorted in the 
sense that it allows large profitable corporations to pay, in some 
cases--in many cases--zero. In fact, last year--it would be funny if it 
really was not pathetic--as I understand it, ExxonMobil, which made $19 
billion, paid nothing in taxes. Bank of America--Bank of America got a 
huge bailout from the American taxpayer, paying their executives all 
kinds of fancy, huge compensation packages--got a refund check from the 
IRS. That is how absurd the situation is. And people say: Oh, my word, 
in order to deal with our deficit, we are going to have to cut back on 
Medicare and Medicaid and education. We cannot afford it. I guess we 
can afford to allow ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in the 
history of the world, to make huge sums of money and pay nothing in 
taxes. We can afford to do that, but we cannot afford to protect 
working families and the middle class.
  In the year 2005, one out of every four large corporations in the 
United States paid no Federal income tax on revenue of $1.1 trillion. 
Now, what do you think? Maybe before we start cutting Social Security 
and Medicare and Medicaid and veterans programs, we would want to ask 
some of these very large and profitable corporations to pay at least 
something in taxes? From 1998 to 2005, two out of every three 
corporations in the United States paid no Federal income taxes, 
according to the GAO report.
  Sadly, the economic pain millions of people are experiencing did not 
even begin as a result of the Wall Street bailout. The middle class was 
collapsing long before that. It is wrong to blame Bush for all the 
problems. He contributed a lot to it but not all of it. That trend has 
been going on for many years.
  As the Washington Post reported last January--let me quote from an 
article because, again, I want to put the economic reality facing the 
middle class in contrast to the economic reality facing the very rich 
in the broad context of this agreement signed by the President and the 
Republican leadership. As the Washington Post reported last January:

       The past decade--

  The Bush 8 years plus 2 years--

     was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times. . . .
       It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade 
     for American workers.

  ``A lost decade for American workers.'' Do you know why people are 
furious? Do you know why they are angry at Washington and everybody 
else? The last decade was, according to the Washington Post, a lost 
decade for American workers.

       There has been zero net job creation since December 1999.

  Twelve years of zero job creation, which is why unemployment is so 
high, not only for the general population but even worse for our young 
people, kids getting out of high school, young people graduating 
college.
  According to the Washington Post--this came from the Washington Post 
in January:

       Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted 
     for inflation, than they did in 1999. . . .

  In other words, the American economy has turned into a nightmare for 
tens of millions of families. Imagine that.

       Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted 
     for inflation, than they did in 1999--and the number is sure 
     to have declined further during a difficult 2009.

  They did not have those numbers, but because of the Wall Street 
collapse, that certainly is the case.
  So what are we talking about? We are talking about, as I have just 
demonstrated, the people on top seeing a doubling of their income, 
while their effective tax rates are going down. You are seeing the 
middle class collapsing.
  What this agreement says is that we are going to provide huge tax 
breaks for millionaires and billionaires. That is insane. Only within 
the beltway could an agreement such as that be negotiated.
  As I mentioned earlier, in the last 3 days, we have received 
thousands and thousands and thousands of phone calls and e-mails to my 
office, and over 98 percent--I daresay 99 percent--say this is not a 
good agreement, do not support it.
  Mr. President, I have been joined on the floor by the very 
distinguished Senator from the State of Louisiana. I ask unanimous 
consent that I be permitted to enter into a colloquy with Senator 
Landrieu.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Landrieu very much for joining us here. 
I wondered if the Senator could give the American people her thoughts 
about this agreement and what has been going on.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for his 
eloquent and passionate presentation for hours this morning. He clearly 
has presented to this Chamber and to the American people some stark 
realities that are unpleasant. Some people might even find them hard to 
believe. But he has done his homework. He has documented what he said. 
In that backdrop, it does make this agreement, made between the 
Republican leadership and the President of the United States, even 
harder for some of us to understand.
  I want to acknowledge, as the Senator said--I know there are 
pressures on all sides, and time is running out; we have to make a 
decision about tax cuts in a short period of time. We do not have the 
benefit of several months or even half a year. I understand the 
pressures of time. But as the Senator

[[Page S8750]]

from Vermont pointed out, how about the pressures on the middle class? 
What about these pressures? What about this pain?
  I was wondering, because I wanted to ask the Senator from Vermont--I 
was not able to follow his entire presentation this morning--did he 
quote from the report ``Income Inequality and the Great Recession,'' 
done by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, led by Charles 
Schumer? I ask the Senator, did you quote from this report?
  Mr. SANDERS. We quoted from a number of studies, but not that one, I 
say to the Senator.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I would like to add in our colloquy, if the Senator is 
aware, according to this report that just came out in September of this 
year:

       Income inequality has skyrocketed. Economists concur that 
     income inequality has risen dramatically over the past three 
     decades.
       Middle-class incomes stagnated under President Bush. During 
     the recovery of the 1990s under President Clinton, middle-
     class incomes grew at a healthy pace. However, during the 
     jobless recovery of the 2000s under President Bush, that 
     trend reversed course. Middle-class incomes continued to fall 
     well into the recovery, and never regained their 2001 high.

  The report goes on to say--which is frightening, which is why I have 
been raising my voice in opposition so strongly to some parts of this 
package--

       High levels of income inequality may precipitate economic 
     crises.

  In other words, if the middle class cannot see light at the end of 
the tunnel and if the economy itself cannot grasp a way for the middle 
class to grow, I say to the Senator, this recession may never end no 
matter how much money you give to the very wealthy. This is the reality 
we are facing at this moment--how to end this recession.

  Republicans weren't completely to blame for it, Democrats weren't 
completely innocent, or vice versa. It is not about who to blame, it is 
about how to fix it. We are about to pick up a $980 billion hammer next 
week in an attempt to fix it. Are we hitting the nail right? We don't 
have many $980 billion hammers to pick up. We are borrowing this one. 
So let's get it right. This is an important issue before our country. I 
think that is what the Senator is saying.
  Am I putting words into the Senator's mouth? Is this what the Senator 
is trying to explain?
  Mr. SANDERS. Exactly. The point cannot be understated. What Senator 
Landrieu is saying is that if you have a collapsing middle class and 
people are unable to purchase anything, it impacts the entire economy. 
The economy can't grow. We can't grow jobs if people don't have enough 
money to buy products made by other people. If all or a substantial 
part of the wealth in this Nation accrues in the hands of a few, they 
get three yachts and eight airplanes, I guess, but there is a limit to 
what they can purchase.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. And there is a limit to what they can consume.
  What the Senator from Vermont is saying and what I am saying--I want 
to be very clear, because the Senator and I don't agree on every piece 
of legislation. He tends to be a little bit more liberal and 
progressive in his politics than I am, but on this subject we are both 
equally concerned about the shrinking of the middle class. From my 
perspective--the Senator may have a different view--I am talking about 
the broad middle class: incomes of $50,000 to $500,000. In my State, 
$500,000 of income--not net worth but income--is a huge amount of 
money. In fact, I brought a graph to show that 84 percent of the 
households in Louisiana--when I talk about middle class--84 percent of 
the households in Louisiana make less than $75,000. I said 84 percent. 
Most people in Louisiana--most--believe they are in the middle class, 
but 84 percent make below $75,000.
  So when I use the term middle class--and we all have a different 
view--I am saying the broad middle class with incomes between $50,000 
and $500,000. If you have $500,000 in income, you are quite wealthy in 
Louisiana, but I realize we are not New York, Connecticut, or 
California. Maybe if you make $500,000 or $400,000 in some of these 
places, you don't consider yourself very wealthy or rich. I think by 
Louisiana standards you would be, but this is a big nation. So I want 
to be as broad as I can possibly be here. I am not talking about the 
wealthy being $400,000 or $500,000. That may not be the case in 
California. But what we are talking about in this tax bill is borrowing 
$50 billion to give tax breaks to families earning over $1 million. So 
as the Senator from Vermont said, whether you put your mark at $250,000 
or $500,000--we can disagree about how broad the middle class is, but 
is there anyone--anyone--anyone in this Chamber on either side of the 
aisle from any State who believes seriously, giving what the Senator 
from Vermont just outlined--which is really not debatable; these 
economic studies are not just from one side of the aisle or another--
that we should actually next week provide $50 billion in extended 
benefits for the families in America who are making more than $1 
million a year? Should we do that when the inequities are so great, 
when the needs of the middle class are so great, when there is no 
evidence to suggest from any I have seen that is convincing that even 
after this tax cut the recession will end? We are doing this for 2 
years. What happens if the recession doesn't end and we have borrowed 
all of this money to provide the extension of these tax cuts, as well 
as giving $50 billion to the $1 million earners in this country? What 
do we do then? Go borrow another trillion and try it again? I think we 
have to try something different.
  I don't know if the Senator has another point before I go into a few 
thoughts.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let me ask the Senator--and I thank her very much and I 
agree with what she has been saying. I was mentioning earlier the calls 
coming in and the e-mails coming into my office are overwhelming: 99 
percent against this. Are you getting similar calls?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I am getting calls, and I am getting about 50 percent 
for and 50 percent against. The State of Louisiana is a little 
different than the State of Vermont. Many of the calls coming in from 
around the country are against giving--well, actually, let me say this: 
Most of the calls coming in are absolutely against giving tax cuts to 
people over $1 million.
  Mr. SANDERS. That is what I am talking about.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Overwhelmingly, people are calling in and saying, Is 
that really happening? In fact, my office told me today that actually 
10 people called who had incomes over $1 million, which I found very 
interesting, to say they supported my position: Tell Senator Landrieu I 
make $1 million a year and I agree with her. So I know people are 
listening. I thank those callers. They make $1 million every year and 
they said, Please, use the money for somebody else or something else. I 
am doing fine. I am counting my blessings. I survived the recession. 
They know that 33,000 people are getting ready to run out of 
unemployment benefits in Louisiana alone if we don't extend it. They 
know middle-class families making over $75,000 in income or $200,000 in 
income or even $500,000--you can have $300,000 of income in Louisiana 
and be a strong businessperson and doing very well, and have eight 
children. The Presiding Officer has large families out in the West. We 
have very large families in the South. No one ever gives us credit 
enough, I think, for that. People work very hard, a mother and a 
father. Their income might be $200,000, $250,000, but with six 
children, that doesn't go that far these days. I grew up in a 
neighborhood where we routinely had 12 children in a house. How much 
money do you think you have to make to feed and clothe and send to 
college 12 children? My father sent nine of us to college. We never 
made anywhere near that money. I still think it was a miracle any of us 
ever got there.
  But, nonetheless, the issue is next week we are going to debate this 
agreement. I wish to say I support extending tax cuts to the middle 
class, to the broad middle class. But there is something terribly wrong 
here in Denmark. Something is not right in Denmark if we are spending 
or borrowing $50 billion, which is about what it costs to extend income 
tax rates, the lower rate and the dividend rates, and the capital gains 
rates to people making over $1 million.
  Someone on the radio today said, Well, Senator, don't you think 
giving

[[Page S8751]]

tax cuts will stimulate the economy? I said, No. I am not an economist, 
but every economist I have read on this tax package says that is one of 
the least stimulative--am I correct, Senator--one of the least 
stimulative provisions of the bill.
  I want to know next week, when we are debating this, I would like at 
least one Republican--just one--it could be the minority leader Mitch 
McConnell, it could be the budget chairman Judd Gregg, it could be just 
one Republican--to give a passionate argument for why they insisted 
this be in the package. I would like to listen to it. I would like to 
hear it with my own ears. What was it about it that they thought was so 
important that they had to have it in the package? Because I know, as 
angry as I am with the President right now about some matters, I know 
the President did not insist this be in the package. I know enough 
about him to know that he didn't call everybody in the room and say, 
Oh, we forgot something. Let's make sure this tax extension includes 
people making over $1 million. I know he didn't give that speech. I 
want to know who did. Who did give it, because your constituents should 
know about it. And the American people have a right to know. That is 
one thing about our democracy, it is open. It could be more open. We 
could be like Britain where they all stand up and talk at one another 
in one of the rooms. It is very interesting. I find it very interesting 
to watch sometimes. We don't do that, but at least if the people of 
Britain want to know what their people are saying, they can hear them.
  Somebody said this. I would like to know who, and where, and when. 
Was it in the Oval Office? Was it in the cloakroom? Because I am going 
to be forced to vote--because now, I think the Senator understands, we 
aren't going to have any amendments, so I am going to be forced to vote 
and have to choose, which is going to be a very tough choice, between 
extending tax cuts for 84 percent of the people in my State who make 
less than $75,000--which of course I want to do. Even though we have to 
borrow the money to do it, we can't not do it. The economic 
circumstances are such that we have to do it. But now, in order to get 
them help, I have to say yes to something that I have talked about--and 
I want to be serious about this; I am very serious about it--that, for 
me, borders on moral recklessness.

  I have been criticized on both sides of this debate. How can you use 
words like this? I don't know. I went to Catholic school. We went to 
mass almost every week. Every week the priest would say, Don't take 
more than you need. Don't be greedy. Share with others. Did I go to the 
wrong school? So I would like to know. Maybe those lessons were missed 
on the other side. I don't normally speak like this. I have been 
criticized for it. I am very, very torn, because I like to be part of a 
team.
  I understand, I say to the Senator from Vermont, that we can't have 
every package exactly the way we believe. I understand that. I have had 
to vote for some things that were hard for me to stomach, and I have 
done it because there were other good things in the bill. That is the 
way the process works. But I actually cannot remember a time on either 
an appropriations bill of this magnitude or a tax bill of this 
magnitude that we have been asked to cast a vote for something that on 
its face is so reckless, so unnecessary, so sort of in your face to the 
poor, in your face to the middle class. We are going to take our money. 
Don't you say a word about it.
  Who said that? Did Warren Buffett come down here and ask for it? Did 
Boone Pickens come down here and ask for it? Did the Gateses come down 
here and ask for it? Who asked for it? Why do you think you deserve it, 
and what Senator put their name on it?
  I have a few more things to say. I don't want to keep the Senator 
from Vermont tied up.
  Mr. SANDERS. Quite the contrary. The Senator from Louisiana is making 
some very important points. I appreciate it and I look forward to 
hearing what she has to say.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you. I wish to say a few other things about this 
whole situation, because the Senator from Vermont and I agree on some 
things and parts of this--obviously this part--but we had a big 
difference. I wanted to show this from my perspective.
  I voted for the original tax cuts. I am not sure the Senator from 
Vermont did. There were very good reasons on both sides. I wish to take 
a minute, because I have, as I said, critics on both sides, and I want 
to explain--not explain, but share some thoughts about that and make 
something very clear.
  I was one of 12 Democrats--there are only 7 of us left--in the 
Chamber today who voted for the Bush tax cuts. We were for the middle 
class and the poor and the wealthy. Everybody got income tax relief, 
capital gains tax relief, dividend tax relief. Senator Lincoln and I 
and others worked very hard to make sure that in that package--even 
though I would have designed it differently if I could have done it 
myself, but there are no czars around here. This is a democracy. I 
understand that. I have been doing it for 30 years. We worked hard to 
shape that package the best we could to direct it and target it to the 
middle class. There are many critics of that who say you didn't do it 
well enough. You didn't send it to the middle class. You sent it to the 
wealthy. I disagree. I think we did as well as we could to send it to 
the middle class, although the higher brackets were lowered as well. 
But I will tell my colleagues the big difference was, it was paid for 
when we voted for it. There was a $128 billion annual surplus. In other 
words, we were spending $128 billion less than we were taking in. What 
a happy time that was. We were paying for our Pell grants. We were 
paying for education. We were paying for health care. We had surpluses 
in Social Security, the Senator will remember, and we had a $128 
billion surplus that year alone, and surpluses as far as the eye can 
see. This is before 9/11.
  So the 12 of us--let me speak just for myself--I thought, what a 
situation this is. Democrats had taken the tough vote. Not one 
Republican had voted for this budget reconciliation. As the Chair 
knows, as he was then in the House and took a tough vote with the 
Democrats to put us on that path, the middle class was expanding. Jobs 
were being created. We were creating millionaires. Yes, I love creating 
more millionaires. It is why I got into politics--one of the reasons. I 
like when people are successful. I love to hear stories about my 
constituents who came from poor families, whose mothers were household 
servants, whose fathers never went to high school--I love to hear about 
smart little girls from Gert Town who got straight As in school, went 
down the street to Xavier University, got their premed degree, and then 
went on to become a doctor, and now they are millionaires. I don't 
decry that. I celebrate it. I have fought for them to get their 
scholarships--not individually but generally. It is what I do. It is 
what Senators and House Members do.
  I am so mad at people saying to me, as a Democrat, that we don't like 
people who are rich; that we have something against them. Nothing could 
be further from the truth.
  I love the book, ``The Millionaire Next Door.'' It talks about how it 
is a myth that most millionaires in America have inherited their money. 
The fact is, we have created such a great country over 250 years. We 
have actually found the way for poor people to go from nothing to huge 
wealth and to create a life-changing opportunity for their children and 
grandchildren. We celebrate it, write movies about it, and our 
libraries are full of books about it. There is nothing wrong with that.
  So when we had a surplus, I thought we should give tax breaks and use 
some of that money. But, today, we are being asked to provide tax cuts, 
when the deficit is--I want to get this number correct because it is 
shocking--10 times greater than the surplus; it is $1.294 trillion. 
That is what the annual deficit is this year. When we did the tax cuts, 
we were generating a $128 billion surplus every year--surpluses as far 
as the eye could see. We thought maybe we should give a third of this 
bounty in tax cuts, and we made investments in other things. But, 
today, after what the Senator from Vermont has described as the 
economic inequality in the country, when we have no surplus in sight, 
the biggest, largest, most ferocious recession since the Great 
Depression, and we are running an annual deficit of $1.29 trillion--
someone had the nerve on the other

[[Page S8752]]

side of the aisle to say: Wait, before you close the deal, before you 
shut the door, before you stop the printing press, please put in the 
people in America who make over $1 million.
  Now, for that $50 billion, there are lots of ways that we could save 
if we could correct this deal. I don't think we can. But if we could, 
as the Senator knows, do we have men and women in the military--does he 
know what their COLA will be this year? I think it is only 1.4 percent.
  Mr. SANDERS. That is what my understanding is. I think a lot of the 
folks in the military are very upset about that.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Every person in uniform is only getting a COLA this 
year of 1.4 percent. Did anybody over there not think about this when 
they raised their hand to say let's give it to millionaires? Those in 
the military most certainly deserve a bonus. They are coming back 
without eyes or legs; they are leaving some of their limbs in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. Did anybody over there think about that?
  The senior citizens for whom the Senator has been such an advocate 
are not seeing the kind of COLA they normally get. Talk about stimulus, 
I think every dollar you give to a senior citizen--wouldn't the Senator 
say--gets spent right away. They have to buy food with it. They are not 
going out perusing a yacht or an airplane they could or could not buy. 
They need to eat. They go to the corner drugstore; they need to get 
their medicine. They spend it. Yes, we give money to the poor on the 
Democratic side and the middle class because it is the right thing to 
do. It actually happens to be also the smart thing to do for the 
economy and for jobs.
  So when people say the Senator has flip-flopped on taxes, I don't 
understand how to say it differently. I voted for tax cuts when we had 
a surplus. I am challenged about how to address this package--I most 
certainly want to extend it for the middle class and to extend help for 
the unemployment. People are unemployed not because they are lazy, for 
Heaven's sake. They are unemployed because there are no jobs for them. 
It is some of the longest term unemployment we have had in our Nation's 
history.
  So the other side is making us feel--they say: We gave you the 
unemployment, so surely you should give us the tax breaks for 
millionaires. Is that really an equal trade? If somebody believes that 
actually--I have heard commentators say it on different networks. I 
have been on these news programs, and they say: You got the 
unemployment, so that is a fair trade.
  If there is a Senator who thinks that, I would love them to say that 
next week. I think that would be great to have on the record. So this 
situation is what the Louisiana families in my State are facing. 
Obviously, I would like to provide tax relief for these families. We 
have less than 1.8 percent who are making over $200,000. I am checking 
right now to find out how many families in Louisiana actually make over 
$1 million. I was told it was 3,200. That number might be too high. The 
Senator from West Virginia told me that in his State it is 599 people 
who make over $1 million a year. Yet it looks like that is the package.
  We are going to be in a tough situation, without amendments, having 
to vote for it. I will see what my constituents are saying over the 
weekend. I want to say one more thing about this inequity and turn it 
back over to the Senator from Vermont. Besides the other things that 
were put into the Record about the inequality, the challenges before 
our country right now, I came across some data, and I would like the 
Senator to be on the floor to listen to this.
  Mr. SANDERS. I am not going anywhere. You can take as much time as 
you want.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I wasn't sure what his time was. I am chair of the 
Small Business Committee. I have many hearings, but I had one in the 
last 3 months and some of the testimony was startling to me. I wanted 
to share this with the Senator.
  It is in the 2000 census data. Someone was testifying about why this 
recession was taking so long to get over. They were giving figures 
about the status of the economy and the wealth or incomes of broad 
sections of the population. They said sort of off the cuff--like, ho-
hum, today is Monday.

  They said: By the way, the average net worth, the median net worth of 
households in America, the average--median net worth--not income but 
net worth--of households is $67,000. That is very interesting. I 
thought it would be higher than that. That is taking what you own minus 
everything you owe, and the difference is your net worth. I thought 
people might have more than that in terms of equity in their homes, a 
couple hundred thousand. That was concerning to me.
  I said: Do you have that broken down by race, by any chance?
  They said: Yes, ma'am.
  I said: Would you share it? And they did. I will share it with you 
because I have not recovered from what I heard.
  The gentlemen said to me: Well, for White families in America, the 
average median--50 percent more, 50 percent less--is $87,000. For 
Hispanic families, it is $8,000. For African-American families, it is 
$5,000.
  I want to repeat that. Fifty percent of all families in America who 
are Caucasian, their net worth is $67,000 or less. For Hispanic 
families in America, 50 percent of all Hispanic households, their net 
worth is $8,000. For African-American families today, in 2010--40 years 
after the peak of the civil rights movement and 150 years or so after 
the Civil War and all the things we think we have done to try to get 
people in a more equal position in our society--it is $5,000. That is 
including home equity--or home ownership, I mean. Without home 
ownership, that net worth for African-American families falls to 
$1,000.
  So when people say people are in pain and suffering and anxious and 
they can't buy anything, you wonder why. There is no cushion in a 
recession like this. How brutal is a recession to people who have so 
little a cushion? For a middle-class family of any race, if you lose 
your job, you can get unemployment, you have some equity in your home, 
or maybe you have some savings you can fall back on. There is a 
cushion, and you can bounce back up. How brutal is this recession to 
millions of families in America who have no cushion? They are just 
hitting hard rock. They are hitting steel. There is no cushion there. 
You wonder why people are angry. You wonder why this tea party movement 
is festering, why people are so angry. I understand that anger. I am so 
angry myself, I don't know what to do.
  Mr. SANDERS. If I can interrupt my good friend, she is right. It is 
no great secret that her politics and mine aren't the same on many 
issues. She is down here speaking from her heart, coming from the State 
of Louisiana, which is not radically different from Vermont. We have a 
lot of struggling families.
  I want to reiterate a point. She has been talking so effectively 
about the stress on the middle class and working families in her State 
and around the country. I want to reiterate this point. I am not here 
to pick on George W. Bush, but during his 8 years, the wealthiest 400 
Americans--pretty high up guys; that ``ain't'' the middle class no 
matter how broadly you define that--their income more than doubled--got 
that--while their income tax rate dropped almost in half.
  The wealthiest 400 Americans now earn an average of $345 million a 
year and pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, on average. That is 
the lowest tax rate for wealthy individuals on record.
  So the point is, Senator Landrieu and I are talking about the people 
out in the real world who are working longer hours for lower wages. 
Median family income has declined. People are scared that for the first 
time in our modern history their kids will have a lower standard of 
living than they had.
  Is the Senator hearing that in Louisiana?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I am.
  Mr. SANDERS. Senator Landrieu is asking a simple question, and 
millions of people are asking the same question. The wealthiest people 
are becoming much richer, the middle class is declining, and poverty is 
increasing. Who decided? Who said billionaires need an extended tax 
break and a reduction in the estate tax? It is a very simple question 
she is asking. It is a very profound question because it speaks to what 
this country is all about. I didn't mean to interrupt.

[[Page S8753]]

  Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator from Vermont. I commend to my 
colleagues this report entitled ``Income Inequality and the Great 
Recession'' from Senator Schumer and the Joint Economic Committee. I 
ask unanimous consent that the Executive Summary be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               Income Inequality and the Great Recession


                           executive summary

       This week, the U.S. Census Bureau will release new 
     statistics on income inequality in the United States, 
     allowing for an assessment of the impact of the Great 
     Recession on our nation's income distribution. In preparation 
     for that data release, the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) 
     analyzed income inequality in the United States in the years 
     preceding the Great Recession, and found:
       Income inequality has skyrocketed. Economists concur that 
     income inequality has risen dramatically over the past three 
     decades.
       Middle-class incomes stagnated under President Bush. During 
     the recovery of the 1990s under President Clinton, middle-
     class incomes grew at a healthy pace. However, during the 
     jobless recovery of the 2000s under President Bush, that 
     trend reversed course. Middle-class incomes continued to fall 
     well into the recovery, and never regained their 2001 high. 
     The first year of the Great Recession dealt a sharp blow to 
     middle-class families, who had not yet recovered from the 
     pain of the last recession.
       High levels of income inequality may precipitate economic 
     crises. Peaks in income inequality preceded both the Great 
     Depression and the Great Recession, suggesting that high 
     levels of income inequality may destabilize the economy as a 
     whole.
       Income inequality may be part of the root cause of the 
     Great Recession. Stagnant incomes for all but the wealthiest 
     Americans meant an increased demand for credit, fueling the 
     growth of an unsustainable credit bubble. Bank deregulation 
     allowed financial institutions to create new exotic products 
     in which the ever-richer rich could invest. The result was a 
     bubble-based economy that came crashing down in late 2007.
       Policymakers have a great deal of leverage in mitigating 
     income inequality in order to stabilize the macro-economy. In 
     the decades following the Great Depression, policy decisions 
     helped keep income inequality low while allowing for 
     continued economic growth. In contrast, policy decisions made 
     during the economic expansion during the Bush administration 
     failed to keep income inequality in check, and may have 
     exacerbated the problem. Policymakers working to rebuild the 
     economy in the wake of the Great Recession should heed these 
     lessons and pay particular attention to policy options that 
     mitigate economic inequality.

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I want to go back to a point about this 
so that I am not misunderstood. I guess no matter what I say critics 
will take it and do what they will with it, but I am not against tax 
cuts. I voted for them many times in my life when we had surpluses. I 
have even been pressured to vote for things, and have done so, when we 
didn't have the surpluses, but they were targeted and focused and there 
actually had been some rational thought attached to where we might need 
to borrow some money and spend it, such as in the stimulus package, 
because in that instance, if we didn't get some spending going, we 
could slip further into a recession. Even conservative economists 
counseled us on parts of the stimulus package.
  By the way, contrary to popular myth, that was about the same size as 
this package. This package is actually larger. This package is going to 
be $900 billion. The stimulus was $800-something. It was less. But in 
that stimulus package about a third was tax cuts. Remember that, Mr. 
President? A third of that was tax cuts. It wasn't all just spending. 
But every economist--conservative, liberal--said the government has got 
to step up and spend in this economy because this place is shutting 
down--meaning the country--and so we did.
  People will still argue on the other side that was the wrong thing to 
do and we shouldn't have done it. But I am here to say that without the 
$2.8 billion in tax cuts and spending that went to Louisiana through 
that stimulus package--and my State legislature is struggling to 
balance the budget, as I speak; they have been in the budget committee 
over the past couple of weeks--I don't know where we would be today. I 
don't know how much went to Vermont or California or how much went to 
Colorado, but people say it was a failure. Well, let me say that $2.8 
billion went to our State and it warded off some Draconian cuts that 
our cities and counties and parishes would have had to make, and it 
warded off tax increases so that Governors didn't have to raise taxes 
and mayors didn't have to raise taxes all over this country. Some of 
them have done that, but they have tried to limit it because they know 
how fragile this middle class is.
  I am not unmindful of the importance of providing tax cuts when we 
can. But when we are asked to vote on a package that has a provision 
such as this, that borders on moral recklessness, I have to catch my 
breath and ask: Whose idea was this? I wish to know.
  It is going to be a long weekend. It will be a long 30 hours of 
debate. I am glad the Senator from Vermont is going to make sure we 
take every one of those 30 hours postcloture, if we even get to cloture 
on this bill, because I think the American people are going to be 
waiting around to find out whose idea was that.
  Mr. SANDERS. If I can interrupt the Senator from Louisiana, because 
she makes a very important point, we are a democracy and it is the 
American people who make the decisions. I know she shares with me the 
belief that the American people have to become engaged in this very 
important debate, which has a lot to do with the future of this 
country.
  Senator Landrieu asks a very simple question, which I would like--and 
I think the American people would like--an answer to: Whose brilliant 
idea was it--at a time when we have seen an explosion in income and 
wealth to the people on top, while their tax rates have already gone 
down--that we drive up the national debt and ask our kids to pay higher 
taxes to pay off that debt in order to give tax breaks to people who 
don't need them? That is the question Senator Landrieu is asking. I 
think the American people need an answer to that, and my hope is that 
millions of Americans will start calling their Senators to ask that 
question.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Was it your idea? Whose idea was it?
  Mr. SANDERS. Whose idea was it?
  The irony here--and I think Senator Landrieu made this point as 
well--is that there are plenty of millionaires out there who say: I 
don't need it. I am more worried about the crumbling infrastructure or 
our kids out there than giving me a tax break I don't need. Thanks very 
much. That is what Warren Buffett has said. It is what Bill Gates has 
said. Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's has said it. Many millionaires have 
said it. We are giving some of these guys something they do not even 
want.
  I want to thank Senator Landrieu very much, not only for her being 
here today--and please continue--but for raising these important 
issues.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. One more point, and then I will turn this back over to 
the Senator.
  I was on the Greta Van Susteren show last night. I have said Greta is 
always a tough interviewer, but she is fair, so I am happy to go on her 
program. And it was a tough interview. But we debated these things, and 
I think that is important. I think it is important to debate them here, 
on TV, and in townhall meetings. That is what democracy is all about. 
But she said to me: Senator, we are so frustrated. Nobody ever hears 
anybody say they want to cut spending, or they want to eliminate waste, 
fraud, and abuse. So let me concede this point. For me, I don't think 
we do talk enough about eliminating the waste, eliminating the fraud, 
and eliminating the abuse. I think we should spend more time, and I am 
going to commit myself to that, because I know the American people say: 
Every time we ask for a tax cut, you say we can't afford it. Why don't 
you cut some spending, et cetera.
  Let me state that I voted for tax cuts. I am for tax cuts. I have 
even given tax cuts to people who do make higher than the $75,000 or 
$100,000 or $250,000, when we had a surplus, when I thought it was the 
fiscally responsible thing to do. Other people can disagree, but this 
is the first time I am being asked to provide a tax cut for people 
earning over $1 million with this kind of deficit.
  But I will say this: I am going to commit myself to trying to find 
places we can cut. I support the Federal freeze. I support it in 
appropriations this year. Senator Inouye is taking down on the 
appropriations level $8 billion below the President's budget, and

[[Page S8754]]

if we need to go even further, perhaps we can. But we have to be 
careful where we cut, and I ask people to be rational about this. Do 
you want to cut Pell grants? I looked at this the other day, I say to 
the Senator from Vermont, particularly, because of Claiborne Pell. When 
the Pell grant went into effect, it was a grant to help kids go to 
school. That is still what it does. But in the 1970s, the Pell grant 
paid 100 percent of the average 2-year college. It only pays 50 percent 
of that today. I think I remember it paid almost 60 percent of a 4-year 
public college. It only pays like 40 percent or less than that today 
because we have not kept up with it.
  A program such as the Pell grant is a powerful tool to lift the 
middle class, or lift the poor out of poverty and expand the middle 
class. So when we cut programs, let's be careful to cut the waste, to 
cut the abuse, but let's not cut the heart out of what we are arguing 
for--effective tools to expand the middle class--or we will never get 
out of this recession. Because I promise you, the few thousand people 
in this country--or few tens of thousands, I don't know how many who 
make more than $1 million a year--are not going to lift this country 
out of a recession. It is going to be the middle class. And if we don't 
help them get ahead, if we don't help them get training, this recession 
will go on for a long time.
  Mr. SANDERS. I want to add the idea that when we think about cutting 
back on education--whether it is childcare, primary school, or 
college--we are simply cutting off our noses to spite our faces. The 
Senator is aware that where, at one time in this country, we used to 
lead the world in the number of our people who graduated college, we 
are now falling very significantly. How do you become a great economy 
if you don't have the scientists, the engineers, the teachers, the 
professionals out there, and many other countries around the world are 
having a higher percentage of their high school graduates going to 
college? That is something we have to address. Anyone who comes forward 
and says cut education is moving us in exactly the wrong direction.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Exactly. And I am for more accountability. If some of 
my colleagues on the other side think some of that money is being 
wasted or we are not getting our bang for the buck, don't come with an 
across-the-board cut to Pell grants, come with a plan to change it, 
saying these are the requirements for our universities: You have to 
graduate 65 percent of the kids who start or you have to have certain 
benchmarks before you can apply for these loans or for these grants.
  This country is at a crossroads, and I know the President and his 
advisers understand the extraordinary challenges before this country. I 
hope the Members understand the economic danger, the minefield we are 
in here. We can't make too many mistakes here. There is no cushion 
left. There is no surplus left. We are down to below bottom. So when we 
do big things such as this--and this is a big thing, this $980 billion 
big package, it is almost $1 trillion--we need to do it the best way we 
can do it. We can't do it recklessly or frivolously. We can't do it for 
ideology, for gosh almighty's sakes.
  I wish we could have fought harder for a better package. I have not 
yet decided how I am going to vote, but I have said if I vote, I am not 
voting quietly. I may vote yes, I may vote no, but I will vote with a 
loud voice about what I am concerned about, what I believe my 
constituents are concerned about, and I will try my best to help them, 
to support them, and to make the best decisions we can next week. But 
this has been troubling me, and so I wanted to come to the floor and 
speak about it, and I thank the Senator from Vermont.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Landrieu very much for coming, and I 
think she knows that on many issues her views and mine are different, 
but on this issue, I believe we are speaking for the overwhelming 
majority of the people, not just of Louisiana and Vermont but all over 
this country, who cannot understand why we give tax breaks to 
billionaires to drive up the deficit and the national debt at a time 
when the deficit and the debt are so large. I want to thank Senator 
Landrieu very much for her very articulate and heartfelt statements. I 
appreciate that very much.
  Mr. President, I was mentioning a moment ago the great contrast about 
what is happening in our economy between the people on top and 
everybody else. I indicated that the top 400 families during the Bush 
Presidency alone saw their income more than double, at the same time, 
by the way, as their income tax rates dropped almost in half. So that 
is what is going on for the people on top, who would make out extremely 
well under this agreement between the President and the Republican 
leadership.
  But I also talked about what is going on with the middle class and 
working families of this country. If you can believe it--and this is 
quite amazing--since December of 1999--and this was in a Washington 
Post article in January--there has been a zero net job creation--a zero 
net job creation. Middle-income households made less in 2008, when 
adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999, and that number is sure 
to have declined further in 2009.
  What does that mean? It means that when you look at a 10-year 
period--and people work very hard--in many instances--actually, in the 
vast majority of instances--you will have both husbands and wives 
working and still not making enough money to pay the bills. In fact, 
they have less money than they used to have.
  When I was a kid growing up, the experience was that in the middle 
class one person--I know young people will not believe this, but it is 
true--years ago in the United States, before the great global economy, 
before robotics, before computers, one person could work 40 hours a 
week and earn enough money to pay the bills for the family. One person. 
Today, in Vermont and throughout this country, overwhelmingly you have 
husbands and wives both working. And in some instances they are working 
very long hours. But here is the rub: Today, a two-income family has 
less disposable income than a one-income family did 30 years ago 
because wages have not kept up with inflation, and because health care 
costs have soared, the cost of education has soared, housing has 
soared, and basic necessities have soared. This is a description of a 
country moving in the wrong direction.
  Thirty years ago, a one-income family had more disposable income than 
a two-income family does today. And there are a lot of reasons for 
that. Maybe we will touch on them a little bit later. But one of them, 
in my view, has to do with our disastrous unfettered free trade policy, 
which has resulted in the shutdown of tens of thousands of factories in 
this country. Under President Bush alone, we lost some 48,000 
factories. We went from 19 million manufacturing jobs to 12 million 
manufacturing jobs, and in many instances, those were good jobs.
  Where did they go? Some shut down for a variety of reasons. But 
others shut down because we have trade laws that say you have to be a 
moron not to shut down in America because if you go to China, go to 
Vietnam, go to Mexico, go to a developing country, you pay workers 
there a fraction of what you are paying the workers in America. Why 
wouldn't you go? Then you bring your products right back into this 
country.

  A couple weeks ago, my wife and I did some Christmas shopping. 
Frankly--we went to couple stores--it is very hard to find a product 
manufactured in the United States of America. You do not have to have a 
Ph.D. in economics to understand we are not going to have a strong 
economy unless we have a strong manufacturing capability, unless 
companies are reinvesting in Colorado or Vermont, creating good jobs 
here. You do not have an economic future when virtually everything you 
are buying is coming from China or another country.
  We are not just talking about low-end products. These are not 
sneakers or a pair of pants. This is increasingly high-tech stuff. We 
are forfeiting our future as a great economic nation unless we rebuild 
our industrial base and unless we create millions and millions of jobs 
producing the goods and the products we consume. We cannot continue to 
just purchase products from the rest of the world.
  When we talk about the collapse of the middle class, it is important 
to also recognize the fact, as reported in USA

[[Page S8755]]

Today last September, ``the incomes of the young and middle-aged--
especially men--have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age 
groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s.'' The point being, for 
young workers, for example, when we had a manufacturing base in America 
in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, you could graduate high school and go out 
and get a job in a factory. Was it a glamorous job? No. Was it a hard 
job? Yes. Was it a dirty job? In some cases.
  But if you worked in manufacturing, and especially if you had a union 
behind you, the likelihood is you earned wages to take your family into 
the middle class, you had decent health care coverage, and you might 
even have a strong pension. Where are all those jobs now? During the 
Bush years alone, we went from 19 million jobs in manufacturing to 12 
million jobs, a horrendous loss of manufacturing jobs. If you are a kid 
today in Colorado or Vermont and you are not of a mind, for whatever 
reason, to go to college--30 or 40 years ago you could go out, get a 
job in factory, and make some money. Today, what are your options? You 
can get a minimum wage job at McDonald's or maybe at Walmart, where 
benefits are minimal or nonexistent. That is a significant transition 
of the American economy.
  I wish to tell you something else, when we talk about manufacturing. 
It did not get a whole lot of publicity, but it is worth reporting. The 
good news is, we have recently seen--after the loss of many thousands 
of jobs in the automobile industry--we have seen the auto companies, 
Chrysler and others, starting to rehire. What I think has not been 
widely reported is, the wages of the new workers who are being hired 
are 50 percent of the wages of the older workers in the plant. You are 
going to have workers working side by side, where an older worker who 
has been there for years is making $25, $28 an hour, and right next to 
him a new hire is making $14 an hour. If you understand that the 
automobile industry was perhaps the gold standard for manufacturing in 
America, what do you think is going to happen to the wages of blue-
collar workers in the future?
  If all you can get with a union behind you in automobile 
manufacturing is $14 an hour today, what are you going to make in 
Colorado or in Vermont? Are you going to make $10 an hour or $11 an 
hour? Is that enough money on which to raise a family? Are you going to 
have any benefits? Unlikely.
  That is what happens when your manufacturing base disappears and 
that, to a significant degree, in my view, is a result of a disastrous 
trade policy. I have to tell you--and I think in hindsight most people 
agree I was right--when I was in the House and all the corporations in 
the world were telling us how great NAFTA would be, free trade with 
Mexico, I did not buy it. I was right. They would say: Oh, it is going 
to be even better. We will have free trade with China. Think about how 
large China is and all the American products they are going to buy over 
there to create all kinds of jobs in the United States. I never 
believed it for a moment.
  I will tell you a story. I was in China a number of years ago and as 
part of a congressional delegation we went to visit Walmart in China. 
The Walmart store, amazingly enough, looked a lot like Walmart in 
America--different products, but it looked like the same style. You 
walk up and down the aisles and you see all these American products. I 
remember Wilson basketballs, Procter & Gamble soap products--different 
products there for the Chinese, but a lot of the products were American 
products. They looked pretty familiar.
  I asked the guy who was there with us who was, I believe, the head of 
Walmart Asia--the guy in charge of all the Walmarts in Asia--I asked 
him a simple question: Tell me, how many of these American company 
products are actually manufactured in the United States?
  He was a little bit sheepish and a little bit hesitant and he said: 
Well, about 1 percent. Obviously, what everybody knew, it is a lot 
cheaper for the American companies to set up plants in China, hire 
Chinese workers at 50 cents an hour, 75 cents an hour, whatever it is, 
and have them build the product for the Chinese markets than it is to 
pay American workers $15 an hour, $20 an hour, provide health 
insurance, deal with the union, deal with the environment. That is not 
a great revelation. I think anybody could have figured that one out. 
But the big money interests around here pushed it and Congress and 
President Clinton, at that time, signed it and we were off and running.
  When we look at why the middle class is in the shape it is--and it is 
important to make sure everybody understands it because one of the 
things that happens in this world, it is human nature I suppose, is 
that people feel very guilty and responsible if they are not taking 
care of their families. Right now we know, with unemployment so high--
this is not just cold statistics we are throwing out. These are people 
who not only were earning an income that supported their families, they 
had a sense of worth. Every human being wants to be productive. They 
want to produce something. They want to be part of something. They want 
to go to work, earn a paycheck, bring it home. You feel good about 
that.
  Do you know what it does to somebody's sense of human worth when 
suddenly you are sitting home watching the TV, you can't go out and 
earn a living? It destroys people. People be come alcoholic. People 
commit suicide. People have mental breakdowns because they are not 
utilizing their skills. They are no longer being a productive member of 
society. That is what unemployment is about.
  I think one of the reasons unemployment is so high, one of the 
reasons the middle class is collapsing, has a lot to do with these 
disastrous trade policies. I have to tell you, as we have been talking 
about all day long, these policies, these tax breaks, all this stuff 
emanates from corporate leaders whose sense of responsibility is such 
that they want themselves to become richer, they want more and more 
profits for their company, but they could care less about the needs of 
the American people.
  I remember there was one CEO of a large, one of our largest American 
corporations, and he said: When I look at the future of General 
Electric, I see China, China, China, and China. By the way, we ended up 
bailing out that particular corporation. He didn't look to China to get 
bailed out, he looked to the taxpayers of this country.
  But the word has to get out to corporate America, they are going to 
have to start reinvesting in the United States of America. They are 
going to have to start building the products and the goods the American 
people need rather than run all over in search of cheap labor. That is 
an absolute imperative if we are going to turn this economy around.
  According to a Boston Globe article published last year--let me quote 
what they say. Again, I am trying to document here what is happening to 
the working class of America because I do not want individual workers, 
somebody who may be hearing this on the TV, the radio, to say: It is my 
fault. There is something wrong with me because I can't go out and get 
a job.

  You are not alone. The entire middle class is collapsing. Our economy 
is shedding millions and millions of jobs. I know there are people out 
there trying hard to find work, but that work is just not there. That 
is why we have to rebuild the economy and create jobs. This is what the 
Boston Globe said last year: ``The recession has been more like a 
depression for blue-collar workers. . . .''
  This is an important point to be made here. When we talk about the 
economy we kind of lump everybody together. That is wrong. The truth is 
right now in the economy people on top are doing very well. The 
unemployment rate for upper income people is very low. They are doing 
OK. That as opposed, as this Boston Globe article points out, to what 
is happening to blue collar workers: ``The recession has been more like 
a depression for blue-collar workers, who are losing jobs much more 
quickly than the nation as a whole. . . .''
  This is the working class of America. `` . . . the Nation's blue-
collar industries have slashed one in six jobs since 2007. . . .'' Let 
me repeat that. It is just astronomical, a fact.

     . . . the nation's blue-collar industries [manufacturing] 
     have slashed one in six jobs since 2007, compared with about 
     one in 20 for all industries, leaving scores of the 
     unemployed competing for the rare job opening in construction 
     or manufacturing, with many unlikely to work in those fields 
     again.


[[Page S8756]]


  Never.

       Up to 70 percent of up employed blue-collar workers have 
     lost jobs permanently, meaning their old jobs won't be there 
     when the economy recovers.

  That is the Boston Globe, last year. When we talk about the economy, 
what we have to do is understand that blue-collar workers, middle-
class, young workers are hurting very much. In the context, again, of 
the debate we are now having, the discussion of whether we should 
approve the agreement reached between the President and the Republicans 
on taxes, the idea of not significantly investing in our economy but, 
rather, giving tens of billions of dollars to the very rich in more tax 
breaks makes no sense to many of us.
  When we talk about why people are angry, why people, when asked the 
question by pollsters: Do you think America is moving in the right 
direction, and overwhelmingly they think not, let me tell you why they 
think not. This is just during the Presidency of President Bush from 
2001 through 2008. During that period alone--and by the way, the pain 
is certainly continuing right now. I do not mean to suggest otherwise. 
During those 8 years of Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of 
the middle class and into poverty. Today, nearly 40 million Americans 
are living in poverty; 7.8 million Americans lost their health 
insurance, and that is continuing.
  A recent study came out and suggests that the uninsured now are about 
50 million Americans. Fifty million Americans have no health insurance 
now. We hope health insurance reform will make a dent on that. I think 
it will. But as of today, without the major provisions of health care 
reform being implemented, 50 million Americans are without any health 
insurance.
  During that period--and we have not talked about this a whole lot--
there is another thing going on in the economy for the working class. 
Years and years ago, if you worked in a manufacturing plant, you had a 
union, you stood a reasonable chance of having a pension--a pension. 
During the Bush years, 3.2 million workers lost their pensions, and 
about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension 
coverage whatsoever. The idea today of having a defined pension plan 
significantly paid for by your employer is going the way of the 
dinosaur. That is just not there anymore.
  Workers are more and more dependent on Social Security, which has 
been there for 75 years, which we have to protect and demand that it 
will be there another 75 years because right now millions of workers 
are losing their pensions. I mean, I am throwing these statistics out, 
and the reason I am doing that is I want people to appreciate that if 
you are hurting now, stop being ashamed. It is not, yeah, we can all do 
better. Every one of us can do better. But you are in an economy which 
is contracting, especially for the middle class and working families.
  According to an article in USA Today, from the year 2,000 to 2007, 
middle-class men--women have done better--middle-class men experienced 
an 11.2-percent drop in their incomes--a reduction of $7,700 after 
adjusting for inflation. Middle-class women in this age group saw a 
4.8-percent decline in their incomes as well. So they did pretty badly, 
but the men did even worse. So what we are seeing is an understanding 
of why people are angry and why people think this country is moving in 
the wrong direction.
  I think most people understand that today our country is experiencing 
the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It 
is important to say that because, again, it is hard enough when you do 
not have a job, when you do not have income, when your dignity and 
self-respect are declining, but I don't want people to be banging their 
own heads against the wall blaming themselves for all of the problems. 
Something has gone on in the Nation as a whole. You are not in this 
alone. When we talk about working-class families all across the country 
seeing a decline in their income, it is not because people are lazy, it 
is not because people do not work hard, it is not because people are 
not trying to find jobs. What we have is an economy which is rotting in 
the middle, and we have to change the economy.
  If there is anything we can say about the American people, we work 
hard. We, in fact, work longer hours than do the people of any other 
country, industrialized country, on Earth. We are not a lazy people. We 
are a hard-working people. If the jobs are there, people will take 
them. If people have to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week, that 
is what they will do. But we have to rebuild this economy. We do not 
need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle 
class of this country so that we can put people back to work.
  Let me take a few minutes to discuss how we got to where we are today 
and, in my view, what policies we need to move this country forward to 
create the kinds of jobs we desperately need.
  Let's take a quick look back to where we were in January of 2009--it 
seems like a long time ago but just a couple of years ago. That was the 
last month of the administration of President Bush. In that month, we 
lost over 700,000 jobs. That is an absolutely incredible number. In 
fact, during the last 6 months of the Bush Presidency, we lost over 
3\1/2\ million jobs, all of which was caused by the greed and 
recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street.
  Our gross domestic product, which is the total sum of all our economy 
produces, had gone down by nearly 7 percent during the fourth quarter 
of 2008. That was the biggest decline in more than a quarter century. 
Some $5 trillion of America's wealth evaporated in a 12-week period, as 
the people in Vermont and all over this country saw the value of their 
homes, retirement savings, and stocks plummet.
  I want to say just one word again about Wall Street greed because I 
think for a variety of reasons we just do not talk about it enough. 
What you had was a situation in which a small number of folks at the 
head of huge financial institutions, through their greed, through the 
development of very reckless policies, through illegal behavior, 
through pushing out financial instruments which turned out in some 
cases to be worthless--as a result of all of that, they plunged this 
country into the worst recession we have seen since the Great 
Depression--from January. That is at the end of the Bush 
Administration.
  It is very important to understand that the Wall Street crisis took 
us over the wall in terms of precipitating the severe recession we are 
in, but we have to remember that during those 8 years, as I mentioned 
earlier, the middle class was also shrinking. So it was not: Oh my 
goodness, everything is going great. Then you got the Wall Street 
disaster, and now we are in the midst of a terrible recession. This 
trend of a middle-class collapse went on long before Bush--precipitated 
significantly during the Bush years, but it went on before as well, not 
just during the Bush years.
  Over the 8-year period of President Bush, from 2001 to 2009, we lost 
600,000 private sector jobs. We lost 600,000 private sector jobs, and 
only 1 million net new jobs were created, all of them in the government 
sector. So for my friends, my Republican colleagues, to tell us that we 
need more tax breaks for the very rich because that is going to create 
jobs--that is what trickle-down economics is all about--I would say to 
them: You had your chance. It failed. In case you don't know, losing 
600,000 private sector jobs in 8 years is not good. That is very, very 
bad. That is an economic policy that has failed. We don't need to look 
at that movie again. We saw it. It stunk. It was a bad movie. Bad 
economic policy. More tax breaks for the rich is not what our economy 
needs. In fact, what every economist will tell you is that is the least 
effective way to create jobs.
  During the Bush era, median income dropped by nearly $2,200. That 
means that a family in the middle, over an 8-year period, saw their 
income drop by $2,200 during the 8 years of Bush.
  I say all of these things just to tell you that we are not where we 
are today just because of the Wall Street crisis. That took us over the 
cliff. That made a very bad situation much, much worse. But it has been 
going on for a long time. It has gone on before Bush. It has gone on 
after Bush.
  During the 8 years of Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of 
the middle class and into poverty. We don't talk about poverty in 
America anymore. We don't talk about the homelessness in America very 
much anymore. Trust me, it is there. It is three

[[Page S8757]]

blocks away from where I am speaking right now, a very large homeless 
shelter. It is in small towns in Vermont where people tell me that for 
the first time they are seeing more and more families with kids needing 
emergency shelter because they can't afford housing. In Vermont, a lot 
of people have low-wage jobs making 10 bucks an hour, and it is hard to 
find a decent apartment or pay a mortgage on $10 an hour. That is true 
certainly all over this country. Homelessness is going up.
  During the Bush years, nearly 8 million Americans lost their health 
insurance. One of the issues I will talk about in a little while is 
health care. It is related to everything. We are the only country in 
the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all 
people as a right of citizenship. According to Harvard University, 
45,000 Americans will die this year because they lack health insurance 
and are not getting to a doctor when they should.
  During the Bush administration, 5 million manufacturing jobs 
disappeared, as companies shut down plants in the United States and 
moved to China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries. As I 
mentioned earlier, it is profoundly important to understand what is 
going on in America. In 2000, we had over 17,000 manufacturing jobs in 
this country. By 2008, we had less than 12,000. That is 17,000 to 
12,000 in 8 years. That is the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs--a 
29-percent reduction--and the fewest number of manufacturing jobs since 
the beginning of World War II.
  Under President Bush, our trade deficit with China more than tripled 
and the overall trade deficit nearly doubled.
  Again, the point I am making now in the context of this agreement is 
that we need agreements now that do not give tax breaks to millionaires 
or billionaires, that do not lower the tax rates or the estate tax, 
which is applicable only to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. We need 
an agreement that rebuilds our infrastructure, rebuilds our 
manufacturing base, and creates the millions of good-paying jobs the 
American people desperately want.
  Again, I think the point has to be made--and I have to make it over 
and over--that when you look at the economy, it is one thing to say 
everybody is hurting. You know, sometimes that happens. A terrible 
hurricane comes through and knocks down everybody's home. Well, the 
hurricane that has hit America for the last 10, 20 years has not 
impacted everybody; it has impacted the working class, it has impacted 
the middle class. The people on top are doing better than they ever 
were. Our friends on Wall Street whose greed and illegal behavior 
caused this recession are now making more money than they ever did, 
after being bailed out by the middle class of this country.
  During the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their incomes 
more than double. Do you really think that after seeing a doubling of 
their incomes under the Bush years, these people are in desperate need 
of another million-dollar-a-year tax break? In 2007, the 400 top income 
earners in this country made an average of $345 million in 1 year. That 
is a pretty piece of change. That is the average, $345 million. In 
terms of wealth, as opposed to income, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw 
an increase in their wealth of some $400 billion during the Bush years. 
Imagine that. During an 8-year period, the top 400 wealthiest people 
each saw an increase, on average, of $1 billion apiece. Together, these 
400 families have a collective net of $1.27 trillion. Does anybody in 
America really believe these guys need another tax break so that our 
kids and our grandchildren can pay more in taxes because the national 
debt has gone up? I do not think most Americans believe that. That is 
why, in my view, most Americans are not supporting this agreement.
  Let me also say that when we look at what is going on around the rest 
of the world, what we have to appreciate is that in the United States 
today--again, this is not something we can be proud of; it is something 
we have to address--we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and 
income of any other country on Earth.
  I remember talking not so long ago to somebody from Scandinavia. I 
think it was Finland. He was saying: Of course, we have rich people in 
our country, but there is a level at which they would become 
embarrassed.
  America now has a situation where the CEOs of large corporations make 
300 times more than their workers. In many other countries, everybody 
wants to be rich, but there is a limit. You can't become a billionaire 
stepping over children sleeping on the street. That is not what this 
country is supposed to be about. Enough should be enough.
  The top 1 percent today earns 23.5 percent of all income. In the 
1970s, that number was 8 percent. In the 1990s, it was approximately 16 
percent. Now it is 23.5 percent. So the people on top are getting a 
bigger and bigger chunk of all income. Furthermore, it is not only the 
top 1 percent, there are economists who ask: You think the top 1 
percent are doing well? It is really the top one-tenth of 1 percent. If 
you can believe this, the top one-tenth of 1 percent--and I don't know 
how many people that is, you can do the arithmetic, 300 million into 
one-tenth of 1 percent--took in 11 percent of total income, according 
to the latest data. One-tenth of 1 percent earned 11 percent of all 
income in America.
  In the 1970s, the top 1 percent only made something like 8 percent of 
total income. In the 1980s it rose to 10 to 14 percent. In the late 
1990s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005 it passed 21 percent. 
And in 2010, the top 1 percent receive 23 percent of all the income 
earned in this country.
  People should be mindful of this fact: The last time that type of 
income disparity took place was in 1928. I think we all know what 
happened in 1929. That is the point Senator Landrieu was making a while 
back. What she understands, quite correctly, is if working people, the 
vast majority of the people, don't have the income to spend money to 
buy products and goods and services, we can't create the jobs. If all 
of the money or a big chunk of the money ends up with a few people on 
top, there is a limit to how many limousines you can have and how many 
homes you can have and how many yachts you can have. So when we hit a 
situation where so few have so much, it is not only a moral issue, it 
is also an economic issue.
  A strong and growing middle class goes out, spends money, and creates 
jobs. Grossly unequal distribution of income and wealth creates more 
economic shrinkage and loss of jobs because people just don't have the 
disposable income to go out and buy and create jobs.
  To add insult to injury in terms of this agreement negotiated by the 
President and Republicans, while the very wealthiest people became much 
wealthier and the deficit soared--and under President Bush the national 
debt almost doubled--what else happened? The tax rates for the very 
rich went down. The rich got richer; tax rates went down. This was a 
result not only of the tax breaks for the rich initiated during the 
Bush administration but also, quite frankly, tax policy that took place 
before President Bush. The result is that from 1992 to 2007, from the 
latest statistics we have, the effective Federal tax rate--what people 
really pay--for the top 400 income earners was cut almost in half. So 
these cry babies, these multimillionaires and billionaires, these 
people who are making out like bandits, they are crying and crying and 
crying, but the effective tax rate for the top 400 income earners was 
cut almost in half from 1992 to 2007.
  The point that needs to be made is, when is enough enough? That is 
the essence of what we are talking about. Greed, in my view, is like a 
sickness. It is like an addiction. We know people who are on heroin. 
They can't stop. They destroy their lives. They need more and more 
heroin. There are people who can't stop smoking. They have problems 
with nicotine. They get addicted to cigarettes. It costs them their 
health. People have problems with food. We all have our share of 
addictions. But I would hope that these people who are worth hundreds 
of millions of dollars will look around them and say: There is 
something more important in life than the richest people becoming 
richer when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the 
industrialized world. Maybe they will understand that they are 
Americans, part of a great nation which is in trouble today. Maybe they 
have to go back to

[[Page S8758]]

the Bible, whatever they believe in, and understand there is virtue in 
sharing, in reaching out; that you can't get it all.
  I think this is an issue we have to stay on and stay on and stay on. 
This greed, this reckless, uncontrollable greed is almost like a 
disease which is hurting this country terribly. How can anybody be 
proud to say they are a multimillionaire and are getting a huge tax 
break and one-quarter of the kids in this country are on food stamps? 
How can one be proud of that? I don't know.
  It is not only income, it is wealth. The top 1 percent owns more 
wealth than the bottom 90 percent. During the Bush years, the 
wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 
billion. How much is enough?
  All of these things are related to the agreement the President and 
Republicans worked out because we are all concerned about the national 
debt and deficit. In terms of the Federal budget, when President Bush 
first took office, he inherited a $236 billion surplus in 2001 and a 
projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. That is what Senator 
Landrieu was discussing. But then some things happened. We all know 
that 9/11 was not his fault, but what happened is, we went to war in 
Afghanistan. We went to war in Iraq. The war in Iraq was the fault of 
President Bush, something I certainly did not support, nor do I think 
most Americans supported. The war in Iraq, by the time our last veteran 
is taken care of, will probably end up costing us something like $3 
trillion, adding enormously to our national debt.
  So when we talk about Iraq, it is not only the terrible loss of life 
that our soldiers and the Iraqi people have experienced, let's not 
forget what it has done to the deficit and the national debt. We did 
not pay for the war in Iraq. We just put it on the credit card.
  President Bush gave out $700 billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 
percent of Americans. Where was the offset? There was none. He gave 
them tax breaks. That is it. It adds to the national debt.
  The President and Republicans supported a $400 billion Medicare Part 
D prescription drug program. I have always believed we need a strong 
prescription drug program for seniors. But the program that was passed 
was written by the pharmaceutical industry, written by the insurance 
companies, and is nowhere near as cost-effective as it could be. As the 
President undoubtedly knows, we are not even negotiating prescription 
drug prices with the drug companies, a great expense and great cost to 
the American people, where drug prices are now much more expensive 
under Medicare Part D than they are in terms of what the Veterans' 
Administration or the Department of Defense purchases. So we passed 
that, unpaid for. Great idea. Just another $400 billion prescription 
drug program unpaid for.
  Then we bailed out Wall Street. The original cost was $700 billion. A 
lot of that has been paid back, but there is expense there as well.
  So we add all these things together, normal governmental growth, and 
it turns out that the Bush administration turned a $236-billion-a-year 
surplus into a $1.3-trillion-a-year deficit. More or less, that is 
where we are right now. In fact, the national debt nearly doubled under 
President Bush, going from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion in 2009 and 
now we are at $13.7 trillion, borrowing huge sums of money from China 
and other countries in order to maintain our existence. That is where 
we are.
  Have we been seeing in recent years some improvements in the economy? 
We sure have. There has been some job growth. Nowhere near enough. But 
we are surely not losing 700,000 jobs a year. We are seeing some 
growth. But we need to do much better.
  That takes me back to an issue I feel strongly about and one on which 
I want to say a few words. In this agreement the President negotiated 
with Republicans, there is a substantial sum of money going into 
various types of business tax breaks. The theory, which has certainly 
some validity, is that these business tax breaks will create jobs. The 
problem is that right now, businesses, the large corporations at least, 
are sitting on a huge bundle of money already that they are not 
spending. The reason they are not investing that money is they perceive 
that working families don't have the money to buy their products and 
services.
  In saying this, I am not alone. I think most economists agree there 
is a far more effective way we can create jobs rather than just a 
number of tax breaks going to businesses. I touched on this point 
before. I want to get into a little bit more detail.
  For this I am indebted to a very fine book written by an old friend 
of mine, Arianna Huffington. The title of her book is ``Third World 
America.'' She used that word because basically the theme of her book 
is, if we do not get our act together in terms of infrastructure, in 
terms of education, in terms of health care, that is where we are 
headed. We are headed in the direction of being a Third World nation.
  She has an interesting chapter which deals with one very important 
part of what is going on in America, and that is the crumbling of our 
infrastructure. She writes:

       From 1980 to 2005, the miles traveled by automobiles 
     increased 94 percent--for trucks mileage increased 105 
     percent--yet there was only a 3.5 percent increase in highway 
     lane miles.

  More and more cars, more and more traveling. We are not building 
roads.

       But you don't need these numbers to know that our roads are 
     badly congested.

  Anybody who lives around Washington knows our roads are congested. It 
takes hours to get to work sometimes.
  You see it and experience it every day.
  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers infrastructure 
report card--and this is where we should be investing, not tax breaks 
for the rich--Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in 
traffic. Think about that, 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, 
at a cost of $78 billion a year. Think about all of the pollution, all 
of the greenhouse gas emissions, all of the frustration, all of the 
anxiety, all of the road rage. People are stuck on roads because our 
transportation system is totally inadequate, our roads, our public 
transportation.
  She then makes another interesting point. When we talk about 
automobile accidents, what do we usually think? We think somebody is 
driving recklessly, maybe they are drunk. Those are serious issues. But 
she writes: In studying car crashes across the country, the 
Transportation Construction Coalition determined that badly maintained 
or managed roads are responsible for $217 billion a year in car 
crashes, far more than headline-grabbing, alcohol-related accidents or 
speed-related pileups.
  In other words, if you want to know why we are seeing automobile 
crashes, the issue of bad roads is even more significant than drunk 
drivers or people who are reckless drivers. I can remember--I think 
everybody has the same story--I was driving on a road in Vermont, and, 
whoops, there was a huge pothole, and the car went into it. It cost a 
few hundred dollars to repair the car. So we are spending as a nation 
billions of dollars repairing our cars because our roads are not in 
good shape. When there is a traffic jam, people are emitting all kinds 
of greenhouse gas emissions. You are wasting gas. You are wasting 
money. If we invested in our transportation system, we could go a long 
way to addressing that.
  When we talk about transportation--and, by the way, again, I bring 
this issue up because, in the bill agreed to by the President and the 
Republican leadership, to the best of my knowledge, not one penny--not 
one penny--is going into infrastructure, which, to me, does not make 
any sense at all.
  Again, Arianna Huffington writes:

       America's railway system is speeding down the tracks in 
     reverse. It is one of the few technologies that has actually 
     regressed over the past 80 years.

  Regressed. I am not talking about China, where they are building all 
these high-speed rail lines. Our rail situation in terms of the amount 
of time it takes to go from location one to location two has actually 
gotten longer.
  She writes:

       Tom Vanderbilt of Slate.com--

  Which is a very good Web site--

     came across some pre-World War II train timetables and made a 
     startling discovery. Many train rides in the 1930s, 40s, and 
     50s took less time than those journeys would take today.

  Can you imagine that? In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, people were 
able to get on a train and get to their destination in less time than 
is the case today.


[[Page S8759]]


       For instance, in 1934, the Burlington Zephyr would get you 
     from Chicago to Denver--

  From Chicago to Denver--

     in around 13 hours. The same trip takes 18 hours today.

  I do not know if the Presiding Office is familiar with the Burlington 
Zephyr, which is a train that goes from Chicago to Denver, but what 
this writer is pointing out is that in 1934 it took 13 hours to make 
that trip. Do you know how long it takes today? It takes 18 hours. So 
we are moving in the wrong direction.
  I know in Vermont--I do not have any statistics right in front of me 
but I can tell you--I believe very strongly--it takes longer to get 
from the southern part of the State to the northern part of the State 
than it used to, and the frequency of the trips is less than they used 
to be.

       The trip from Chicago to Minneapolis via the Olympian 
     Hiawatha, in the 1950s, took about 4\1/2\ hours. Today, via 
     Amtrak's train, the journey takes more than 8 hours.

  It used to be 4\1/2\. So in terms of our public transportation, not 
only are we neglecting, not only are we not moving forward, we are 
actually moving backwards.

       At the moment, the only high-speed train in the United 
     States is Amtrak's Acela, which travels the Washington, New 
     York, Boston line.

  And she writes:

       And I use the term ``high-speed'' very loosely. While in 
     theory the trains have a peak speed of 150 miles per hour, 
     the average speed on that train is just about 71 miles per 
     hour.

  Once again, I read some statistics before, pointing out that China is 
building thousands and thousands of miles of high-speed rail. And here 
in the United States we are moving backwards. It is taking us a longer 
time for various train rides than used to be the case.
  But it is not just trains. It is not just our roads. It is not just 
our bridges.
  Well, it is also our bridges. Let me say a word on bridges. I think 
we all remember 4 years ago, I think it was, the terrible tragedy in 
the Minneapolis area, when one of their major bridges collapsed and a 
number of people lost their lives. That got the front-page headlines 
all over this country. I know in Vermont we closed down bridges. They 
are not safe to travel.

       According to the Department of Transportation, 1 in 4 of 
     America's bridges is either structurally deficient or 
     functionally obsolete. The numbers are even worse when it 
     comes to bridges in urban areas, where 1 in 3 bridges is 
     deficient--no small matter given the high levels of 
     passengers and freight traffic in our Nation's cities.

  So a huge amount of traffic--in urban areas one in three bridges is 
deficient, and in rural areas such as Vermont, one in four.
  How are these bridges going to be rebuilt? It is likely not going to 
be done by local and State governments that right now are experiencing 
enormous economic crises. If it is going to be done, it is going to 
have to be done here at the Federal level.
  I have to say that in Vermont we saw some significant improvements as 
a result of the stimulus package. In fact, in Vermont, recently, we 
have put more money in rebuilding our roads and bridges with very good 
success. I think the people of Vermont see the difference. In the last 
couple years, directly as a result of the stimulus package, we have 
made significant improvements on a number of bridges but nowhere near 
enough.
  The point I want to make is that with our infrastructure collapsing, 
with the American Society of Civil Engineers suggesting we need to 
spend $2.2 trillion in the next 5 years just to maintain where we are, 
we have an agreement before us which puts zero dollars in 
infrastructure. According to this book:

       We need to invest $850 billion over the next 50 years to 
     get all of America's bridges into good shape.

  Trust me, we are not coming anywhere near that right now.

       But it is not just our roads. It is not just our public 
     transportation. It is not just our bridges. When we talk 
     about infrastructure, we also have to talk about dams.
       On March 16, 2006, the Ka Loko Dam in Kilauea, Hawaii, 
     collapsed, and seven people died when the Ka Loko Dam 
     breached after weeks of heavy rain, sending 1.6 million tons 
     of water downstream.
       Dams are a vital part of America's infrastructure. They 
     help provide for drinking, irrigation, and agriculture, and 
     generate much needed power, and often offer protection from 
     floods. Yet our dams are growing old. There are more than 
     85,000 dams in America, and the average age is 51 years. At 
     the same time, more and more people are moving into 
     developments located below dams that require significantly 
     greater safety standards. But we have had a hard time keeping 
     up with the increase in the so-called high-hazard dams. 
     Indeed, we are falling further and further behind.

  So the point here is, we have a major agreement. People are concerned 
about creating jobs. We are investing zero in our infrastructure, and 
dams are a very important part of our infrastructure, as are levees. 
And I suspect Senator Landrieu, who was here a little while ago, would 
have something to say about levees.
  All right. So we are talking about an infrastructure which is 
collapsing. We are talking about China investing far more in terms of 
their GDP into infrastructure improvement than we are. We are talking 
about being in the midst of a major recession, where we desperately 
want to grow jobs, and yet this proposal does not add one cent into our 
infrastructure.
  Now, again, I am going back to the very good book written by Arianna 
Huffington called ``Third World America.'' She writes:

       As bad as America's sewers, roads, bridges, dams, and water 
     power systems are, they pale in comparison to the crisis we 
     are facing in our schools. I am not talking about the 
     physical state of our dilapidated public school buildings, 
     although the National Education Association estimates that it 
     would take $322 billion to bring America's school buildings 
     into good repair.

  I have been in schools in Vermont and elsewhere which were old and 
crumbling, and I have been in schools which are new and state of the 
art. I think anyone who has seen the contrast in terms of the attitude 
of the students in those types of schools will understand it is 
important to give these kids good places in which to learn and to grow. 
It means a lot to them when they see a building that is new that has 
state-of-the-art equipment, as opposed to one that is crumbling. It 
suggests to them what we as a society feel about them.
  Arianna Huffington writes:

       Nothing is quickening our descent into Third World status 
     faster than our resounding failure to properly educate our 
     children. This failure has profound consequences for our 
     future, both at home and as we look to compete with the rest 
     of the world in the global economy.

  She writes:

       Historically, education has been the great equalizer.

  That is certainly the case.

       That has been the incredible virtue of our public school 
     system--

  What we have taken as kids, who spent--my father did not graduate 
from high school. My mother did. That was it.

     --and given millions of young people the opportunity to get a 
     good education in school and be able to go to college and use 
     their potential. The springboard to the middle class and 
     beyond has been education. It was a promise we made to all of 
     our people.

  What we as a nation said is, regardless of your income, we are going 
to provide you with the best possible education in order to succeed in 
life. That is something extraordinary, that no matter what your income 
is, we are going to provide you with a great education. As a kid, I 
went to public schools, and I did have a very good education.

       But something has gone in recent years terribly wrong, and 
     we have slipped further and further behind many other 
     countries. Among 30 developed countries ranked by the 
     Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--

  That is the OECD--

     the United States ranked 25th in math and 21st in science.

  So 25th in math, 21st in science.

       Even the top 10 percent of the American students--our best 
     and brightest--ranked only 24th in the world in math 
     literacy.

  There was another study, I think probably just a more updated OECD 
study, that came out just the other day, reported in the New York 
Times, where kids in Shanghai were leading the world in these types of 
tests as compared to our own students. They are studied. They have 
better schools, better teachers, more investments in their education. 
And there is a culture there. There is a culture. It is not fair to 
blame the kids.
  Does anyone seriously believe in the United States of America we take 
intellectual development seriously? I was

[[Page S8760]]

reading today--I do not remember the guy's name, who it was--a 
basketball player or a baseball player just signing a contract for 
untold tens of millions of dollars. Yet you have teachers starting off 
at $30,000, $32,000. Is anyone going to suggest in a serious way we 
reward people who become childcare workers or teachers?
  We have childcare workers taking care of little kids--which may be 
the most important job in our society because there is the brain 
development that takes place between zero and 3 that has a large part 
to do with what a human being becomes--people leaving early childhood 
education in order to move up the economic ladder and get a job at 
McDonald's because pay is so low, benefits are so low. What are we 
doing as a nation?
  She writes:

       A National Assessment of Educational Progress report found 
     that just 33 percent of U.S. fourth graders and 32 percent 
     eighth graders were proficient in reading.

  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
  So I think her point is that if we are not going to become a Third 
World nation, we have to start investing in this country--in our 
physical infrastructure, in our human infrastructure, and in our 
educational infrastructure.
  Let me give you some examples of what this means in real terms. 
Today, unemployment in our country--the official unemployment rate is 
9.8 percent. For those without a high school diploma, it is 15.6 
percent, compared to 5.6 percent for college graduates. Mr. President, 
67 percent of high school graduates do not have enough of the skills 
required for success in college and the 21st century workforce.
  As many as 170,000 high school graduates each year are prepared to go 
on to college but cannot afford that. Let me repeat that. About 170,000 
young people in this country, who graduate high school, who want to go 
to college, are unable to do it because they cannot afford it.
  Are we nuts? What are we doing in wasting the extraordinary 
intellectual potential of all of these young people? What we are saying 
to them is because you don't have the money and because college is so 
expensive, and because our Federal Government is more busy giving tax 
breaks to billionaires and fighting two wars, we are not investing in 
you.

  That makes no sense at all. When you invest in your kids, you are 
investing in the future of America. They are America. And if they are 
not well educated, how are they going to become productive members of 
society? How are we going to compete against China and Europe and other 
countries around the world that are investing in education?
  Here is something we don't talk about enough: The fastest growing 
occupations are those that require higher levels of education and 
greater technical competency. So we have a problem--it is true in 
Vermont and it is true all over the country--which is we have jobs out 
there, good jobs, and those jobs cannot be filled because our young 
people don't have the job skills to fill them. How absurd is that?
  I remember there was a piece in one of the papers, I think it was in 
Ohio, where after the worst of the recession, a lot of layoffs--I think 
it was Ohio--they were beginning to hire workers and these were for 
sophisticated, high-tech jobs. They brought workers in and brought them 
in and brought them in, and they couldn't come up with the number of 
workers they needed to fill the jobs they had. What does that say about 
our educational system?
  Data from Alliance for Excellent Education, 2009: 1,800 Vermont 
dropouts cost the State $459 million of lost lifetime earnings for the 
State and $19.4 million in health care costs. In other words, what 
everybody understands is if you don't invest in your young people, they 
are not going to become productive, tax-paying workers. As often as 
not, they will get involved in self-destructive activity--drugs, crime, 
whatever. They will end up in jail, and we end up spending tens of 
thousands of dollars keeping them in jail rather than seeing them out 
there as productive members of society contributing their fair share in 
taxes.
  The Urban Institute says we can reduce child poverty--which I 
mentioned earlier is the highest in the industrialized world--by 35 
percent if we provide childcare subsidies to families with income less 
than 50 percent of State median.
  This is an issue I feel very strongly about. It is, to me, beyond 
comprehension that in Vermont and throughout this country, it is 
extremely difficult for working-class families to find affordable, good 
quality childcare. We are not back in the 1950s where daddy went to 
work and mommy stayed home taking care of the kids. Mom is at work as 
well. And we have families all over this country--middle-class, 
working-class families--saying, I cannot find quality childcare. We are 
uncomfortable leaving our 2-year-old or 3-year-old. We can't find 
childcare at a rate we can afford.
  In this area, again, we are far behind many other countries around 
the world. Kids who do not get intellectually challenging early 
childhood education, kids who do not get the emotional support they 
need from zero to 3 to 4, will enter school already quite behind other 
kids. Then, 5 years later, 10 years later, they will be dropping out of 
school and they will be doing drugs and they will be ending up in jail 
at great expense. How long does it take us to understand that investing 
in our children, our youngest children, is enormously important for our 
country? It is a good investment. It is much better to invest in 
childcare than in keeping people locked up in jails.
  Seventy-five percent of American youth who apply to the military are 
ineligible to serve because of low cognitive capacities, criminal 
records, or obesity. This is quite unbelievable. Now we are not only 
talking about not being able to compete internationally because we are 
not bringing forth the kind of educated people we need, because of the 
inadequacies of our schools and childcare and so forth--this almost 
becomes a national security issue, if you like. Seventy-five percent of 
American youth who apply to the military are ineligible to serve 
because of low cognitive capacities, criminal records, or obesity. It 
gives me no pride, no happiness, to bring forth these statistics. But 
as a nation, we are going to have to grasp these things. Either we can 
ignore these things, either we can run away from reality, put our heads 
underneath the carpet, or we can say we are not going to allow America 
to become a Third World nation, that we are going to turn this country 
around.
  But we are not going to turn the country around unless we rethink our 
priorities. One of our priorities cannot be more tax breaks for the 
richest people in this country.
  From the 1960s to 2006, the United States fell from first to 18th out 
of 24 industrialized nations in high school graduation rates. What 
happens in today's economy if a kid does not graduate high school? If 
my memory is correct, about 30 percent of our kids--and I know these 
figures are fuzzy because it is hard to determine who is dropping out 
and who is not, but my understanding is about 30 percent of our kids 
drop out of high school. What happens to those kids? Where do they go? 
How many of them end up in jail? How many of them do drugs? As a 
nation, I think we can do a lot better than that. We should not have 
gone from first to 18th out of 24 industrialized nations in high school 
graduation rates. Dropouts are eight times more likely to be 
incarcerated. In other words, when kids fail in school, they are going 
to end up in jail--eight times more likely. Eighty-two percent of those 
in prison are high school dropouts.
  I will tell my colleagues a funny experience. I was in Burlington 
last week. I met this fellow. He came up and was chatting with me. He 
said, I just got out of jail. What struck me is he was a well educated 
young man. He was very articulate. I suspect he had gone to college. 
What struck me is how rare that is, as the statistics aptly 
demonstrate. The people who end up in jail overwhelmingly are high 
school dropouts, people who don't have the education to make it in the 
world.
  When we talk about the need to substantially increase funding for 
early childhood education, we should understand that State-funded, pre-
K programs currently serve 24 percent of 4-year-olds and 4 percent of 
3-year-olds. In other words, there are millions of families who would 
like to see their kids be able to access good quality childcare but 
can't find that in their States--again, in contrast to giving tax

[[Page S8761]]

breaks to billionaires who don't need it and in some cases are not even 
asking for it. The younger the age of investment in human capital, the 
higher the rate of return on that investment. If society invests early 
enough, it can raise cognitive and socio-emotional levels and the 
health of disadvantaged kids. One doesn't need to be a psychologist to 
understand that. If kids get off to a good start in life, if they have 
the intellectual support, the intellectual development, and the 
emotional support, those kids are much more likely to do well in 
school, much less likely to drop out, much less likely to be a burden 
on society, much less likely to end up in jail, much less likely to do 
drugs, et cetera. This is an investment we should be making.
  I wish to get back for a moment to the agreement the President made 
with the Republican leadership and why I think it is a bad agreement 
and why I believe we can do much better. The way we are going to 
improve this agreement is when millions of people all over this country 
say, wait a second. Wait a second. This was an agreement reached behind 
closed doors. There are Members in the House and the Senate who didn't 
know about the agreement. What about the average American out there? I 
wonder how many people believe it makes a lot of sense, with a $13.7 
trillion national debt, to be giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest 
people in this country?
  I have to tell my colleagues, the calls in my office are coming 98, 
99 percent to 1 against these agreements. People think we can do better 
and our job is to do better. The way we do better is when people all 
over this country stand up and say, Wait a minute, Congress. Your job 
is to represent the middle class, to represent our kids, and not to 
represent the wealthiest people in this country.
  I mentioned earlier, I think certainly one of the major objections to 
this agreement is that it provides tens of billions of dollars to the 
wealthiest people in this country at a time when the rich are already 
doing phenomenally well and at a time when the wealthiest people have 
already experienced huge tax breaks. I think most people think that 
does not make sense. Let me give an example, not to pick on particular 
individuals--that is not my goal--but so we know this.
  According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, if the Bush tax breaks for 
the top 2 percent are extended, these are some of the people who will 
benefit and what kind of benefits they will receive: Rupert Murdoch, 
the CEO of News Corporation, would receive a $1.3 million tax break 
next year. Mr. Murdoch is a billionaire. Do we really think he needs 
that? Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, whose bank got a $29 
billion bailout from the Federal Reserve, will receive a $1.1 million 
tax break. Trust me, Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, is doing 
just fine. Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup, the bank that got a $50 
billion bailout, would receive $785,000 in tax breaks. Ken Lewis, the 
former CEO of Bank of America--a bank that got a $45 billion bailout--
the guy is already fabulously wealthy--would receive a $713,000 tax 
break. The CEO of Wells Fargo--these are the largest banks in America; 
the CEOs of these banks are already making huge compensation. John 
Stumpf, who is the CEO of Wells Fargo, would receive a $318,000 tax 
break every single year. The CEO of Morgan Stanley, John Mack, whose 
bank got a $10 billion bailout, would receive a $926,000 a year tax 
break. The CEO of Aetna, Ronald Williams, would receive a tax break 
worth $875,000.
  I contrast that, as I did earlier, to the fact that 2 days ago, the 
Presiding Officer and I and a total of 53 Members of the Senate said, 
You know, maybe we should provide a $250 check this year to seniors on 
Social Security and to disabled vets because they haven't gotten a COLA 
for 2 years--a $250 check. People making $14,000, $15,000 a year 
desperately need a little bit of help. We couldn't get one Republican 
vote. But when it comes to the CEO of a major bank who is already a 
multimillionaire--we are talking about $6 million, $7 million, $8 
million a year in tax breaks--that is not what we should be doing as a 
nation.
  Furthermore, I know President Obama and others have said, Well, let's 
not worry, because these tax breaks are just temporary--just temporary. 
They are only going to be given for 2 years. I have been in Washington 
long enough to know that when you give a temporary tax break for 2 
years, you are, in fact, giving a long-term tax break or maybe even a 
permanent tax break. Because 2 years from now, the exact same arguments 
will be made: if you do away with those tax breaks for the rich, you 
are raising taxes. Do you want to raise taxes, a terrible thing to do? 
That same argument will be made. But there is one difference. The 
difference is that when President Obama ran for President and since he 
has been President, he has time and time again come out against those 
tax breaks. He does not believe in them. I believe him, and I know that 
he doesn't. But if he is the Democratic candidate for President and he 
says: Reelect me to be President because in the future I am going to 
really get rid of these tax breaks, I am afraid his credibility is not 
very high because that is what he said last time. I guess there is a 
limit as to how many times you can cry wolf.

  (Mr. LEVIN assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. SANDERS. If these tax breaks for the wealthiest people are 
extended for 2 years, there is a strong likelihood they will be 
extended for many years beyond those 2 and perhaps even permanently. 
That brings us back to the Bush-era nonsense of believing that tax 
breaks for the rich and trickle-down economics are going to help the 
middle-class and working families of this country.
  While the personal income tax issue and extending them for the top 2 
percent has received a lot of national attention, what has not gotten a 
whole lot of discussion is that that is not the only unfair and absurd 
tax proposal out there. The agreement struck between the President and 
the Republican leadership continues the Bush era 15 percent tax rate on 
capital gains and dividends, meaning those people who make their living 
off of their investments will continue to pay a substantially lower tax 
rate than firemen, teachers, and nurses. So if you are a wealthy person 
and you earn money from dividends--I believe the overwhelming majority 
of those capital gains accrue to the top 1 percent--you are going to be 
paying a tax on that income of 15 percent, which is less than you pay 
if you are a fireman, a police officer, a teacher, or a nurse. So what 
we are doing there is extending not only the personal income tax breaks 
for the very rich but a host of other taxes as well.
  On top of all of that--and I know many of my colleagues have picked 
up on this and are extremely upset, and I think that is one of the 
reasons the Democrats in the House just yesterday said they don't want 
to bring this proposal to the floor for a vote--this agreement includes 
a horrendous proposal regarding the estate tax.
  The estate tax is a proposal Teddy Roosevelt talked about in the year 
1906. It was eventually enacted in 1916. Here is what Teddy Roosevelt 
said about this issue in August of 1906--and it is worth repeating this 
because what the proposal struck between the President and the 
Republican leadership does is lower the estate tax substantially. Here 
is what Teddy Roosevelt said in 1906:

       The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, 
     restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a 
     small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful 
     men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. 
     . . .

  This is Teddy Roosevelt, who by then had served as President of the 
United States.
  He continued:

       No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been 
     fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a 
     dollar's worth of service rendered--not gambling in stocks, 
     but service rendered.

  This guy was pretty prophetic back in 1910.
  He continues:

       The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere 
     fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiated in 
     kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of 
     relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated 
     inheritance tax on big fortunes properly safeguarded against 
     evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the 
     estate.

  Wow, Teddy Roosevelt hit the nail on the head. That was 100 years 
ago. He was worried that a small group of people with incredible money 
would be able to pass that money on, and what you would create would be 
an oligarchic form of government with a small

[[Page S8762]]

number of people not just holding economic power but significant 
political power.
  It is ironic that, right now, as a result of the disastrous Citizens 
United decision, what Roosevelt foretold, predicted, is exactly what is 
happening. You have a handful of billionaires now sitting around 
deciding how much of their fortune they are going to invest in 
political campaigns all over this country to defeat people like me who 
are opposed to their agenda and support other people who are in 
agreement with it. That is what Roosevelt talked about. That is exactly 
what is happening.
  So what we are looking at in this proposal is a situation where the 
estate tax rate, which was 55 percent under President Clinton, will 
decline to 35 percent, with an exemption on the first $5 million of an 
individual's estate, $10 million per couple. Here is the important 
point that has to be made. I think a lot of people don't understand 
this. Certainly, our Republican friends have done a very good job in 
distorting reality on this one. There are millions of Americans who 
believe that when they die, their children will have to pay an estate 
tax. That is absolutely and categorically incorrect. As this chart 
shows, only a tiny fraction of estates from deaths in 2009 owed any 
estate tax. That number is about .24 percent. Less than three-tenths of 
1 percent of American families paid any tax on the estates they were 
left. So 99.7 percent of American families did not pay one cent in 
estate taxes. That is the simple truth. The so-called death tax our 
Republican friends talk about a whole lot is the estate tax, and 99.7 
percent of families don't pay a nickel on it. The people who do pay are 
not the rich; they are the very, very rich.
  Let me give you one example of the absurdity of lowering the tax rate 
or, even worse, ending the estate tax, as some of our Republican 
colleagues would like to do. Here is this chart. One example of what--
well, this agreement doesn't do that; it lowers the rates. If they were 
to wipe it out completely, as Republicans want to do, Walmart owners, 
Sam Walton's family, the heirs to the Walmart fortune, which is worth--
well, it may be more or less now, but it is about $86 billion. One 
family is worth $86 billion. They are doing pretty good. If we abolish 
the estate tax, as our Republican friends would have us do, the Walton 
family alone would receive an estimated $32.7 billion tax break, if the 
estate tax was completely repealed--one family, $32.7 billion. This is 
patently insane. This is insane. Insane.
  We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized 
world. We have massive unemployment. I am trying to get seniors--50-
plus million people--a $250 check, by the way, because we have not seen 
a COLA for the last 2 years for seniors and disabled vets. That would 
cost, in 1 year, about $14 billion. The Walton family itself would get 
more than double in a tax break what some of us are fighting for for 
over 50 million seniors and disabled vets. We can't afford to give $14 
billion to help some of the people in this country who are struggling 
the hardest. We cannot do that, but somehow we can afford to give $32.7 
billion in tax breaks to one of the richest families in this country. 
If that makes sense to anybody, please call my office. It doesn't make 
sense to me, and I don't think it makes sense to the vast majority of 
the American people.
  Under this agreement, the estate tax rate, which was 55 percent under 
President Clinton, will decline to 35 percent, with an exemption on the 
first $5 million of an individual's estate, $10 million for couples. 
Let's remember again that this tax applies only to the top three-tenths 
of 1 percent of the families in this country. This is not just a tax 
break for the rich; it is a tax break for the very, very rich.
  Again, this agreement says we are only going to extend this for 2 
years. Well, frankly, I doubt that very much. I suspect that 2 years 
from now the same argument will be made. They will be extending it. 
Frankly, our Republican colleagues, representing the richest people in 
the world, are hell-bent on abolishing the estate tax completely.
  Those are some of the reasons I think we should be voting against 
this agreement.
  Third--and this is an issue I have been talking about, and I am happy 
to hear there is more discussion about this in the last few days--is 
the so-called payroll tax holiday. What that is about is that this 
would cut $120 billion in Social Security payroll tax for workers. On 
the surface, this sounds like a very good idea because the worker, 
instead of paying 6.2 percent into Social Security, pays 4.2 percent. 
If you think about it for 2 seconds, you really understand that it is 
not a good idea because this is money being diverted from the Social 
Security trust fund.
  Social Security, in my view, has been the most successful Federal 
program in perhaps the history of our country. In the last 75 years, 
whether in good or bad times, Social Security has paid out every nickel 
owed to every eligible American. Today, Social Security has a $2.6 
trillion surplus. Today, Social Security can pay out benefits for the 
next 29 years. Our goal, and what we must do, is make sure we extend it 
beyond 29 years, for the next 75 years. Well, if we divert $120 billion 
from the Social Security trust fund and give it to workers today, what 
you are doing is cutting back the viability--the long-term viability--
of Social Security.
  That is not just Bernie Sanders raising this issue. There are many 
people representing millions of senior citizens who are deeply 
concerned about this proposal--this provision in the agreement between 
the President and the Republican leadership.
  The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare is 
one of the very largest senior groups in America. They do a very good 
job. We have many seniors in Vermont who are members of this 
organization. Their job is to do what the title of the organization 
suggests, which is to preserve Social Security and Medicare. Just the 
other day, they sent out a news release, and the title of the news 
release was ``Cutting Contributions to Social Security Signals the 
Beginning of the End; Payroll Tax Holiday is Anything But.''
  Let me quote from Barbara Kennelly, a former member of Congress, who 
is the president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social 
Security and Medicare.

       Even though Social Security contributed nothing to the 
     current economic crisis, it has been bartered in a deal that 
     provides deficit-busting tax cuts for the wealthy. Diverting 
     $120 billion in Social Security contributions for a so-
     called tax holiday may sound like a good deal for workers 
     now, but it is bad business for the program that a 
     majority of middle-class seniors will rely upon in the 
     future.

  That, again, is a quote from Barbara Kennelly, President and CEO of 
the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
  Mr. President, I think many of us should understand where this 
concept originated. This is not a progressive idea. This is an idea 
that came from Republicans and conservatives who want to end Social 
Security. I want to read an interesting quote from a gentleman named 
Bruce Bartlett. Mr. Bartlett was a former top adviser to Presidents 
Reagan and George H.W. Bush. This is what he wrote in opposition to 
this payroll tax cut.

       What are the odds that Republicans will ever allow this 1-
     year tax holiday to expire? They wrote the Bush tax cuts with 
     explicit expiration dates. Then, when it came time for the 
     law they wrote to take effect, exactly as they wrote it, they 
     said any failure to extend them permanently would constitute 
     the biggest tax increase in history.

  So what Mr. Bartlett is saying--and I will go back to his quote in a 
second--is what we all know to be true; that around here, in Congress, 
if you provide a tax break for 1 year--in this case a payroll tax 
holiday--a year from now, if you restore the old rates--which are 6.2 
percent--our Republican friends are going to say Democrats are raising 
your taxes. It ``ain't'' gonna happen.
  This 1-year extension could well become a permanent extension, and if 
it becomes a permanent extension, you are diverting a huge amount of 
money from Social Security and you are weakening the entire financial 
structure of Social Security in this country, which I expect is exactly 
what some would like to do.
  President Obama says: Well, not to worry. It is only 1 year. Don't 
worry, that 1 year is going to be covered by the Federal Government.
  So for the very first time, out of the Treasury Department, money is 
going

[[Page S8763]]

to come into Social Security, which has always been 100 percent 
dependent, as it should be, on payroll taxes. For the first time, we 
are breaking that. Around here you do it once and it is going to 
continue.
  Barbara Kennelly, the President of the National Committee to Preserve 
Social Security and Medicare, says:

       Cutting these contributions to Social Security signals the 
     beginning of the end.

  So we should be very, very, very mindful of that. We should not 
support this payroll tax. It is one of the more dangerous provisions in 
this agreement.
  But let me get back now, if I might, to what Bruce Bartlett--a former 
top adviser for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush--recently wrote:

       If allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is the biggest tax 
     increase in history--one that Republicans claim would 
     decimate a still fragile economy--then surely the expiration 
     of a payroll tax holiday would also constitute a massive tax 
     increase on the working people of America. Republicans would 
     prefer to destroy Social Security's finances or permanently 
     fund it with general revenues than allow a once-suspended 
     payroll tax to be reimposed. Arch Social Security hater Peter 
     Ferrara once told me that funding it with general revenues 
     was part of his plan to destroy it by converting Social 
     Security into a welfare program rather than an earned 
     benefit.

  Once again, that is a quote from Bruce Bartlett, a former adviser to 
President Reagan and the first President Bush. So what he is saying 
is--and this is maybe one of the sleeping issues in this agreement 
between the President and the Republican leadership--we may be taking a 
huge step forward in destroying the most important program in this 
country--which is Social Security--by diverting now $120 billion, and 
in the future hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars from this 
program so that, in fact, it will not be there for our kids and our 
grandchildren.
  Mr. President, the fourth point I want to make in opposition to this 
agreement--and one that I have made before and read a little bit 
about--is that while some of the business taxes in this agreement may 
work to create jobs, some of them won't. The more important point is 
that economists on both ends of the political spectrum believe the 
better way to spur the economy and to create the millions and millions 
of jobs we must create is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
  Just a few minutes ago I read excerpts from a very good book by a 
friend of mine, Arianna Huffington, entitled ``Third World America.'' 
The purpose of her book was to give us a warning that if we as a nation 
do not get our act together in a variety of ways, including our 
physical infrastructure, we are headed down the pike to be a Third 
World nation.
  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we as a nation 
need to spend $2.2 trillion in the next 5 years alone in order to take 
care of our infrastructure needs.
  Unfortunately, this agreement, signed by the President and the 
Republicans, doesn't put one penny into infrastructure. So if we are 
serious about creating jobs, if we are serious about making sure our 
economy can be competitive in the global economy, we have to be 
watching what other countries are doing, and they are investing far 
more than we are.
  The stimulus package, by the way, will help us very much in Vermont 
in this area. Right now, if you were to drive around the State of 
Vermont--and I think in many other places in this country--and you took 
out your cell phone, you would find it very hard to make calls in a 
number of areas of the State. A few months ago, I was literally a mile 
and a half away from our State capital in Montpelier, near Northfield, 
VT. I could not make a telephone call with my cell phone. That is true 
in many parts of Vermont and in many areas of America. We are lagging 
behind many other countries in terms of the accessibility of cell phone 
service and broadband--and broadband.
  So I am happy to say that in Vermont we received a very generous 
grant through the stimulus package that will help us, and other States 
did the same. But those are areas where we have to invest. You have to 
invest in broadband and make sure cell phone service is available in 
rural America--all over America. I talked a moment ago about our train 
services. There are train services today which are worse than they were 
30 or 40 years ago. It takes longer to get from destination A to 
destination B. China is investing huge sums of money building high-
speed rail at a rate that we could not even dream about.
  So while in this agreement we do have money for business tax cuts, I 
do not think that is the best way to invest taxpayer money if we are 
serious about creating the jobs that we need. Corporate America already 
is sitting on close to $2 trillion cash on hand. I don't know that more 
tax breaks are going to help them very much. I think that it is a lot 
smarter--and I think most economists agree with me--to be investing in 
our infrastructure, both to create jobs now and to improve our 
competitiveness in years to come.
  Further, Mr. President, I want to say a word on this--I mentioned 
this earlier today: President Obama talks about this being a compromise 
agreement; you can't get everything you want. I certainly understand 
that. But one of the aspects of the compromise he points to is an 
extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months. Well, let me be very 
clear. I think at a time when 2 million of our fellow Americans are 
about to lose their unemployment, at a time when unemployment is 
extraordinarily high--long-term unemployment is, I think, higher than 
at any point on record, with people looking for work month after month 
after month and not finding it--it would be morally unacceptable if 
this country did not extend unemployment benefits for those workers for 
13 months. Yet the President sees this as a great sign of compromise.
  I would argue the contrary. I would suggest to you that for the past 
40 years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations and 
under Democratic and Republican leadership in the Senate or in the 
House, whenever the unemployment rate has been above 7.2 
percent, unemployment insurance has always been extended. In other 
words, this has been a bipartisan policy for 40 years. I don't want to 
see us seeing and accepting as a really great give on the part of 
Republicans--something that they are giving us as part of a 
compromise--when it has been bipartisan policy for 40 years under 
Democratic and Republican leadership. So I don't accept this as a great 
gift. I think the American people understand you don't turn your backs 
on unemployed workers--people who have been unemployed for long periods 
of time. You don't allow those people to lose their homes. You don't 
force these people out into the streets. You don't take away what 
shreds of dignity they have remaining. That is not what you do. That 
has always been Republican philosophy as well as Democratic philosophy. 
This is not a great gift. So I do not accept this is a compromise.

  Let me be very clear. As I said earlier, I do believe there are 
positive parts of this agreement that must be maintained as we move 
forward toward a better agreement. Let me cite some of them that make a 
lot of sense to me and that I believe we have to retain and build on.
  The obvious one, in addition to extending unemployment benefits, is 
we have to extend middle-class tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. As 
I have been documenting over and over again today, we are looking at a 
situation where the middle class in this country is collapsing. Under 
President Bush, the median family income went down by $2,200. People 
are losing their health care. It would be asinine, it would be 
unacceptable if the middle class did not continue to receive the tax 
breaks that were developed in 2001 and 2003. That, to a large degree, 
is what this fight is about. We have to extend those tax breaks to the 
middle class but not tax breaks to the millionaires and billionaires.
  Further, there are some other good provisions in this agreement--the 
earned-income tax credit for working Americans and the child and 
college tax credits--and they are very important. They will keep 
millions of our fellow Americans from slipping out of the middle class 
and into poverty, and they will allow millions of our fellow citizens 
to send their kids to college.
  I just talked a moment ago about the fact that we have over 100,000 
families in this country where kids graduate high school wanting to go 
to college but can't afford to do so. This proposal will help them do 
that, and that is right.

[[Page S8764]]

  But despite the fact there are some good and important provisions in 
this proposal, when we look at the overall package, when we look at a 
$13.7 trillion national debt and a declining middle class, I think what 
we have to say is this package just doesn't do it. It is just not good 
enough.
  The President says he knows how to count votes. I understand that. He 
says: Well, you had a couple of votes here to make sure that we would 
not give tax breaks to millionaires. And the President has been very 
clear he does not want to do that. I understand that. But he says: What 
choice do I have?
  I think the answer is that we have to fight this issue. In my view, 
the solution ultimately will not be resolved inside the beltway, in the 
Senate or in the House. It will be resolved when millions of Americans 
get on their telephones, get on their computers, and let their Senators 
and their Members of the House of Representatives know they are 
profoundly outraged that at a time when the rich never had it so good, 
and when we have a huge national debt, this agreement contains huge tax 
breaks for those people who don't need it. That is how we defeat this.
  I am not sure that all alone here in the debate I am going to turn 
any of my Republican or even some Democratic colleagues around. But I 
do believe that, if people all over this country stand up and say: Wait 
a minute, how much do the richest people in this country want? I just 
documented a few moments ago that the top 400 wealthiest people in this 
country saw a doubling of their income under President Bush--a doubling 
of their income--and tax rates went down. When is enough enough? How 
much do they need?

  I think and I would hope, by the way, that this is certainly not just 
a progressive issue. I am a progressive. This is a conservative issue. 
Year after year, I have heard our conservative friends telling us: My 
goodness, we just cannot continue to raise the national debt; we have 
to do something about this unsustainable deficit. This agreement grows, 
increases the national debt. What kind of honest conservative can vote 
to increase the national debt? And if they do, please, no more lectures 
here on the floor of the Senate. Your hypocrisy will be known to 
everybody. Don't tell us you are concerned about the national debt and 
give tax breaks to billionaires and raise the national debt so our kids 
and grandchildren in the middle class will have to pay higher taxes in 
order to pay off the debt that was caused by you giving tax breaks to 
millionaires. Please, no more lectures on that issue. Just say: OK, 
rich people contributed to my campaign; I have to do what they want. 
That will be honest. Please, no more lectures about your concern about 
the national debt.
  Again, I want to reiterate this point. Everybody says: Don't worry, 
these are only 2 years. These are not, in my view, 2 years. If you do 
them for 2 years, the same old argument will be back 2 years from now, 
and we will be in the midst of a Presidential election. What our 
Republican friends will say, as sure as I am standing here--and I am 
glad we have a gentleman putting this in the Congressional Record. I 
want people to go back to the Congressional Record. I am sure I will be 
proven right that 2 years from now our Republican friends will come 
back and they will say: Oh, my word, if you repeal these tax breaks, 
you are going to be raising taxes. We can't do that.
  What will make the situation even more difficult 2 years from now 
than today is you have President Obama--if he is the Democratic 
candidate 2 years from now, he will say: I don't believe in these tax 
breaks for the rich, and I will do my best to repeal them. But his 
credibility has been damaged because that is what he said in the last 
campaign. That is what he has been saying all along. The President does 
not believe in extending these tax breaks for the wealthy. I know that. 
Everybody knows that. But if he caves in now, who is going to believe 
he is not going to do the same thing 2 years from now? That is the 
damage.
  Then I think what is even more troublesome is that once we move down 
the path of more tax breaks for the very wealthy, we are accepting the 
heart and soul of trickle-down economics, which has been, to my mind, a 
proven disaster, a failure. I remind the listeners and my colleagues 
that these tax breaks have been in existence since 2001. They were in 
existence throughout almost all of President Bush's tenure. The end 
result was that we lost 600,000 private sector jobs--lost 600,000 
private sector jobs, the worst job performance record maybe in the 
history of this country. Trickle-down economics does not work.
  Giving tax breaks to billionaires does not stimulate the economy. 
Helping working families and the middle class get decent jobs and tax 
breaks for people who need the money and are going to spend the money 
is what creates jobs, not giving tax breaks to billionaires who do not 
need it and who are not going to spend it.
  Again, the point I want to make here is that if people think, oh, 
this is just temporary, this is just 2 years, I believe they are 
kidding themselves. I believe that 2 years from now, the debate will be 
about extending them or perhaps even making them permanent.
  At a time, as I mentioned earlier, where the top 1 percent has seen a 
huge increase in the percentage of income they earn in this country--
going from 8 percent in the 1970s to 23.5 percent now--and where the 
top 1 percent now earns more income than the bottom 50 percent, it is 
totally absurd to be giving tax breaks to people who do not need them, 
and it is not good economics, as well.
  Here is the other irony, as I also mentioned earlier--I guess by this 
time, I am going to be doing a little repetition here. But as I 
mentioned earlier, you have a number of millionaires and some of the 
richest people in this country who will benefit from these tax breaks. 
Do you know what they are saying? Do you know what Warren Buffett is 
saying? Do you know what Bill Gates is saying? Do you know what Ben 
Cohen from Ben & Jerry's is saying? Do you know what many other wealthy 
people are saying? Hey, thanks very much; I don't need it. It is more 
important that you invest in our children. It is more important that we 
protect working families. We are doing just fine, thanks. Our incomes 
have soared, our tax rates have gone down, and we don't need it. In 
other words, we have this absurd situation that not only is this bad 
public policy, we are actually forcing tax breaks on people who don't 
need them and don't even want them. The richest people in this 
country--Bill Gates, Warren Buffett--we don't want it.
  Here is something else. Here is something else that needs to be 
understood. What the Republicans are doing in this agreement is driving 
up the national debt. You may think that is not what the Republicans 
really believe in. They are supposed to be conservatives. They don't 
want a high national debt. Why would they be giving tax breaks to the 
rich and driving up the national debt? There is a rationale. These guys 
are not dumb, and I think they know what they are doing. Here is what 
the argument is. If you drive up the national debt and the deficit, you 
then come back to the floor of the Senate and you say: You know what, 
this national debt and deficit is unsustainable. The only way we can 
deal with it now is by cutting, cutting, cutting. We are already 
beginning to hear how some of those thoughts are going to develop.
  There was, as you know, a deficit reduction commission appointed by 
the President. When I heard who was going to be chairing that 
commission and cochairing it--Alan Simpson, a very nice gentleman but a 
very conservative gentleman who has attacked Social Security for a very 
long period of time, and Erskine Bowles, a conservative Democrat--I had 
serious doubts about what was going to come out of that commission. The 
good news is, they needed 14 votes to pass their recommendations and 
they didn't get the 14. But a lot of the ideas that Senator Simpson and 
Mr. Bowles developed are going to be filtering around this institution.
  What the Republicans will say is that when you have a huge debt--
which they helped create--we are going to have to cut. What are we 
going to have to do? As you recall, that deficit reduction commission 
recommended a savage cut--over 20 percent--in Social Security benefits 
for young workers--major cuts. There was talk about raising the Social 
Security age up to, I think, 69. They are talking about cuts in 
Medicare, cuts in Medicaid, cuts in education.

[[Page S8765]]

  Right now--I think I have documented it a dozen times--it is a 
horrendous situation when so many of our young people cannot afford to 
go to college, and the others who do go to college and graduate end up 
on average something like $25,000 in debt. These guys on the deficit 
reduction commission were recommending that the interest on that debt 
be accrued while students are in college.
  Here we have us slipping behind the rest of the world in terms of our 
percentage of college graduates, and this recommendation is on young 
people, who do not have a lot of money, who were borrowing money, that 
they will have to pay more to go to college. You are going to see it.
  Here is the argument--good, it is going to be in the Congressional 
Record. Check it out, see if I am right. The argument will be: The 
deficit is going up, the national debt is going up. We have to attack 
and cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans programs.
  This year--Senator Landrieu from Louisiana made this point a little 
while ago--and I think this is roughly right--our soldiers, men and 
women in the Armed Forces, are going to get a 1.8-percent increase in 
their salaries this year, 1.8 percent for people putting their lives on 
the line to defend this country. A $250 check for 50-plus million 
seniors and disabled vets--we couldn't pass it; too much money--$14 
billion. They are going to come back and cut and cut in the name of 
trying to deal with the high deficit which they are now increasing. 
That is an issue we must be addressing.

  In my view, while there are some good parts of the proposal, it is 
certainly one that should be significantly improved. I believe the way 
it can be improved is by the American people beginning to get involved 
in the process.
  I can tell you, as I said earlier, I don't know how the calls are 
going today in my office because I have been here, but for the last 3 
days, we have received thousands of phone calls and e-mails, and over 
98 percent of them have been against this proposal. The American people 
believe, the people in Vermont believe we can do a lot better job in 
crafting a proposal that represents the middle class and our kids and 
not just the wealthiest people in this country.
  When we talk about this proposal negotiated by the White House and 
Republican leadership, again, it has to be put within the broad context 
of what is going on in America. That context is not a pretty picture. 
That context requires us to understand that the middle class, which has 
been the backbone of this country for so very long, is in the process 
of disappearing. That context makes us understand that millions of 
families in this country are worried, parents are worried, not just 
about their own lives--they are prepared to work 50 or 60 hours a week; 
they are prepared to cut back on their own needs. I think what is 
hurting them more deeply is the kind of future they are contemplating 
for their children. They are worried that, for the first time in the 
modern history of America, their kids will get jobs that will pay them 
lower salaries than what the parents have earned. They are worried that 
unemployment will be much more likely for their kids than for 
themselves. They are worried that while they were able to scrape 
through--in my case, I was able to scrape through college. I borrowed 
some money, did some jobs, and made it like millions of other people. 
They are worried that with the high cost of a college education and the 
reduction in their real earnings, they are not going to be able to send 
their kids to college. I have received e-mails--and I am sure you have, 
Mr. President--the saddest thing in the world, where you have parents 
who are saying: We have saved all of our lives for the thing we wanted 
the most, which was to be able to send our son or daughter to college, 
and we can't do that now. That is the overall context this agreement 
has to be placed within.
  The issue is, again and again, the richest people in this country do 
not need tax breaks. They are doing phenomenally well. They have 
already been given huge amounts of tax breaks. It is the middle class, 
it is the working families, it is the lower income people we have to be 
worrying about and not just the wealthy and the powerful.
  When we talk about why the middle class is declining, that is a tough 
issue. I am not here to suggest I know all of the answers. I surely 
don't. It is a complicated issue. Honest people have differences of 
opinion. But let me touch on a few areas that I think will explain why 
poverty is going up and the middle class is going down. One of them 
deals with our trade policies.
  I can remember a number of years ago I was in the House of 
Representatives, and I can remember the lobbyists and the big money 
interests coming around and saying: If you guys only pass NAFTA, this 
would create a whole lot of jobs in the United States because we would 
be able to ship products made in America to Mexico. In fact, as I 
recall--it seems almost humorous now--what they said is: If we pass 
NAFTA, it would solve the problem of illegal immigration because the 
economy of Mexico would be so strong that people would stay in their 
own country and not try to sneak across the border. That is, as we look 
back on it, somewhat humorous, that that issue was even discussed.
  But one of the areas that, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, 
we have not dealt with is our disastrous trade policy. That is NAFTA; 
that is permanent normal trade relations; that is trade policies which 
have encouraged large corporations in this country to send jobs abroad 
because they can find workers in other countries, in low-wage 
countries, who are prepared to work for pennies an hour.
  I think not only have we not addressed this issue from an economic 
perspective the way we should, I have to tell you, I know that during 
campaigns, a lot of Members of Congress put their 30-second ads on the 
air saying how concerned they are about outsourcing and our trade 
policy. But somehow, the day after the election, I didn't hear that 
discussion resume on the floor of the House or the Senate. I want to 
say this is true not just of Republicans but of Democrats as well.
  A lot of Democrats campaign on the need for trade reform, but it does 
not happen. In fact, I have been here in the Senate now for almost 4 
years. I have not heard one serious--underline ``serious''--discussion 
to explain how in recent years we have lost millions and millions of 
manufacturing jobs, when those jobs were the backbone of the working 
class of this country, not providing only decent wages but decent 
benefits, decent health care, decent pensions.
  There was once a time in this country when a manufacturing job was a 
ticket to the middle class. I have to say something because I remember 
not so many years ago, there were national leaders saying: Well--to the 
young people--you do not have to worry about that factory work anymore. 
You do not have to be involved in production because, you know what. 
All of the jobs in the future are going to be nice and clean in offices 
and on computers.
  I think we demeaned and insulted the people who built the products we 
consumed. There is nothing wrong with a factory job if workers there 
earn a decent wage and have a decent benefit. Those are the jobs that 
built America. I remember, and we should never forget--and we now have 
celebrated the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. There was a speech that 
President Roosevelt gave a day after Pearl Harbor, in a joint session 
to the Congress, when he declared war on Japan.
  I saw a video of that speech. It was a remarkable speech because, at 
that moment, at that moment, the United States was not only fighting 
Japan, and we knew the fight with Germany and Nazism was right around 
the corner, at that point we were having to fight a war on two fronts: 
in Asia and in Europe. Hitler was on the march; the Japanese were in 
China. The Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor. Here we were, just 
about to enter the war. How could we possibly win that war?
  Yet because of the manufacturing capabilities that we had at that 
time, and this is an amazing story, literally in 2\1/2\ years the war 
was essentially won, obviously not completed until 1945. But because of 
the incredible industrial capabilities in this country, the ability to 
transform our manufacturing sector from a consumer-oriented sector, 
from automobiles into tanks; from shirts into uniforms; from hunting 
rifles into machine guns, within 2 or 3 years we had essentially won 
that war. It was an

[[Page S8766]]

incredible effort on the part of workers in this country who 
transformed our economy into an industrial force that was able to 
supply our soldiers with the weapons that they needed to defeat Hitler 
and the Japanese.
  Where are we today in terms of our manufacturing capabilities? As I 
mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went shopping 
for Christmas presents, literally, in just a plain old department 
store. It is literally very hard to find a product not manufactured in 
China. It is very hard to find a product, a gift that we could buy that 
was manufactured in the United States of America.
  I think people understand instinctively that this country will not be 
a major economic player in years to come if we allow our manufacturing 
base to continue to decline. Again, just under Bush, we went from 17 
million manufacturing jobs down to 12 million jobs, in 8 years of Bush. 
How do we survive as a strong industrial power if our manufacturing 
jobs disappear?
  Today there are fewer manufacturing jobs in this country than there 
were in April of 1941, about 8 months before the attack on Pearl 
Harbor; fewer manufacturing jobs today than in April of 1941. Those 
manufacturing jobs that are left--that are left--in many cases pay 
lower wages, with fewer benefits, than they did a generation ago.
  In other words, we are moving not only in a decline in our 
manufacturing jobs but in the wages our workers earn and the benefits 
they receive.
  I raise all of these issues to put this agreement between the 
President and the Republican leadership in a broader context. Today--
and this is just an incredible fact, and it is absolutely frightening 
to the future of the middle class in this country--today, entry level 
automobile workers at General Motors and Chrysler now earn half as 
much, half as much as their peers made just 1 year ago. Instead of 
making $28 an hour, a middle-class wage, they are now making $14 an 
hour. This is in the automobile industry which has always been the gold 
standard for manufacturing jobs in America. If workers with a union in 
the automobile industry are making $14 an hour, what do you think 
workers in New Mexico are going to be making without a strong union?
  So what you are seeing is a dissolution of the middle class, wages 
are going down, and in this remarkable example, a 50-percent reduction; 
the older workers making good wages, new workers half the wages.
  Is this the future of America? Is this what our kids have to look 
forward to, that they are going to be earning half the wages their 
fathers made, that their mothers made? Is that the future? In the midst 
of all of that, we run up a huge national debt, send our jobs to China, 
and we give tax breaks to millionaires? Is that the future these kids 
have to look forward to? I certainly hope not. We are going to have to 
be tough, and we are going to have to take on some very powerful 
special interests to turn this whole thing around.
  Today I have devoted a lot of time to our national debt, $13.7 
trillion, and to our deficit, which is $1.4 trillion. But we cannot 
ignore our trade deficit. In 2008, our trade deficit was nearly $700 
billion. Last year our trade deficit with China alone was almost $227 
billion. In other words, we are purchasing a whole lot more products 
than we are selling.
  Sometimes I get a kick out of hearing the defenders of our trade 
policy talk about all of the products we are exporting. Well, yeah, we 
are exporting a lot, but we are importing a heck of a lot more. So I 
think what you have is a major economic issue. That economic issue is 
that we are losing millions of good-paying jobs because of our 
disastrous trade policy. Furthermore, the jobs we have, on those jobs, 
we are seeing a decline in wages and in benefits.
  I think the bottom line of this is not just an economic issue, it is 
a moral issue as well, and that is when companies such as General 
Electric and all the rest--I do not mean to be picking a lot on General 
Electric, but I have a quote I want to make. This was a few years back. 
I think it is important because it applies not just to General 
Electric. But I want people to hear this. GE is, of course, one of our 
major corporations. The manufacturer's recent disclosure pointed out, 
the taxpayers of this country, through the Fed, provided $16 billion in 
bailout to General Electric during the recent crisis. This is what the 
head, the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, said in 2002, 
December 6:

       When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, 
     China, China, China. You need to be there. You need to change 
     the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a 
     nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 
     billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every 
     discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is 
     extremely attractive. You can take an 18-cubic-foot 
     refrigerator, make it in China, land it in the United States, 
     and land it for less than we can make an 18-cubic-foot 
     refrigerator today ourselves.

  Gee. A couple of years ago when GE had some difficult economic times, 
and they needed $16 billion to bail them out, I did not hear Mr. Immelt 
going to China, China, China, China, China. I did not hear that. I 
heard Mr. Immelt going to the taxpayers of the United States for his 
welfare check.
  So I say to Mr. Immelt, and I say to all of those CEOs who have been 
so quick to run to China, that maybe it is time to start reinvesting in 
the United States of America. But it is not just Mr. Immelt. I do not 
mean to just pick on him. It is all of them. They all see the future in 
China, in Vietnam, in countries where people work for pennies an hour.
  Mr. Immelt came to his decision in the footsteps of the former CEO of 
GE, Jack Welsh. What Jack Welsh was famously quoted as saying:

       Ideally--

  This is the guy who was head of General Electric before Immelt. He 
said:

       Ideally, we would have every plant we own on a barge.

  Do you remember that quote? He said:

       Ideally, we would have every plant we own on a barge.

  What did he mean by that? What he meant by that, if you are on a 
barge, you can move your plant to any part of the world where the labor 
is cheapest. So if it gets too expensive in China, and you have to pay 
people 75 cents an hour, you go to Vietnam. If it gets too expensive in 
Vietnam, maybe you can go to North Korea and have people work under 
marshal law. I do not know.
  But what he was saying is, his goal was to make sure that GE would 
create jobs in those countries in the world where workers were paid the 
lowest possible wage.
  Former GE executive vice president Frank Doyle said:

       We did a lot of violence to the expectations of the 
     American workforce. We downsized, we delayered, and we 
     outsourced.

  He was honest enough to admit that. But, again, I do not mean to just 
pick on Jeff Immelt or General Electric. It is a history of 
corporations all over America.
  Let me just mention that the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers--and this is 
what he says. You know, we tell the young people: The future is in 
information technology. We want you guys to be smart. Learn how to use 
the computers. You are not going to work in factories.
  This is what the CEO of Cisco, certainly one of the large IT 
companies in the United States, said:

       China will become the IT center of the world. And we can 
     have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 
     2040. What we are trying to do is outline an entire strategy 
     of becoming a Chinese company.

  This was in 2004.

       Furthermore--

  He says, October 15, 2004--this is Cisco:

     we believe in giving something back and truly becoming a 
     Chinese company.

  Meanwhile, when Cisco needs tax breaks, they get it from the 
taxpayers of the United States of America. Boy, are they taking us for 
dummies. They outsource their jobs to China and so forth.
  In the last campaign, one of the folks who ended up getting a lot 
more publicity than he usually does is the president and CEO of the 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a gentleman named Tom Donohue.
  (Mr. UDALL of New Mexico assumed the chair.)
  Mr. SANDERS. Again, my point is not to just pick on individuals. 
Every quote I am giving can be multiplied 50, 100 times over. This is 
what corporate America believes. They believe it is totally appropriate 
to throw American workers out on the street, move to low-

[[Page S8767]]

wage countries, China and other countries, pay people a few cents an 
hour, and bring their products back into the United States.
  Mr. Tom Donohue is the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce. He got a lot of publicity during the last election because 
the Chamber of Commerce became the funnel for a lot of money that went 
into campaigns around the country. They raised tens of millions of 
dollars, a lot of the money, that was undisclosed. All the rich folks 
and billionaires gave money to the Chamber of Commerce, and they were 
able to elect candidates who were sympathetic to their point of view.
  Let's find out what their point of view is. This is a quote going 
back to 2004:

       One job sent overseas, if it happens to be my job, is one 
     too many. But the benefit of offshoring jobs outweighs the 
     cost.

  That was Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the largest business 
organization in America. They are in favor of offshoring American jobs. 
They think it is a good idea. They understand that if corporations 
throw American workers out on the street and go to China and pay people 
there pennies an hour, it will make more profits. Give them credit. 
They are upfront about it. We don't care about the United States of 
America. We don't care about young people. We don't care about the 
future of this country. The future of the world is in China.
  Here is a quote that appeared in one of the papers:

       U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue 
     urged American companies to send jobs overseas.

  That was in 2004. This is an AP story.

       U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue--

  This is the head of the largest business organization in America. 
That is where all these businesses come together to develop policy, to 
lobby us, to provide campaign contributions--

     urged American companies to send jobs overseas.

  That is really patriotic. That is standing up for the United States.

       Donohue said Wednesday that exporting high-paid tech jobs 
     to low-cost countries such as India, China, and Russia saves 
     companies money. It's no surprise that Donohue, who tripled 
     the Chamber of Commerce's lobbying team since 1997 and 
     aggressively promotes pro-business policies, endorses 
     offshoring. The 3 million member organization, the Chamber of 
     Commerce, the world's largest business consortium, champions 
     tax cuts, free trade, workers compensation reform, and more 
     liberal trade policies with China.

  What more do we need to understand why we have lost millions of good-
paying manufacturing jobs, why wages are going down? What more do we 
need when the president of the Chamber of Commerce tells us he thinks 
it is good public policy to send jobs to China? I don't think there is 
much we have to discover. They are telling us this.
  In a moment what I will be talking about is how these ideas from the 
big-moneyed people become implemented in policy which has to do a lot 
with lobbying and campaign contributions. Before I go there, I wish to 
give some more examples about how business leaders feel about the 
workers of this country and the young people.
  This, again, is a quote. I apologize. It is a few years old, from 
2004, January 19. This is from Alan Lacy, the CEO of Sears Roebuck and 
Company at the time:

       There are four or five times as many smart, driven people 
     in China than there are in the United States. And there are 
     another four or five, three or four times as many people in 
     India that are smarter or as smart or have more drive. And if 
     technology is now going to basically reduce location as a 
     barrier to competition--

  I.e., you have a World Wide Web and you can do your work in China or 
India--

     then essentially you have something like, whatever that was, 
     seven or nine times more smart, committed people than are now 
     competing in this marketplace against certain activities.

  So we are going to see, I think, a huge incentive to ship some of 
these more commoditylike knowledge workers' jobs offshore.
  So here we have our blue-collar jobs decimated, and we told the kids 
not to worry. You didn't want to work in the factory anyhow. We have 
good information technology, computer-based jobs for you. But then you 
have the heads of large corporations saying: Why do I want American 
young people to do this? I can have Indian young people do it who will 
work for a fraction of the wages. We all see this. It is nothing new. 
You try to get a plane reservation and you are talking to somebody in 
India. Please, do not hear me as being anti-Indian or anti-Chinese. 
That is the furthest thing I would want anyone to think. We want to 
work with people all over the world. But we don't have to destroy the 
middle class of this country to help people around the world. You don't 
have to be a corporate CEO to sell out your own people who built your 
company to run abroad. This Senator is not anti-Chinese, far from it, 
anti-Indian, anti-Vietnamese. I guess I plead guilty to being pro-
American. Maybe that is suspect here.
  The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina, ran for Senator. 
This is what she said when she was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2004:

       There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore.

  I could go on and on and on, but I think we have the point. The point 
is that when things get rough for corporate America, as they did 
recently for General Electric, they run to the taxpayers in order to be 
bailed out. But their overall philosophy is that their goal in life is 
to make as much money as they can in any way they can, and, therefore, 
you run to those countries where wages are low.
  We are seeing it all the time. It is not just blue collar; it is 
increasingly white color. We have radiologists who are reading X-rays 
in India. People behind the computer can do work in India as well as 
here, and these corporate folks have taken advantage of that and sold 
out the young people of this country and the working class.
  It is virtually impossible to find anything in a Walmart or other 
stores such as that that is made in America today. This is essentially 
true for clothing. An increasing amount of clothing comes from 
Bangladesh. Today, there are 4,000 garment factories in Bangladesh 
making clothing for Walmart, Gap, JC Penney, Levi Strauss, Tommy 
Hilfiger, and many others. Garment workers in Bangladesh, some 3.5 
million of them--and the number is growing--are among the lowest paid 
workers in the world. They have difficulty buying enough food and 
shelter for their own needs.
  The good news is the minimum wage in Bangladesh was doubled. It went 
from 11.5 cents an hour to 23 cents an hour. So when you buy your shirt 
made in Bangladesh, you have young women there coming in from the 
countryside who are now paid, because of a doubling of the minimum 
wage, 23 cents an hour. Is that something our people should be asked to 
compete against? Should we say to the American worker: We can get you 
jobs. We are prepared to invest in the United States. We are an 
American company. You helped make us great. Thank you for the work you 
have done over the years. Thank you for purchasing our products. Thank 
you for making go us strong. If you are prepared to work for $1 an 
hour, $2 an hour, $3 an hour, we will come back.
  By the way, in the last campaign, what did we hear rumblings of? 
Abolishing the minimum wage. The minimum wage is now $7.25 an hour. 
There are people out there who say: Look, if I can hire somebody in 
China for $2 or $3 an hour and you want a job in America and I have to 
pay you $7.25 an hour, why would I want to do that? If we abolish the 
minimum wage, I may hire you.
  What a wonderful prospect for our young people to think about, 
working for $4 or $5 an hour.
  If we want to understand why the middle class is collapsing, why 
unemployment is high, why our manufacturing base has been decimated, 
why it is hard to purchase a product made in the United States, it has 
a lot to do with our trade policies, which were pushed by people such 
as Mr. Donohue of the Chamber of Commerce and many others.
  But it is not just a disastrous trade policy that has brought us to 
where we are today. The immediate cause of this crisis is--and this 
gets me sick thinking about it--what the crooks on Wall Street have 
done to the American people. These people fought for a period of years 
to deregulate the banking industry. These people said to us: Well, if 
you just would do away with Glass-

[[Page S8768]]

Steagall, if you will just allow financial institutions, commercial 
banks, investor banks, insurance companies, if you allow them to merge, 
do away with these walls which Glass-Steagall, since the Great 
Depression, established, my God, it will be just terrific. It will be 
good for the economy, good for the American people, good for our 
international competitiveness.
  I remember those debates because I was at that point in the House of 
Representatives. I was a member of the Financial Institutions Committee 
at that point. I was on the committee that dealt with that. I remember 
all the times Alan Greenspan came before the committee and Robert 
Rubin. We had Republicans, Democrats coming before the committee and 
saying: This is what you have to do. You have to deregulate. You have 
to let these guys merge. Bigger is better. Against my votes. Somewhere 
on the Internet there is a discussion I had with Alan Greenspan when he 
came before our committee. I made it very clear to the people of 
Vermont, to him and everybody else, that I did not think deregulation 
was a good idea, that I thought it would lead to disaster. Someplace in 
this world there is a quote of mine which pretty much predicts what was 
going to happen. But needless to say, I was one vote. The majority of 
the Members in the House and Senate voted to deregulate. The rest is, 
unfortunately, history.
  What we saw is people on Wall Street operating from a business model 
based on fraud, based on dishonesty, understanding that the likelihood 
of them ever getting caught was small, that if things got very bad, 
they would be bailed out by the taxpayers, understanding that they are 
too powerful to ever be put in jail, to be indicted, understanding that 
in this country when you are a CEO on Wall Street, you have so much 
wealth and so much power and so many lawyers and so many friends in 
Congress, you could do pretty much anything you want and not much is 
going to happen to you--and they did it. Their greed and recklessness 
and their illegal behavior destroyed this economy.
  What they did to the American people is so horrible. Here we had a 
middle class which was already being battered as a result of trade 
agreements, loss of manufacturing jobs, health care costs going up, 
couldn't afford to send their children to college--that had gone on for 
years--and then these guys started pushing worthless and complicated 
financial instruments and the whole thing explodes. And they come 
crying to the taxpayers of America to bail them out.

  I will never forget--never forget--Hank Paulson coming before the 
Democratic caucus--I am an Independent and have long been serving as an 
Independent in Congress--saying that within a few days he needed $700 
billion or the entire world's financial system would collapse. My 
suggestion to him at that meeting was: If you need the money, why don't 
you go to your friends and get the money? Why don't you go to all your 
banker friends and millionaire friends and billionaires friends and get 
some of that money, and don't go to the middle class of this country 
that has already been harmed.
  In fact, we brought an amendment to the floor of the Senate, which 
was one of the first amendments I brought as a Senator, which said that 
the top 2 percent should pay for the bailout, not the American people. 
It got defeated on a voice vote.
  So what happens on Wall Street is we have seen a tremendous 
concentration of ownership there, another issue we do not talk enough 
about. I know Senator Brown and Senator Kaufman and I worked on a 
proposal to try to break up these large financial institutions. I think 
we got 30-some-odd votes on that. We could not do it.
  So what the American people should know now is, while we bailed out 
Wall Street, because they were too big to fail, three out of the four 
largest financial institutions--all of whom were bailed out very 
significantly--are now larger today than they were before the bailout.
  Incredibly, since the start of the financial crisis, Wells Fargo has 
grown 43 percent bigger, JPMorgan Chase has grown 51 percent bigger, 
and Bank of America is now 138 percent larger than before the financial 
crisis began.
  Can you imagine that? We bailed these guys out because they were too 
big to fail, and now three out of the four largest ones are much larger 
than they were. How did that happen? Well, in 2008, Bank of America--
the largest commercial bank in this country--which received a $45 
billion taxpayer bailout, purchased Countrywide, the largest mortgage 
lender in this country, and Merrill Lynch, the largest stock brokerage 
firm in the country. That is how Bank of America expanded. They were 
too big to fail. Today they are much bigger.
  In 2008, JPMorgan Chase, which received a $25 billion bailout from 
the Bush Treasury Department and a $29 billion bridge loan from the 
Federal Reserve, acquired Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, the 
largest savings and loan in the country. That is how JPMorgan Chase, a 
huge bank, became even bigger.
  In 2008, the Treasury Department provided an $18 billion tax break to 
Wells Fargo to purchase Wachovia, allowing that bank to control 11 
percent of all bank deposits in this country.
  Hear this because this is quite unbelievable: When we try to 
understand what is going on in the economy today--the rich getting 
richer, the poor getting poorer, the middle class collapsing--today, 
after we bailed out all these large banks, three out of four of them 
are now much larger than they were before. Today, Bank of America, 
JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo--the four largest financial 
institutions in this country--hold about $7.4 trillion in assets, and 
that is equal to over half the Nation's estimated total output last 
year. Four financial institutions have assets worth more than 52 
percent of our total output last year.
  Instead of breaking up these folks, these large institutions, we let 
them get bigger. In fact, according to Simon Johnson, the former chief 
economist of the International Monetary Fund:

       As a result of the crisis and various government rescue 
     efforts, the largest 6 banks in our economy now have total 
     assets in excess [he claims] of 63 percent of GDP. . . . This 
     is a significant increase from even 2006, when the same 
     banks' assets were around 55 percent of GDP. . . .

  Do you understand what this is about? Four financial institutions 
owning over half the assets of America. You talk about economic power, 
you talk about political power, that is what we are talking about.
  Simon Johnson continues: This is ``a complete transformation compared 
with the situation in the U.S. just 15 years ago--when the 6 largest 
banks had combined assets of only around 17 percent of GDP.''
  So 15 years ago, 17 percent, six banks; today, four banks, and, he 
claims, 63 percent of GDP. In other words, over the last 15 years, the 
largest banks in this country have more than tripled in size.
  Not only are too-big-to-fail financial institutions bad for 
taxpayers, the enormous concentration of ownership in the financial 
sector has led to higher bank fees, usurious interest rates on credit 
cards, and fewer choices for consumers. What do you think happens when 
you have a few institutions, a handful of institutions, controlling 
mortgage lending or where people get their credit cards?
  Today, these huge financial institutions have become so big that 
according to the Washington Post: The four largest banks in America now 
issue one out of every two mortgages, two out of three credit cards, 
and hold $4 out of every $10 in bank deposits in the entire country.
  If any of these financial institutions were to get into major trouble 
again, taxpayers would be on the hook for another substantial bailout. 
We cannot allow that to happen. So the whole reason for the bailout was 
that if any of these financial institutions collapsed, it would take 
down a significant part of the economy and millions of jobs. We had to 
prop them up. We had to bail them out. It turns out that since we 
bailed them out, these handful of financial institutions are now even 
larger than they were before and we now know they are enjoying very 
strong profits and they are paying their CEOs even more in compensation 
than they did before the breakdown.
  In my view, if we are serious about understanding why the middle 
class is collapsing, if we are serious about getting this economy 
moving again long term, we have to have the courage to

[[Page S8769]]

do exactly what Teddy Roosevelt did back in the trust-busting days and 
break up these banks. The point Roosevelt was making was, it is bad for 
the economy when a handful of entities control industry after industry. 
They have a stranglehold on the economy. You have to break them up. Yet 
I have heard very little discussion--I know there was an amendment from 
Sherrod Brown and Ted Kaufman, and I introduced legislation on this 
issue to start breaking them up. But, frankly, their lobbyists and 
their money are such that it becomes very difficult to do that. But 
that is exactly what we should be doing.
  The legislation I introduced last year, S. 2746, the Too Big to Fail, 
Too Big to Exist Act, would break up these large financial 
institutions. That legislation would require the Secretary of Treasury 
to identify every single financial institution and insurance company in 
this country that is too big to fail within 90 days; and after 1 year, 
the Secretary of the Treasury would be required to break up these 
institutions so their failure would not lead to the collapse of the 
U.S. or global economies.
  I think that is pretty obvious. We passed a financial reform bill, 
which I supported and got a major provision in there asking for 
disclosure at the Fed, an investigation of conflicts of interest at the 
Fed, and an audit of the Fed during the financial crisis. But overall, 
I, by no means, think that legislation went anywhere near far enough. I 
think that is a modest piece of legislation and an issue we have to 
revisit.
  I worry very much about the future because I have a feeling in my 
stomach that day is going to come around again, when these huge 
financial institutions are tottering, when they are going to go running 
to Washington, and they are going to say: Hey, you have to bail us out. 
In my view, if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to 
exist. Let us break them up so we do not have to go through another 
bailout of Wall Street.
  Furthermore, I believe when you have that kind of concentration of 
ownership--when you have four large financial institutions holding half 
the mortgages in this country, controlling two-thirds of the credit 
cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits--this is not good for a 
competitive economy.

  We are supposed to be living in free market capitalism, real 
competition. This is not free market competition. This is a huge 
concentration of ownership, where a few people have enormous power over 
the economy, and with their wealth, the political life of this country.
  No single financial institution should be so large that its failure 
would cause catastrophic risk to millions of American jobs or to our 
Nation's economic well-being. No single financial institution should 
have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world's 
economy into crisis. We were there 2 years ago, and in many ways, 
despite the passage of the financial reform bill, we are even more 
there now. The big, huge financial institutions we bailed out are 
bigger, more huge today.
  Interestingly enough, on that issue, it is not just progressives such 
as myself who hold that view. There are some pretty conservative folks 
who are honest conservatives. The concentration of ownership in a 
handful of entities; is that a conservative proposition? Not in terms 
of my understanding of what conservatives are about. I do not think so.
  You have at least three Federal Reserve Bank presidents who support 
breaking up too-big-to-fail banks. James Bullard, president and chief 
executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis; Kansas City Fed 
president Thomas M. Hoenig; and Dallas Fed president Richard W. 
Fisher--these guys do not have my political views. I am a proud 
progressive. My guess is they are conservatives. But anybody with an 
ounce of brains in their head understands that four large financial 
institutions that have assets that are more than half the GDP of the 
United States of America places us, A, in a very dangerous position in 
terms of too big to fail, and, B, it is just bad for a competitive 
economy.
  Is there any wonder why people are paying 25 percent or 30 percent 
interest rates on their credit cards? That is because these guys issue 
two-thirds of the credit cards in America. Is there any reason why they 
were issuing fraudulent mortgage packages to people? Because there is 
not the kind of competition that should be there.
  But this is not just Bernie Sanders' point of view. Here is what 
Kansas City Fed President Hoenig said. I am sorry I do not have a date 
on that, but I think it was fairly recently--last year. This is Kansas 
City Fed President Hoenig:

       I think they should be broken up. I think there's no reason 
     why as we've done in other instances of [sic] finding the 
     right mechanism to break them into their components. . . .
       And in doing so, I think you'll make the financial system 
     itself more stable. I think you will make it more 
     competitive, and I think you will have long-run benefits over 
     our current system, [which] mixes it and therefore leads to 
     bailouts when crises occur.

  This is Thomas Hoenig, the head of the Kansas City Fed. A very simple 
statement. He is absolutely right. But--and I am going to get to the 
reason why in a little while--we have not been able to do this. We have 
not been able to do this because Wall Street sends their lobbyists down 
here in droves and Wall Street provides zillions of dollars in campaign 
contributions and Wall Street fights like the dickens to make sure that 
any strong provisions that some of us might bring up are defeated. Here 
is what the President of the Dallas Fed, Mr. Fisher, said:

       [B]ased on my experience at the Fed . . . the marginal 
     costs of too-big-to-fail financial institutions easily dwarf 
     their purported social and macroeconomic benefits.
       The risk posed by coddling too big to fail banks is simply 
     too great.

  Winston Churchill said that. He is quoting Mr. Churchill:

       In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and 
     everything that is sound is disagreeable.

  That is from Churchill.
  Mr. Fisher continues:

       I think the disagreeable but sound thing to do regarding 
     institutions that are too big to fail is to dismantle them 
     over time into institutions that can be prudently managed and 
     regulated across borders. This should be done before the next 
     financial crisis because we now know it surely cannot be done 
     in the middle of a crisis.

  That is Dallas Fed president Mr. Fisher.
  They are already in the process of breaking up big banks in England. 
According to the Washington Post:

       The British government announced Tuesday--

  Not this Tuesday, way back last year--

     that it will break up parts of major financial institutions 
     bailed out by taxpayers. The British government, spurred on 
     by European regulators, is forcing the Royal Bank of 
     Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, and Northern Rock to sell off 
     parts of their operations. Europeans are calling for more and 
     smaller banks to increase competition and to eliminate banks 
     so large that they must be rescued by taxpayers, no matter 
     how they conducted their business, in order to avoid damaging 
     the global financial system.

  A very interesting development occurred on October 15 of last year. 
On October 15--as I mentioned earlier, Alan Greenspan, who was the 
chairman of the Fed before Mr. Bernanke, and I have had our run-ins. 
Mr. Greenspan, along with Mr. Rubin and others, were the chief 
proponents--Larry Summers in there--were the chief proponents of 
deregulation of financial institutions, and Mr. Greenspan and I had 
more than a few arguments. But on October 15 of last year, Alan 
Greenspan, who admitted his views on deregulation were wrong--and I 
give the man courage for at least admitting he was wrong. He did a 
heck-of-a-lot of damage, but at least he had the courage to admit he 
was wrong. He was quoted in Bloomberg News as saying:

       If they are too big to fail, they are too big. In 1911, we 
     broke up Standard Oil. So what happened? The individual parts 
     became more valuable than the whole.

  Maybe that's what we need to do.
  Alan Greenspan, the architect of deregulation, citing the fact that 
in 1911 we broke up Standard Oil. So here we have Greenspan, who helped 
cause this crisis, at least having the courage to understand that now 
is the time to begin breaking up these big financial institutions. They 
have enormous power over our economy. They have enormous power over our 
political life. Their lobbyists are all over this place. You can't walk 
down the hall without bumping into some of their lobbyists. So we have 
to start breaking them up

[[Page S8770]]

and the American people have to be prepared for a major fight to take 
on these huge financial institutions.
  Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who has advised the Obama 
administration, supports breaking up big banks so they no longer pose 
systemic risk to the entire economy.
  According to a recent article in the New York Times, Volcker said:

       People say I'm old-fashioned and banks can no longer be 
     separated from nonbank activity. That argument brought us to 
     where we are today.

  Paul Volcker. I couldn't agree more. That is what I am talking about. 
We have to start breaking up four financial institutions which led us 
into the economic disaster we are in right now that remain much too big 
to fail, that we are going to have to bail out again and again and 
again, and that today have a stranglehold on our economy.
  The New York Times says under Volcker's plan:

       JPMorganChase would have to give up their trading 
     operations acquired from Bear Stearns. Bank of America and 
     Merrill Lynch would go back to being separate companies. 
     Goldman Sachs could no longer be a bank holding company.

  That is exactly what needs to be happening.
  I come from a small State. We have community banks. Here is the 
irony: The banks in Vermont, in the midst of all of this financial 
disaster, did just fine. They are small, locally owned banks. They know 
the people they lend money to. The CEOs are not making hundreds of 
millions of dollars in profit. They know their community. They know 
what loans made sense. Now, I may be old-fashioned like Mr. Volcker, 
but I think that is what banking is about: to lend out money to people 
in the productive economy, to the business community, who can use the 
money to expand and create jobs; to homeowners who need that money to 
buy a home, not to be living in your own world engaged in a huge 
gambling casino producing and selling worthless products nobody 
understands.
  The function of a bank is to be a middleman between people who need 
money and are producing real products and helping them get that money 
and people who are investing in the banks. It is not supposed to be an 
island to itself. But in recent years what we have seen, incredibly, is 
that 40 percent of all profit in America went to the financial 
institutions with a small number of people working there, relatively 
small. They got 40 percent of the profits because they live in a world 
that is a huge gambling casino.
  We need financial institutions to go back to the way banking used to 
be, where the job of banks was to provide affordable loans to the 
productive economy so we can produce real products, real goods, and we 
can create real jobs when we do that.
  Robert Reich, President Clinton's former Labor Secretary, said:

       No important public interest is served by allowing giant 
     banks to grow too big to fail. Wall Street banks should be 
     split up, and soon.

  We have a lot of people, some conservatives, some progressives, who 
are saying the same thing. If we are going to rebuild the middle class, 
the way to do that is, among other things, to change our disastrous 
trade policies, to make it clear to corporate America that they cannot 
continue to sell out the workers of this country by moving to China and 
other low-wage countries. We also have to have a much more competitive 
economy, one in which all large financial institutions do not own 
assets of more than half of the GDP of this country.
  On that point, I find it very interesting that it is not just 
progressives such as myself or Robert Reich, but we have some 
conservative bankers--people who are heading Fed banks around this 
country--who are saying pretty much the same thing.
  Also, when we talk about banks, I wish to get back to a point I 
raised earlier. This is an issue I have been working on for years and 
years, and this is the issue of usury. I mentioned earlier, if you read 
the religious tenents of the major religions throughout history, 
whether it is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others, what you find 
is almost universal objection and disgust and a feeling of immorality 
in terms of usury. When we talked about usury in the United States, 
what we usually talked about were thugs, gangsters working on street 
corners who lent out money at outrageously high interest rates to 
workers, and when that money was not repaid back at the interest rates 
asked for, the thugs would beat up the workers.
  In fact, I am thinking now about the first movie of Rocky. I don't 
know if the Presiding Officer saw the first movie of Rocky with 
Sylvester Stallone, but before he became a successful fighter and the 
heavyweight champion of the world, that is what he was: a big tough guy 
who beat up people who did not pay back the gangsters the high interest 
rates they were asking for.
  Well, the world has changed. Now the people who are committing usury 
are not the gangsters on street corners all over America. Their place 
has been taken by the CEOs of Wall Street financial institutions who 
are lending out money to desperate Americans at 25 or 30 percent 
interest rates. That, my friends, is called usury, and according to 
every religion on Earth, that is immoral. What you are doing is going 
up to people who are desperate, people who are hurting, and you are 
saying: You desperately need money, we are going to give you money, but 
there is a string attached. You are going to be charged an outrageous 
amount of interest on that money.
  So here is the irony: The people who are hurting the most pay the 
highest interest rates. The people who need the money the least are 
paying the lowest interest rates.
  So the Fed lent out billions and billions of dollars to the largest 
financial institutions and offered it at less than 1 percent. That is 
American taxpayer money--large corporations, less than 1 percent.
  But if you are a worker today and you are having hard times--maybe 
you are unemployed--you are going to pay 25 or 30 percent interest 
rates on your credit card, and sometimes more. You have this Payday 
Lending where people are paying outrageous sums of money. I think that 
is immoral. I think we have to stop it, and it disturbs me very much 
that especially at a time when we bailed out these large financial 
institutions they are still able to charge our people 25 or 30 percent. 
People who have bailed them out get hit the second time around by 
having to pay 25 to 30 percent interest rates.
  Right now, it is not even 25 or 30 percent. As a matter of fact, the 
tenth largest credit card issuer in this country, an entity called 
Premier Bank, is now offering a credit card with a 79.9-percent 
interest rate and a $300 credit limit. What do we make of that? The 
tenth largest credit card issuer in this country is charging 79 percent 
interest rates, and we allow that to go on. These are crooks. These are 
no different than the gangsters who beat up people on street corners 
when they didn't get payment back, except now the gangsters are wearing 
three-piece suits and sitting in some fancy suite on Wall Street.
  Today, over one-quarter of all credit card holders in this country 
are now paying interest rates above 20 percent and, as I indicated, as 
high as 79 percent. Let's be clear. When credit card companies charge 
over 20 percent interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the 
business of making credit available. What they are involved in is 
extortion and loan sharking--nothing essentially different than 
gangsters, except they dress a lot better. That is all it is. It is 
thievery and we tolerate it, and we bail them out.
  It is interesting in terms of these high interest rates because for 
many years we have had States, including the State of Vermont, saying: 
You are not going to charge outrageously high interest rates. For 
example, establishing a usury law is not a radical concept, which is 
what we have to move toward. We have to put a cap on interest rates. In 
fact, between 1978 and today, over 20 States in America had laws 
capping credit card interest rates.
  In Alabama, the legal maximum amount of interest is 8 percent; in 
Alaska, it is 10.5 percent; in Arizona, it is 10 percent; in Idaho, 12 
percent; Kansas, 15 percent; the State of Vermont, my own State, the 
legal maximum interest rate is 12 percent. But what happened is all of 
those State interest rate caps disappeared under the 1978 U.S. Supreme 
Court decision known as the Marquette case, which allowed banks to 
charge whatever interest rates they

[[Page S8771]]

wanted if they moved to a State without an interest rate law such as 
South Dakota or Delaware.
  So all of these companies moved to South Dakota. They moved to 
Delaware. No interest rates. And they charged the people in Vermont or 
Hawaii or anyplace else 35 percent interest rates.
  So getting back to the original agreement--which I strongly disagree 
with--that the President and the Republican leadership agreed to, I 
think that agreement significantly helps the upper income people by 
lowering the tax rates for millionaires and billionaires, by lowering 
the interest rate on the estate tax, and by providing some business 
loans which are not the kinds of investments that can best create jobs.
  (The PRESIDENT pro tempore assumed the chair.)
  One of the things we have to do to protect the middle class today is 
have a cap on interest rates because otherwise people are getting a 
paycheck and then going into debt and paying 25, 30 percent on their 
interest rates, with the money going to a handful of banks on Wall 
Street.
  I have introduced legislation to put a cap on interest rates, and it 
is not a radical idea. Right now, credit unions in this country, by 
law, are not allowed to charge more than 15 percent, except under 
extraordinary circumstances. By and large, that has worked for about 30 
years. So if you get a credit card through a credit union, you are 
going to be paying in almost every case no more than 15 percent. That 
was developed by Federal law.
  Do you know what. I have talked to the credit union people in Vermont 
and all over the country. Credit unions are doing just fine. They are 
not the ones that came begging the American taxpayer for a huge 
bailout. So for 30 years they have survived just fine on a 15-percent 
cap. But our friends on Wall Street who caused this recession, our 
friends on Wall Street who needed a welfare check from the American 
people in order to survive, who today are earning more money than they 
did before the bailout--we don't have any cap on the interest rates 
they can charge.
  In my view, if the credit unions have survived and survived well with 
a 15-percent maximum interest rate cap--the most they can charge--and 
it worked for credit unions, it can work for the private banks as well. 
That is what we have to do.
  According to a recent article--this is a year ago--in the Los Angeles 
Times:

       Chris Collver, legislative and regulatory analyst for the 
     California Credit Union League, said that a rate cap hasn't 
     hurt business for nearly 400 credit unions represented by his 
     organization. ``It hasn't been an issue,'' he said. ``Credit 
     unions are still able to thrive.''

  Here is my point. The middle class is hurting. Unemployment is 
outrageously high, poverty is increasing, there are 50 million people 
with no health insurance, there is a gap between the rich and everybody 
else, manufacturing is collapsing, and jobs are going all over the 
world--China, Mexico, India. We have to start protecting the middle 
class of this country.
  There are a number of things we have to do. I think one simple thing 
we have to do is tell the crooks on Wall Street--and I use that word 
advisedly--history will prove that they knew what they were doing. They 
were dishonest. The business model is fraudulent. There are honest 
people who occasionally make a mistake, but there are other businesses 
that are based on fraud and assume they are never going to get caught. 
When they do get caught, the penalty they have to pay is so little that 
it is worth it because they end up getting caught 1 out of 10 times, 
but they make a whole lot of money, and then they pay a fine and 
somebody goes to jail--very rarely, though--for a year. That is what 
you are seeing on Wall Street.
  I think if it has worked very well for the credit unions, it can work 
for the private banks as well.
  Mr. President, in the financial reform bill, did we address this 
issue? Yes, we did, and no, we didn't. We said the credit card 
companies have to be clearer and more honest about their interest rates 
and how much borrowing money will actually cost because before they 
would say: You will get a zero interest rate or a 2-percent interest 
rate, but most people didn't read the small print on page 4 that said 
they could raise interest rates at any time.
  We have made some progress on at least them being honest with the 
American people about what their credit card costs will be, but that is 
not enough. What we have to do is put a cap on interest rates. It has 
worked for the credit unions. I believe it can and should work for the 
big banks as well.
  Mr. President, what I want to do now is just give you some examples 
about--you know, sometimes here--and I am guilty of it as well--we talk 
in big numbers--a billion here and a trillion there--and it adds up. 
But I think it is also important to look at the flesh and blood that is 
out there, the real suffering people are experiencing.
  A while back, what I did was I sent an e-mail out to people in 
Vermont. It was a very simple e-mail. It said: Tell me in your own 
words what is going on in your family. What is going on in your lives, 
in the midst of this terrible recession?
  Again, it is important. Yes, we know unemployment is 9.8 percent and 
the real unemployment is 16 percent, 50 million people don't have any 
health insurance, median family income has gone down, poverty has gone 
up, and 25 percent of our kids are on food stamps. It is important to 
know that stuff. But behind all of those statistics is flesh and blood 
and good people who are doing everything they can to survive with a 
shred of dignity in their lives.
  I did this last year. I sent that e-mail out to my constituents in 
Vermont, and I said: Write back to me. Tell me in your own words what 
is going on in your lives. I cannot remember how many we received, but 
there were hundreds and hundreds of responses. It quite amazed me. 
Frankly, it was hard to read these letters from decent, good people 
about what was happening in their lives.
  What I said to them was this: If it is OK with you, we will publish 
what you have written. We won't use your names, of course. I don't want 
to embarrass anybody. We will read some of these stories on the floor 
of the Senate.
  That is what I did. I didn't read them all, but I read some of them 
because it is important for us sitting here inside the beltway not to 
forget what is going on in the real world, whether it is Hawaii, 
Vermont, California, or anyplace.
  Here are letters from two mothers in Vermont. First is from a woman 
in a rural area. The second is from a single mother in a small city. In 
Vermont, frankly, we don't have too many big cities. In my very 
beautiful State, where I expect the weather is very cold today, our 
largest city is all of 40,000 people. That is Burlington, VT, and I was 
honored to have been the mayor of that city for 8 years. Certainly, the 
vast majority of our people live in towns of less than 1,000, and there 
are towns of 500. For a while, I lived in a town called Stanton, up in 
the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, which has probably 150 people in it, 
and that is not uncommon in Vermont. There are a lot of small towns.
  Here are the two letters.
  A woman in the rural area says:

       My husband and I have lived in Vermont our whole lives. We 
     have two small children, a baby and a toddler, and have felt 
     fortunate to own our own house and land. But due to the 
     increasing fuel prices, we have at times had to choose 
     between baby food and diapers and heating fuel.

  In Vermont, heating fuel gets up there when the weather gets 20 below 
zero. It is an expensive proposition.
  Continuing:

       We have run out of heating fuel three times so far, and the 
     baby has ended up in the hospital with pneumonia two of the 
     times. We tried to keep the kids warm with an electric space 
     heater on those nights, but that just doesn't do the trick. 
     My husband does what he can just to scrape enough money for 
     car fuel each week, and we have gone from three vehicles to 
     one just to try to get by without going further into debt. We 
     were going to sell the house and rent, but the rent around 
     here is higher than what we pay for our mortgage and property 
     taxes combined. Please help.

  That is what she asked of me and her government--``Please help.'' She 
didn't ask me to lower taxes for billionaires. She is speaking for tens 
of millions of people in this country who are in desperate need of 
help.
  Here is another letter that came from a woman who lives in a larger 
town:

       I am a single mother with a 9-year-old boy. We lived this 
     past winter without any heat at all.


[[Page S8772]]


  That is not a good position to be in in Vermont in the winter.

       Fortunately, someone gave me an old wood stove. I had to 
     hook it up to an old unused chimney we had in the kitchen. I 
     couldn't even afford a chimney liner. The price of liners 
     went up with the price of fuel. To stay warm at night, my son 
     and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile 
     them on the kitchen floor. I would hang a blanket from the 
     kitchen doorway, and we would sleep right there on the 
     floor. By February, we ran out of wood, and I burned my 
     mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot 
     water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it into the 
     tub. I would like to order one of your flags and hang it 
     upside down at the Capitol building. We are certainly a 
     country in distress.

  Mr. President, what I will without doubt assure you is that those 
stories, in different forms--and I know it is different in big cities 
than in a rural State such as Vermont, and I know it is different in 
Hawaii, where the Chair comes from, than in Boston, MA. But I am 
absolutely sure that millions of people in one way or another are 
telling the same story. These are great Americans, people who want to 
work and do the best they can by their kids. They are simply not making 
it right now.
  This is the United States of America, in 2010, and people are going 
cold. People don't have enough food. People are homeless. My friends 
here are talking about huge tax breaks for billionaires. My friends 
here are talking about lowering rates on the estate tax for the top 
three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people. What are we talking 
about? What kinds of priorities are those?
  Here is another letter from Vermont. This is not a woman in 
desperation. Those folks I just read from are. This woman says:

       As a couple with one child, earning about $55,000 a year 
     [which is, in Vermont, fairly decent] we have been able to 
     eat out a bit, buy groceries and health insurance, contribute 
     to our retirement funds, and live a relatively comfortable 
     life financially. We have never accumulated a lot of savings, 
     but our bills were always paid on time, and we never had any 
     interest on our credit card. Over the last year, even though 
     we have tightened our belts, not eating out much, watching 
     purchases at the grocery store, not buying extras like a new 
     TV, and repairing the washer instead of buying a new one--
     doing all those things, we find ourselves with over $7,000 of 
     credit card debt and are trying to figure out how to pay for 
     braces for our son. I work 50 hours per week to help earn 
     extra money to catch up. But that also takes a toll on the 
     family life. Not spending those 10 hours at home with my 
     husband and son makes a big difference for all of us. My 
     husband hasn't had a raise in 3 years and his employer is 
     looking to cut out any extra benefits they can to lower their 
     expenses, which will increase ours.

  How many millions of Americans do you think are saying exactly the 
same thing?
  Let me read another story that comes from Vermont.

       My 90-year-old father in Connecticut has recently become 
     ill and asked me to visit him. I want to drop everything I am 
     doing and go visit him. However, I am finding it hard to save 
     enough money to add to the extra gas I will need to get 
     there. I am self-employed with my own commercial cleaning 
     service and money is tight, not only with gas prices but with 
     everything. I make more than I did a year ago, and I don't 
     have enough to pay my property taxes this quarter for the 
     first time in many years. They are due tomorrow.

  Here is another letter that I think deserves to be read. Mr. 
President, I think it would not hurt this body if every Member of the 
Senate--I know we all get letters like this--came down here and spent a 
couple of days talking about what is going on with working families in 
this country. Spouting statistics is good, and dealing with tax deals 
of $900 billion is fine, but I think we should reacquaint ourselves 
with the reality of life in America today.
  This is what another constituent of mine writes:

       My husband and I are retired and 65 years of age. We would 
     have liked to work longer, but because of injuries caused at 
     work and the closing of our factory to go to Canada, we chose 
     to retire early. Now, with oil prices the way they are, we 
     cannot afford to heat our home unless my husband cuts and 
     splits wood, which is a real hardship as he has had his back 
     fused and should not be working most of the day to keep up 
     with the wood. Not only that, he has to get up two or three 
     times each night to keep the fire going.

  In other words, what she is talking about, is that in Vermont a lot 
of people heat with wood--increasingly with pellets, an important 
source of fuel in the State of Vermont. What she is talking about is 
her husband, who is 65, with a bad back, has to go out and cut wood, 
and in their case, his being old, he has to get up two or three times a 
night to stoke the furnace that is keeping the house warm. Again, I 
would remind people that in Vermont it occasionally gets 20 or 30 below 
zero.
  She continues:

       We also have a 2003 car that we only get to drive to get 
     groceries or go to the doctor or to visit my mother in the 
     nursing home three miles away. It now costs us $80 a month to 
     go nowhere. We have 42,000 miles on a 5-year-old car.

  They can't afford to even use the car. I don't know what the price of 
gas is in Hawaii, Mr. President, but in Vermont it is now over $3 a 
gallon. A lot of people in my State have to travel long distances to 
get to work. Their cars need repairs. Cars break down. Cars require, in 
Vermont, compulsory insurance. They have to spend a whole lot of money 
just getting to work. I think we forget about that here. We don't need 
tax breaks for billionaires, we need to pay attention to these people.
  She continues and concludes:

       I have Medicare, but I can't afford prescription coverage 
     unless I take my money out of an annuity, which is supposed 
     to cover the house payment when my husband's pension is gone. 
     We only eat two meals a day to conserve.

  This is not some Third World country. This is the United States of 
Vermont--the United States of America, my State of Vermont, and Vermont 
is better off today than a number of States around this country. You 
have these stories, and multiply them by 10 in every area of this 
country.
  Here is another story:

       Yesterday, I paid for our latest home heating fuel 
     delivery--

  Again, I am focusing now on the cost of fuel because in Vermont, 
where I come from, it is a big deal. So she writes:

       Yesterday, I paid for our latest home fuel heating 
     delivery--$1,100. I also paid my $2,000-plus credit card 
     balance, much of which bought gas and groceries for the 
     month.

  The point here, and then I will continue her letter, is that a lot of 
people use their credit cards not just as a nice and convenient way of 
not having to use cash--when I go shopping, I am going to use my credit 
card and I will pay it off at the end of the month. What a nice thing. 
No, people are using their credit cards to buy food, to buy gas, and to 
buy the basic necessities of life. It is their only line of credit 
open. And then, as I mentioned earlier, they are charged 25 or 30 
percent interest rates on what they owe.
  She continues:

       My husband and I are very nervous about what will happen to 
     us when we are old. Although we have three jobs between us 
     and participate in 403(b) retirement plans, we have not saved 
     enough for a realistic post worklife if we survive to our 
     life expectancy. As we approach the traditional retirement 
     age, we are slowly paying off our daughter's college tuition 
     loan and trying to keep our heads above water. We have always 
     lived frugally. We buy used cars and store brand groceries, 
     recycle everything, walk or car pool, when possible, and 
     plastic our windows each fall.

  What that means is that, in Vermont, if you don't have good storm 
windows, you put up plastic. It is a way to keep the wind out and keep 
the home warm. I know about that because I used to do that.

       Even so, if and when our son decides to attend college, we 
     will be in deep debt at age 65. Please--

  And here she ends this.

       P.S. Please don't use my name. I live in a small town, and 
     this is so embarrassing.

  So embarrassing. We should be embarrassed, not her. We should be 
embarrassed that we are for one second talking about a proposal which 
gives tax breaks to billionaires while we are ignoring the needs of 
working families, low-income people, and the middle class. We should be 
embarrassed that we are not investing in our infrastructure, that we 
are not breaking up these large financial institutions, that we are not 
putting a cap on interest rates, that we are the only country in the 
world that does not have health care for all of our people--of major 
countries. We should be embarrassed, not this wonderful woman who is 
trying to maintain her dignity.
  Another letter from the State of Vermont.

       I too have been struggling to overcome the increasing cost 
     of gas, heating oil, food,

[[Page S8773]]

     taxes, et cetera. I have to say that this is the toughest 
     year financially that I have ever experienced in my 41 years 
     on this Earth. I have what used to be considered a decent 
     job. I work hard, pinch my pennies, but the pennies have all 
     but dried up. I am thankful that my employer understands that 
     many of us cannot afford to drive to work 5 days a week. 
     Instead, I work 3 15-hour days. I have taken odd jobs to try 
     to make ends meet. This winter, after keeping the heat just 
     high enough to keep my pipes from bursting--

  One of the problems you have, when you live in a rural State and it 
gets cold, your pipes can burst, and then you have to spend a fortune 
getting them repaired.
  She continues:

       The bedrooms are not heated and never go above 30 degrees.

  What happens in Vermont, if you have a home, in the wintertime, and 
you don't have a whole lot of money, you kind of close off rooms in the 
house because you can't afford to heat the whole house. So people live 
in a smaller area.
  She continues:

       I began selling off my woodworking tools, snow blower, 
     pennies on the dollar, and furniture that had been handed 
     down in my family from the early 1800s just to keep the heat 
     on. Today, I am sad, broken and very discouraged. I am 
     thankful the winter cold is behind us for a while but now gas 
     prices are arising yet again. I just can't keep up.

  That is the story from one person in Vermont. But that is the story 
for millions and millions of Americans.
  Another story. And the reason I am reading these stories--and I 
appreciate my staff bringing this booklet down here--is this puts flesh 
and blood and real life into the statistics. The statistics are 
frightening enough, but this tells us what happens when the middle 
class of this country collapses. It tells us what happens when people 
lose decent-paying jobs. It tells us what happens when the government 
does not provide the kind of basic support system that it should for 
people in need.
  Here is another letter:

       As a single parent, I am struggling every day to put food 
     on the table.

  Mr. President, this is the United States of America and people are 
talking, in my State of Vermont and all over the country, about 
struggling to put food on the table. What comes to my mind now--and I 
don't know if you saw them, Mr. President--are some articles in the 
paper that talked about because of the bailing out of Wall Street, and 
the fact that Wall Street is now again profitable, these executives 
there are now making more money than they made before the bailout, and 
they go into restaurants and they pay thousands of dollars for a bottle 
of wine, pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for some fancy dinner. 
Yet in my State and all over this country there are people who are 
wondering where their next meal is coming from.
  She continues:

       Our clothing all comes from thrift stores. I have a 5-year-
     old car that needs work. My son is gifted and talented. I 
     tried to sell my house to enroll him in a school that had 
     curriculum available for his special needs. After 2 years on 
     the market, my house never sold. The property taxes have 
     nearly doubled in 10 years.

  Let me pick up on that point. We don't deal with property taxes 
here--I did when I was a mayor--but if we are not adequately funding 
education, if we do not adequately help cities and towns all over this 
country in terms of fire protection and in terms of police protection 
and housing, a lot of that burden falls on the very regressive property 
tax, which in my State of Vermont is very high. And you find it 
referred to time and time again that property taxes are going up. 
Property taxes are going up.
  She writes:

       Property taxes have nearly doubled in 10 years. And the oil 
     to heat is prohibitive. To meet the needs of my son, I have 
     left the house sit and moved into an apartment near his high 
     school. I don't go to church many Sundays because the 
     gasoline is too expensive to drive there.

  Imagine: She doesn't go to church on Sundays because the gasoline is 
too expensive to drive there.

       Every thought of an activity is dependent upon the cost. I 
     can only purchase food from dented can stores.

  Does anybody in this Congress know what a dented can store is? Do you 
know that many people buy their groceries and they get them cheaper 
because the cans are dented? Most Members of the Senate and the House, 
most Governors do not get their meals from dented cans, but huge 
numbers of Americans do.
  She then concludes:

       I am stretched to the breaking point with no help in sight.

  By the way, the letters that I received, when I asked for letters, 
came not just from the State of Vermont--most came from Vermont but 
some came from other areas. I will read another from Vermont and then 
one from rural Pennsylvania.
  This one from Vermont:

       Due to illness, my ability to work has been severely 
     limited. I am making $10 an hour, and if I am lucky, I get 35 
     hours a week of work.

  Let me pull away from the letter. That is not an unusual wage in the 
State of Vermont. That is not an unusual wage all over America. That is 
what people earn, $10 an hour, times 40 hours. He doesn't get 40 hours. 
He makes $350 a week. Ten times 40, 400, times 50, $21,000 a year. 
Shock of all shocks, that is reality. That is what people are trying to 
live on. Those are the people that we should be helping, not the CEOs 
on Wall Street who will get $1 million a year in a tax break if this 
deal goes through. Not the people who are in the top three-tenths of 1 
percent, who our Republican friends want to help by repealing the 
estate tax, which will cost us $1 trillion in 10 years. Maybe we should 
concentrate on helping people who are trying to get by eating food from 
dented cans or people who can't afford to drive to church on Sunday 
because they can't afford the price of a gallon of gas. Maybe we should 
remember who sent us here and who made this country.
  She writes:

       I am making $10 an hour, and if I am lucky I get 35 hours a 
     week of work. At this time, I am only getting 20 hours, as it 
     is off season in Stowe.

  Stowe, VT, is a beautiful town. I hope everybody comes to visit us up 
there. There is great skiing, but it is a resort town. Big time in the 
winter. We are doing better in the summer, but it is a resort town. 
Resorts get more business in the winter than summer and less time 
elsewhere.
  So what she is talking about is that it is off season up there and 
she is only getting 20 hours a week of work at $10 an hour.
  She writes:

       It does not take a mathematician to do the figures.

  I am sorry, this is a man, not a woman.

       How are my wife and I supposed to live on a monthly take-
     home income of less than $800 a month? We do it by spending 
     our hard-earned retirement savings. I am 50 and my wife is 
     49. At the rate we are going, we will be destitute in just a 
     few years. The situation is so dire it is all that I can 
     think about. Soon I will have to start walking to work--an 8-
     mile round trip--because the price of energy is so high that 
     it is either that or going without heat.

  This is a 50-year-old guy, making $10 an hour, 20 or 30 hours a week, 
and his choice is either walking 8 miles to and from his job in Stowe 
or else not heating his home. And this happens in Vermont all of the 
time. It is quite unbelievable. He says:

       As bad as our situation is, I know many in worse shape. We 
     try to donate food when we do our weekly shopping, but now we 
     are not able to even afford to help our neighbors eat. What 
     has this country come to?

  I don't know about other parts of the country. I am sure it is the 
same. But if you go to a grocery store, there is often a bin out there 
in front where people buy food and they drop a can of peas or a can of 
corn or something into it. Here is a guy who is now faced with the 
reality of having to walk 8 miles to and from work and he is upset at 
himself that he does not have the money to buy food for his neighbors 
who he thinks are even worse off than he is. That is the good people of 
Vermont and America. They are all over this country, good and decent 
people who do worry about their neighbors.
  Then you have the lobbyists here representing the largest 
corporations in the world where the CEOs make tens of millions of 
dollars a year and their job is to squeeze the middle class and these 
families harder and harder, cut back on their benefits in order to give 
tax breaks to the richest people in this country. What a difference in 
attitude: A poor man faced with the choice of either walking 8 miles to 
and from his job or losing his heat, worried about his neighbors, and 
you have the lobbyists here worrying about the richest

[[Page S8774]]

people in the world--and winning. And winning.
  Then I got a letter that comes not from Vermont, it comes from rural 
Pennsylvania:

       I am 55 years old and worse off than my adult children. I 
     have worked since age 16. I don't live from paycheck to 
     paycheck, I live day to day. I can only afford to fill my gas 
     tank on my payday. Thereafter I put $5, $10, whatever that I 
     can. I cannot afford to buy the food items that I would. I am 
     riding around daily, to and from work, with a quarter of a 
     tank of gas. This is very scary. I can see myself working 
     until the day that I die.

  Trust me, the gentleman is talking about getting older, worrying 
about working until the day he dies. We are already seeing this. You go 
to grocery stores in Vermont and you see old people, who should be 
sitting home with their grandchildren. Do you know what they are doing? 
They are packing groceries. Then we have some geniuses on this deficit 
reduction commission, people who made their money on Wall Street, they 
have a brilliant idea: Let's raise the Social Security age to 68, 69 
years old so that people like this will have to work, in fact, to the 
day they die.
  He continues. This is not from Vermont. This is from Pennsylvania:

       I do not have savings, no credit cards and my only 
     resources are through my employment. I have to drive to work 
     as there are no buses from my residence to work. I don't know 
     how much longer I can do this. I am concerned as gas prices 
     climb daily. I am just tired. The harder that I work the 
     harder it gets. I work 12 to 14 hours daily and it just 
     doesn't help.

  I am not saying every person in America is experiencing these 
stories. They are not. A lot of people are doing fine. They have good 
jobs. Their kids are doing well. They are taking care of their parents. 
A lot of people are doing just fine. But we would be fools and 
dishonest not to understand the reality of what is going on in this 
country. It breaks my heart, and I know it breaks the hearts of 
millions of people in this country, to see what is going on in this 
great Nation of ours: that so many people are hurting, that so many 
parents--I don't know if I have that letter or if it is in another 
booklet. I will never forget one letter I received, and that is these 
people--my parents never went to college. My father never graduated 
high school. They wanted their kids to get an education; that is what 
they wanted--and we did. It was very important, and how proud my mother 
was of that.
  We get letters from people who say: You know, I dreamed that my kid, 
my daughter, would go to college, and she is not going to go to college 
now. She is not going to go to college.
  It is just painful to even talk about and think about, the direction 
in which this country is moving. So I want to now take a break from 
reading these letters. Actually, the truth is, when these letters came 
in a year ago I could not read more than a half dozen at a time. They 
took too much out of me. They take something out of you to hear people 
you know, good people, honest people--I hear from some of my colleagues 
here that people are lazy. My God, people work so hard in the State of 
Vermont. We have I don't know how many thousands of people are not 
working just two or three jobs, they work four jobs. It is all over 
this country. Whatever you say about the United States of America, the 
people of our country are not lazy. That is one thing you can say about 
them.
  In fact, according to all of the bloodless statistics, our people 
today work longer hours than do the people of any other major country 
on Earth. Did you know that? I don't know that a lot of Americans know 
that. It used to be Japan. The Japanese are a very hard-working people. 
Now it turns out that our people work harder, longer hours than do the 
people of any other country in the industrialized world.
  When you think about that, when I think about the books that I read 
when I was in elementary school--I remember there were pictures up 
there. I don't know if you remember these pictures. There were pictures 
where workers were demonstrating, and they said: We want a 40-hour 
workweek. Do you remember seeing those pictures? We want a 40-hour 
workweek. That was back in the early 1900s.
  Today, 100 years later, people still want a 40-hour workweek because 
they are forced to work 50 or 60 hours a week. They are working two 
jobs. They are working three jobs.
  What I want to do now, before I get back to why I am on the Senate 
floor today, and why I have been here for a few hours--which is to say 
the agreement negotiated by the President and the Republican leadership 
is not a good agreement. It is an agreement that we can improve upon. 
It is an agreement the American people can improve upon. But what I am 
asking the American people to do is to stand up, let your Senators, let 
your Congressman know how you feel.
  Do you really believe millionaires and billionaires who have done 
phenomenally well in recent years need an extended tax cut at a time 
when their taxes have been lowered substantially in recent years? Do we 
really need to give tax breaks to the rich in order to drive up the 
national debt so our kids and grandchildren will pay higher taxes in 
order to pay off that national debt caused by tax breaks for the rich?
  If you do not believe that, if you do not think that is right, let 
the President of the United States know about it. Let your Senator know 
about it. Let your Congressman know about it. We need a handful, seven 
or eight Members of the Senate to hear from their people, to say: Wait 
a minute. Don't hold my kids hostage. Don't force them to pay higher 
taxes in order to give tax breaks to the very rich.
  If the American people stand up and by the millions let their 
Senators and Congressmen and the President know, we can win this thing. 
We can win this battle. It is not too late yet. That is what I hope 
will happen.
  When we talk about why things go on the way they are here in 
Washington, and why so many people back home--whether they are 
Democrats, Republicans, Independent--whether they are conservatives, 
progressives, moderates, whatever they are--there is a huge feeling of 
anger and frustration and, in fact, disgust at what goes on here in 
Washington.
  I have just read some letters from people. You can multiply those 
letters by 1 million. People are saying: Don't you hear us? Don't you 
know what is going on in our lives? Don't you know the worries we have 
for our kids, for our parents? Aren't you listening to us?
  In many ways I am afraid the Senate is not listening to them, nor is 
the House, nor is our Government. What worries me so much about this 
growing concentration of wealth and income in this country is that when 
the rich get richer, they don't just simply put their money under the 
mattress. They don't simply go out and buy yachts and planes and 18 
homes and all the things rich people do. They do that, but they do 
something else.
  They say: I am not rich enough. I need to be richer. What motivates 
some of these people is greed and greed and more greed. There is no end 
to it. So what they do is they do things like hire lobbyists--who are 
all over Capitol Hill. These lobbyists, sometimes former leaders of the 
Republican Party, former leaders of the Democratic Party, former 
hotshot lawyers, bright people, their job is to make sure the 
legislation we pass--such as this major tax bill--that this legislation 
benefits not ordinary Americans, not the people whose letters I have 
just read, not those people, but the wealthiest people in this country 
and the largest corporations.
  I want to just mention something. A very good friend of mine and I do 
a radio show every Friday afternoon--I am afraid I missed it today--Tom 
Hartman. Tom is the author of a number of wonderful books.
  In his latest book, which is called ``Rebooting the American Dream, 
11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country,'' Tom writes and he talks about 
lobbying, which is an issue we have to deal with in this country. He 
says, on page 104:

       Given how lucrative lobbying is as an investment, it has 
     become a huge business.

  In other words, what he is talking about is, if you have a good 
lobbyist and the lobbyist changes a few words in a bill, your company 
or you as an individual can end up with huge amounts of money just by 
changing a few words. In this case, language that we are working on now 
is whether we extend the Bush tax breaks for the top 2 percent, for 
many millionaires and billionaires. Some lobbyists, representing the 
rich and the powerful, are determined to keep that language in there.

[[Page S8775]]

  So it is an investment. So you spend a few million dollars, an 
organization spends a few million dollars on a lobbyist, but if you end 
up getting back hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and 
corporate loopholes or other benefits, it is a very good investment. 
That is what Tom Hartman is writing. He says:

       Given how lucrative lobbying is as an investment it has 
     become a huge business. In February, 2010, the Center for 
     Responsive Politics laid out which industries had invested 
     how much in Congress the previous year. Overall, it found 
     that in 2009 the number of registered lobbyists who actively 
     lobby Congress was 13,694 and the total lobbying spending--

  Get this. Total lobbying spending in 2009 was $3.47 billion, a 240-
percent increase since 1999, 10 years, more than tripling it, I guess. 
In 2009 companies spent $3.47 billion in lobbying. We have 100 Members 
of the Senate, 435 Members of the House. Listeners or viewers can get 
out their calculating machine and divide it up, how much money the big 
money interests are spending trying to influence Senator Inouye or 
myself or the other 98 Members of the Senate or 435 Members of the 
House. They are flooding this institution with money.
  Let me give you just a breakdown of where that money is coming from. 
What they call miscellaneous business, that is retail and 
manufacturing, et cetera, $558 million in one year, 2009; health care, 
$543 million.
  By the way, that was before health care reform. My strong guess--I 
will be very surprised if that number did not double. If you were a 
health care lobbyist this year, trust me, you are doing very well. They 
were all over this place, making sure we did not pass a strong health 
care bill, for example, in Medicare for all, a single-payer program, 
which I support. On top of that, you have the finance, insurance and 
real estate industries combined that spent $465 million.
  And, again, that was before we dealt with financial reform. I suppose 
the recent legislation we dealt with, health care reform and financial 
reform, was a real boon to the lobbyists around here, because they can 
go out and earn their money. But that was before this. Finance, 
insurance, real estate, only spent $465 million in 1 year to influence 
100 Members of the Senate and 435 Members of the House.
  Energy and natural resources. Well, as I mentioned earlier today, 
ExxonMobil last year made $19 billion, paid nothing in taxes, got a 
$156 million refund. ExxonMobil and other companies are putting all 
kinds of money into phony organizations telling us that global warming 
is not real, we do not have to transform our energy system; costs a lot 
of money to do that. The energy and natural resources companies spent 
$408 million in 2009 alone. This is 1 year, folks, 1 year.
  Communications, electronics. Right now I am working on an issue which 
deals with the merger of Comcast and NBC. I think it is a bad idea. 
Comcast is the largest provider of cable services in America, huge role 
in the Internet, and NBC is one of the largest media conglomerates in 
America. What they are trying to do right now is to merge, these two 
huge companies.
  I think the problem in America is we have too few companies 
controlling what goes on. We have too much of a concentration of 
ownership, and that merger is bad. Well, I can assure you for a fact, 
they have all of these lobbyists in the media industry, from 
communications, right here rallying, trying to do their best to make 
sure this merger and other type mergers take place--$360 million from 
the communication and electronics industry.
  Then we have other types of organizations as well. Bottom line, in 
the year 2009, they spent $3.47 billion, almost 3\1/2\ billion, on 
lobbying. And you know what, you get what you pay for.
  That is just lobbying. We are not talking about campaign 
contributions. We are not talking about the huge sums of money it now 
takes to run for office in the United States, and we are not talking 
about where that money comes from. We are not talking about the 
Citizens United horrendous decision reached by the Supreme Court which 
allows billionaires and all of these companies and their executives to 
put money into campaigns and not even have to be identified. We are not 
even talking about that. This is just lobbying.
  So if you wonder why we are having a serious discussion about whether 
we should give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires while the 
middle class is collapsing, and tens of millions of people have no 
health insurance, and we have the highest rate of children in poverty, 
and we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any 
country, if you wonder how we would consider for 1 minute talking about 
more tax breaks for the rich, then you do not know much about what goes 
on here in Washington and you do not know about campaign contributions 
and the degree to which big money buys and sells politicians.
  I want to review again--the reason I am down here today, and I have 
been here for a few hours--and voice my very strong opposition to the 
agreement that was reached between the Republican leadership and 
President Obama. I think the American people do not like this 
agreement. All I can tell you--I do not know what is going on in your 
office, coming from Alaska, Mr. President, but I can tell you in the 
last 3 days, between phone calls and e-mails, I probably have gotten 
5,000. We have heard from about 5,000 people, many from Vermont, some 
from out of State as well.
  The opposition to this agreement is probably 99 percent. People 
cannot understand why in a million years, with a $13.7 trillion 
national debt, and a $1.4 trillion yearly deficit, we would be thinking 
for one second, for one second, about giving tax breaks to the richest 
people in this country who are already doing fabulously well.
  I am down here today, and have been for a few hours, to urge my 
colleagues and, more importantly, the American people, to say no to 
this agreement. If we stand together, if the American people write or 
e-mail or call their Senators and their Congress people, I think we can 
turn this thing around. I think we can come up with an agreement that 
makes us all proud, rather than one that we have to be ashamed for.
  I know there was an editorial back in the State of Vermont which I 
saw. I do not remember the exact title, but something to the effect of: 
This agreement stinks, it is odious, but it is better than nothing. 
Well, I do not think that has to be the choice, awful or better than 
nothing. I think the choice can actually be a good agreement. And I 
think if the American people stand with those of us who are opposing 
this agreement, we can pull this off. We can defeat this agreement and 
come up with a much better one, one that does not cause our kids and 
grandchildren to pay higher taxes in order to provide huge tax breaks 
for the richest people in this country.
  In talking about the reasons I am opposed to this agreement, one of 
the other reasons is that while the President and the Republican 
leadership say, well, you know, this is just a temporary extension, it 
is going to be for 2 years, just temporary, you know and I know that 
when you talk about temporary here, it becomes long term and then 
perhaps becomes permanent.
  If we extend these tax breaks for the top 2 percent now, my strong 
guess--I hope I am wrong. I certainly hope this proposal is defeated, 
but if we extend them for 2 years, my strong guess is they will be, 2 
years from now, extended again. And depending upon the politics of what 
goes on here, they can be extended permanently.
  Our Republican colleagues, as you well know, wanted to extend them 
for 10 years at a cost of $700 billion. An increase in our national 
debt. Our Republican friends are fighting hard to completely repeal the 
estate tax, which would cost us $1 trillion, $1 trillion in 10 years in 
increased national debt.
  So the point I have got to make--I want to emphasize this point, that 
when people talk about these things being short term, being temporary, 
take those thoughts with a grain of salt. Maybe that is the case. I do 
not think it is. I think once you move over the cliff and make that 
decision to extend these tax breaks, they are going to be extended long 
term. Here is the reason why. Right now the dynamic here is the 
President campaigned against these tax breaks. The President does not 
believe in extending these tax breaks for the rich. But he felt he had 
to make the compromise. I thought he made a bad compromise.
  But our Republican friends are saying over and over that if you 
rescind, end these tax breaks to the rich, you

[[Page S8776]]

are raising taxes 2 years from now in the midst of a Presidential 
campaign, when President Obama, if he is the Democratic candidate, 
says: Do not worry, I am going to oppose these extensions of tax breaks 
for the rich, his credibility has been severely damaged, and the 
American people know it. Can they trust him? That is what he told them 
then. That is what he will tell them in 2 years. Is he going to be 
believed? I do not think so. So these tax breaks, while ostensibly for 
2 years may, in fact, be for a lot longer than that.
  I would also say that while we have talked about--primarily the 
discussion has centered around extending the tax breaks, personal 
income tax breaks to the very rich, there are other tax breaks in this 
proposal which are equally odious.
  What this agreement between the President and the Republican 
leadership does is it extends the Bush era 15-percent tax rates on 
capital gains and dividends, meaning that those people who make their 
living off of their investments will continue to pay a substantially 
lower tax rate than firemen, teachers, and nurses.
  Think about that. You are a big-time investor. You make most of your 
income off of capital gains or dividends, and you are paying a 15-
percent tax rate. But if you are a worker doing something with your 
hands or you are a teacher or a fireman or you are a cop or nurse, a 
doctor, you are paying tax rates that are higher than that. We are 
extending those 15-percent tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
  Then, on top of that, this agreement includes a horrendous proposal 
regarding the estate tax. The estate tax was enacted in 1916, and it 
was a proposal strongly supported by Teddy Roosevelt, who believed very 
strongly that it was not healthy for America to have an ongoing and 
evolving concentration of ownership. Here is what Teddy Roosevelt said 
in 1910:

       The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, 
     restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a 
     small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful 
     men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. 
     The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these 
     men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare 
     that they should hold or exercise . . . No man should receive 
     a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every 
     dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service 
     rendered--not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The 
     really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of 
     its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as 
     well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively 
     small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax 
     on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily 
     collected and far more effective--a graduated inheritance tax 
     on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and 
     increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

  How is that? One hundred years ago. That is what he said. I would say 
he got it right when he said that. It is even more true today, hence 
the estate tax.
  Unfortunately, under the agreement reached by the President and the 
Republicans, the estate tax rate, which was 55 percent under President 
Clinton when the economy, by the way, was a heck of a lot stronger than 
it is today, will decline to 35 percent with an exemption on the first 
$5 million of an individual's estate and $10 million for a couple.
  I made this point earlier, but I think it has got to be made over and 
over. Our Republican friends have renamed the estate tax the death tax. 
The implication of what they are saying, and what many Americans 
believe, is that if I have $100,000 in the bank or $50,000 in the bank 
and I die, my kids are going to have to pay a heavy estate tax on what 
I left them. But that is absolutely and categorically not the case. The 
estate tax applies only to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. This is 
not a tax on the rich. This is a tax on the very, very, very rich. And 
under this proposal, which benefits only the top three-tenths of 1 
percent, the President and the Republicans agreed to lower the tax rate 
on the estate tax to 35 percent, with an exemption on the first $5 
million.
  That is wrong. Let me give you an example of who the folks are who 
will benefit from doing this. Many of my Republican colleagues have 
been pushing very hard, not just to lower the tax rate--by the way, 
this 35 percent is lower, I think, than they ever dreamed they would 
get, with a $5 million exemption, but what they wanted ultimately, and 
I suspect will continue to fight for, is the complete repeal of the 
estate tax.
  To give one example--and I don't mean to pick on the Walton family, 
but just as a flesh-and-blood example--Sam Walton's family, the heirs 
to the Walmart fortune, are worth, give or take, $86 billion. That is a 
lot of money. The Walton family would receive an estimated $32.7 
billion tax break if the estate tax was completely repealed. Does 
anybody in their right mind believe that when this country has a 
national debt of $13.7 trillion and when we have the highest rate of 
childhood poverty in the industrialized world and our unemployment rate 
is 9.8 percent, can anybody for one second fathom Members of the Senate 
saying they want to give a $32 billion tax break to one family?
  In terms of the estate tax, what we have done is made it even more 
regressive. We have given substantial help to exactly the people who 
need it the least. That is not what we should be doing. Our job--and I 
know it is a radical idea--should be to represent the vast majority of 
the people, the middle class, the working families, and not just the 
top 1 or 2 percent. This proposal, this lowering of the estate tax, 
which will cost our government substantial sums of money because the 
revenue is not going to come in, will benefit only the top three-tenths 
of 1 percent.
  Again, if some of my Republican colleagues are successful in their 
desire--and they are moving down the path--if we repeal the estate tax 
entirely, which is what they want to do--it is hard to believe, and 
some of the listeners out there think I am kidding, but I am deadly 
serious--it will drive up the national debt by $1 trillion over a 10-
year period. Lowering the estate tax rate and raising the exemption is 
clearly an onerous provision.
  It is not only the Walton family of Walmart who will benefit. 
According to Forbes magazine, there are 403 billionaires living in this 
country with a combined net worth of $1.3 trillion. That is not shabby. 
That is pretty good. Anyone lucky enough to inherit this extraordinary 
wealth would benefit the most from repealing the estate tax.
  As Robert Frank wrote in his book ``Richistan'':

       The wealthiest people in this country accumulated so much 
     wealth that they have been competing to see who could own the 
     largest private yacht, who could own the most private jets, 
     who could own the most expensive cars, jewelry, artwork, et 
     cetera. In 1997, for example, Leslie Wexner, chairman of 
     Limited Brands, the company that owns Victoria's Secret--

  And none of us know what Victoria's Secret is--

     paid a German shipmaker to build what was then the largest 
     private yacht in the United States. It is called The 
     Limitless.

  There is a photo. It is a nice boat. It stretches 315 feet and has 
3,000 square feet of teakwood and a gym.
  According to Forbes magazine, Mr. Wexner is one of the wealthiest 400 
people in this country, worth an estimated $2.3 billion. Permanently 
repealing the estate tax would allow Mr. Wexner's two children to 
inherit all of his wealth without paying a nickel to help this country 
deal with the enormous problems we have.
  I wish Mr. Wexner--I don't know him; I hope he is alive and well--a 
long life. But I believe strongly that in this country, if we are going 
to see the middle class survive and our kids do well, we cannot repeal 
the estate tax and we cannot lower estate tax rates.
  I wish to address another issue which I talked about earlier. I think 
there is some misunderstanding. The Presiding Officer raised this issue 
at a recent meeting we had. All over the country, people say: Isn't it 
great that we are going to lower the payroll tax on workers? We are 
going to go from 6.2 percent, which workers now pay, down to 4.2 
percent. People are going to have more money in their pocket, which 
certainly is a good thing. It is going to cost $120 billion in Social 
Security payroll taxes.
  Here is the point. Yes, we do want to put more money in workers' 
pockets. That is why many of us in the stimulus package supported a 
$400-a-year tax break for virtually every worker in America. That is 
what we said. We

[[Page S8777]]

want people in these difficult times to have the money to take care of 
their families. When they have that money, they go out and spend it. 
When they spend it, it creates other jobs because people have to 
provide goods and services for them. It has a good, stimulative impact. 
We do want workers to have more money in their pockets.
  While this idea of lowering the payroll tax sounds like a good idea, 
in truth, it really is not a good idea. This idea originated from very 
conservative Republicans whose intention from the beginning was to 
destroy Social Security by choking off the funds that go to it. This is 
not just Bernie Sanders' analysis. There was recently--I distributed it 
recently at a meeting we held--a news release that came from the 
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. The 
headline on that press release is ``Cutting Contributions to Social 
Security Signals the Beginning of the End. Payroll Tax Holiday is 
Anything But.'' What the National Committee to Preserve Social Security 
and Medicare, which is one of the largest senior groups in America, 
well understands is that there are people out there who want to destroy 
Social Security. And one way to do that is to divert funds into the 
Social Security trust fund and they don't get there.
  What the President and others have said is not to worry, this is just 
a 1-year program--just 1 year. In fact, they say, the General Treasury 
will pay the difference. So the Social Security trust fund is not going 
to lose funding.
  The reason we have a $2.6 trillion surplus today in Social Security 
and the reason Social Security is good for the next 29 years to pay out 
all benefits is because it comes from the payroll tax. It is not 
dependent upon the whims of the Congress and the Treasury.
  The President and Republicans said: This is just a 1-year program. 
Don't worry.
  I do worry. I worry that once we establish this 1-year payroll tax 
holiday, next year our Republican friends will say: Do you want to end 
that? You are going to be raising taxes on workers. And enough people 
will support that concept, and this 1-year payroll tax holiday will 
become permanent. And when we do that, we will be choking off, over a 
period of years, trillions of dollars that we need to make sure Social 
Security is viable and is there for our children and grandchildren.
  But don't listen to me. Listen to somebody who knows a lot more about 
this issue than I do. Barbara Kennelly is a former Congresswoman from 
Connecticut. She is the president and CEO of the National Committee to 
Preserve Social Security and Medicare. This is what Barbara Kennelly 
says:

       Even though Social Security contributed nothing to the 
     current economic crisis, it has been bartered in a deal that 
     provides deficit busting tax cuts for the wealthy. Diverting 
     $120 billion in Social Security contributions for a so-called 
     tax holiday may sound like a good deal for workers now, but 
     it is bad business for a program that a majority of middle 
     class seniors will rely upon in the future.

  The headline is ``Cutting Contributions to Social Security Signals 
the Beginning of the End.''
  This is not a good approach. Providing and figuring out a way that we 
can get more money into the hands of working people, as we did in the 
stimulus package, does make a lot of sense. Going forward with a 
payroll tax holiday is a backdoor method to end up breaking Social 
Security. It is not anything we should support.
  Let me mention a quote from a gentleman who understands this issue 
very well. He understands the politics of what is going on here. His 
name Bruce Bartlett, former adviser for Presidents Reagan and George 
H.W. Bush. He recently wrote the following in opposition to this 
payroll tax cut. This is what Mr. Bartlett wrote:

       What are the odds that Republicans will ever allow this 
     one-year tax holiday to expire? They wrote the Bush tax cuts 
     with explicit expiration dates and then when it came time for 
     the law they wrote to take effect exactly as they wrote it, 
     they said any failure to extend them permanently would 
     constitute the biggest tax increase in history. . . . if 
     allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is the biggest tax 
     increase in history, one that Republicans claim would 
     decimate a still-fragile economy, then surely expiration of a 
     payroll tax holiday would also constitute a massive tax 
     increase on the working people of America. Republicans would 
     prefer to destroy Social Security's finances or permanently 
     fund it with general revenues--

  Switch the revenue base from the payroll tax to general revenues--

     than allow a once-suspended payroll tax to be reimposed. Arch 
     Social Security hater Peter Ferrara once told me that funding 
     it with general revenues was part of his plan to destroy it 
     by converting Social Security into a welfare program, rather 
     than an earned benefit. He was right.

  In other words, what this issue is about is breaking the bonds we 
have had since the inception of Social Security where Social Security 
was paid for by workers. You pay for it when you are working, and you 
get the benefits when you are old. That is the deal. There is no 
Federal money coming in from the General Treasury.
  This gentleman, Mr. Bartlett, former adviser to Presidents Reagan and 
George H.W. Bush, thinks--and I suspect he is quite right--this is the 
beginning of an effort to destroy Social Security.
  The real debate about Social Security is not one about finances.
  There has been a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. 
I hear from some of my friends on the Republican side that Social 
Security is going bankrupt; it is not going to be there for our kids. 
That is absolutely not true. Social Security today has a $2.6 trillion 
surplus. Social Security can pay out every benefit owed to every 
eligible American, if we do not start diverting funds, for the next 29 
years, at which point it pays out about 78 percent of benefits. So our 
challenge in 29 years is to fill that 22-percent gap. That it is. Can 
we do it? Sure we can.
  President Obama, when he was campaigning, and I think he has repeated 
since, the very good suggestion that instead of having a cap in terms 
of which people contribute into the fund at $106,000, what we should do 
is do a bubble, and people who make $250,000 or more should contribute 
into the Social Security trust fund. If you did that and nothing else, 
you have essentially solved the Social Security problem for the next 75 
years. Very easy. It is done.
  So what this payroll tax holiday is doing, in my view, is pretty 
dangerous. I do not think enough people understand that. I think that 
is one of the strong reasons this agreement should be opposed.
  Another reason I believe this agreement is not as good an agreement 
as we can get is that it provides tens and tens of billions of dollars 
in tax cuts for various types of businesses. I am not here to say these 
tax cuts cannot do some good. I suspect they can. But I think there is 
a lot better way to create the jobs we need than providing these 
particular business tax cuts.
  Frankly, I think economists from almost all political spectrums--
conservative to progressive--understand that if we are serious about 
creating the kinds of jobs this economy desperately needs and if we 
want to do that as rapidly and as cost-effectively as we possibly can, 
the way to do that is not to provide business tax cuts because right 
now--right now--corporate America is sitting on close to $2 trillion 
cash on hand. They have a ton of money. The problem is the products 
they are creating are not being bought by the American people because 
the American people do not have the money to buy those goods and 
services.
  So if we are serious about creating the jobs we need, I think what we 
have to do is start making significant investments in our crumbling 
infrastructure; that is, rebuilding our bridges, our roads, our water 
systems, broadband, cell phone service, public transportation, our rail 
system, dams. In every single one of these areas, we are seeing our 
infrastructure crumbling.
  The point is, if you simply ignore a crumbling infrastructure--and I 
say this as a former mayor who dealt with this issue--if you simply 
ignore a crumbling infrastructure, do you know what, it does not get 
better all by itself.
  I know many mayors and Governors would very much like to think they 
could turn their backs on the infrastructure because it is not a sexy 
investment. It is not a sexy investment. But the reality is, if you do 
not pay attention to it today, it only gets worse and it costs you more 
money. It is like having a cavity. You can get your cavity filled. If 
you neglect it, as I have,

[[Page S8778]]

and you end up doing a root canal, it is far more painful, far more 
expensive. That is what it is about. Do we maintain our infrastructure? 
Clearly, we have not. According to the American Society of Civil 
Engineers, we should be spending about $2.2 trillion in the next 5 
years in order to maintain our infrastructure.
  I say to the Presiding Officer, I do not know about Alaska--I spent a 
very brief time in the Presiding Officer's beautiful State--but I do 
know in Vermont we have bridges all over our State that are in 
desperate need of repair. It is fair to say that the stimulus package 
has been very positive for my State. We are spending more money on 
roads and bridges. But we have a long way to go. So we are putting 
money into our roads and bridges. We are hiring people to do that work. 
That is what we should be doing all over the country.
  But it is not just roads and bridges. It is water systems. I told 
this story, I guess a few hours ago now, about a mayor, the mayor of 
Rutland, VT, which is the second largest city in the State. I was in 
his office and he showed me a pipe, and the pipe was in pretty bad 
shape. He said: You know, this pipe was laid by an engineer who then, 
after he did this, went off to war. And he said: What war do you think 
he went off to fight? And he said it was the Civil War--the Civil War. 
So this was pipe laid in Rutland, VT, which is still being used, which 
was laid, I am guessing, in the 1850s, maybe 1860s. And it is not just 
Rutland, VT.
  When I was mayor of Burlington, we had to spend $50 million, back 
then, 20 years ago, I think, rebuilding our wastewater plants and 
making sure that a lot of pollution and filthy water did not get into 
our beautiful lake, Lake Champlain. It was an expensive proposition. 
But right now, we are going to have to invest in that. It is our water 
systems, our dams, our levees, our roads, our bridges.
  I mentioned earlier and contrasted what was going on in 
infrastructure in the United States as opposed to China, and I quoted 
from a book called ``Third World America,'' written by Arianna 
Huffington, who tells us, essentially, if we do not get our act 
together, that is what we will become--a third world country.
  She points out that compared to countries such as China, our 
investments in rail are absolutely pathetic and inadequate. In China, 
right now, that country is investing billions and billions of dollars 
in high-speed rail, building thousands and thousands of miles of high-
speed rail. They are building over 100 new airports. And what are we 
doing?
  So one of my many objections to the proposal struck between the 
President and the Republican leadership is I think we can do better in 
job creation than in business tax cuts. There is a time and a place for 
business tax cuts, and I am not against them. But I would say that at 
this particular moment in American history, at this particular moment, 
it makes a lot more sense to create, over a period of years, millions 
of jobs rebuilding our rail system, our subways, our roads, our 
bridges, and our water systems, and many other aspects of our 
infrastructure.
  There are places in Vermont and throughout this country where people 
cannot today get decent-quality broadband service, cannot get cell 
phone service. In that area, we are behind many other countries, not 
wealthy countries around the world. When we make those investments in 
infrastructure, we not only create jobs, but we make our country 
stronger and more productive, and we enable ourselves to compete 
effectively in the international economy.
  Another one of my objections to this proposal and why I think we can 
do a lot better is that I was really quite disturbed to hear the 
President and others, who defend this proposal, talk about that one of 
the ``compromises'' that was struck was to extend unemployment benefits 
for 13 months.
  To my mind, as I have said earlier, at a time of deep recession, at a 
time of terribly high unemployment, it would be absolutely wrong and 
immoral for us to turn our backs on the millions of workers who are 
about to lose their unemployment benefits. If we do that, it is hard to 
imagine what happens to those families, for many of whom this is their 
only source of income. What do they do? Do they lose their homes? Do 
they move out onto the streets? How do they take care of their kids? I 
do not know. There are parts of this country where it is very hard to 
get a job. Extended unemployment is at the highest level I think we 
have ever seen. You cannot turn your backs on those families.
  But I get upset when I hear that the Republican's willingness to 
support an extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months is a major 
compromise. I will tell you--I think a lot of the American people do 
not know this--that for the past 40 years--40 years, four decades--
under both Democratic and Republican administrations, whenever the 
unemployment rate has been above 7.2 percent--and today we are at 9.8 
percent unemployment--always, whether the Democrats were in control, 
the Republicans were in control, the President was Democrat, the 
President was Republican, what people did was say: We have to extend 
unemployment benefits. It is kind of common sense. It is not partisan. 
So when you have a program that has existed for 40 years in a 
bipartisan effort, it sounds to me that it is not much of a compromise 
for the Republicans to say: OK, we will do what Democrats and 
Republicans have done for 40 years. What a major compromise. It is not 
a compromise. It is just continuing existing bipartisan policy, which 
is sensible. It is sensible from a moral perspective. You cannot leave 
fellow American families out high and dry.

  It is good economics because what the economists tell us is the 
people who will spend that money quickest are people who receive 
unemployment compensation because that is all they have. They are going 
to go out and buy, and when they buy from the neighborhood store, they 
create jobs. So it is good economics, and it is the moral thing to do.
  But, frankly, in my view, this is not much of a compromise. This is 
just continuing four decades of existing policies.
  As I said earlier, there are very clearly positive parts of this 
agreement, no question about it. I think almost every American will 
tell you that it would be totally absurd--I know there are some who 
disagree, but I think the vast majority of Americans believe that in a 
time when the middle class is collapsing, when median family income has 
gone down, when unemployment is high, that it would be a real horror 
show if we did not extend the Bush tax breaks for the middle class, for 
98 percent of the American people--98 percent. That is what we want.
  We could have crafted it much tighter, couldn't we have? We could 
have said: Nobody above $100,000, nobody above $150,000. That is pretty 
generous. We said a family earning up to $250,000 should get an 
extension of these tax breaks. That is 98 percent of the American 
people, and that is not good enough for our Republican friends. They 
are fighting tooth and nail to make sure the top 2 percent--the 
millionaires and billionaires, the CEOs who earn tens of millions a 
year--they are fighting--it is as if they are at war. They are so 
engaged to make sure these fabulously wealthy people receive at least 
$1 million, in some cases. For people who are making $1 million a year, 
they are going to receive, on average, $100,000 a year in tax breaks. 
For the very, very wealthiest, it could be over $1 million a year.
  I say to the Presiding Officer, I know you joined me just 2 days ago 
in saying that at a time when senior citizens in this country and 
disabled vets, for 2 years in a row, had not received any COLA, that 
maybe it was the right thing to do--because we know that health care 
costs and prescription drug costs are soaring--that maybe we should 
provide a $250 check for those seniors and disabled veterans one time--
one time. I could not get one Republican vote in support of that 
proposition. We won 53 to 45, but around here it does not take 50 votes 
to win; it does not take a majority to win; it takes 60 votes. We could 
not get one Republican vote. So here you have every Republican voting 
against a $250 check for a disabled vet or a senior citizen who is 
living on $15,000, $16,000 a year. Cannot afford it. But we can afford 
a million-dollar-a-year tax break for somebody who is worth hundreds of 
millions of dollars. Now, somebody may understand that rationale. I 
don't. I really

[[Page S8779]]

don't. I can't understand it. I can't understand asking our kids and 
grandchildren to pay more in taxes, and the national debt goes up in 
order to provide tax breaks for the richest people in this country.

  So while there are some good provisions in this bill--certainly 
extending the tax breaks for 98 percent of our people, for the very 
broad middle class; I think if the American people demand it, in our 
democracy we can do better. I don't know if the Presiding Officer or I 
alone will be able to convince some of our Republican friends or maybe 
some of our Democratic friends to make this into the kind of proposal 
we need for the working families of this country, and for our children, 
for our next generation. I don't know if we can do it inside this 
beltway.
  As I said earlier, I think the way we win this battle, the way we 
defeat this proposal and come back with a much better proposal is when 
millions of Americans start writing and e-mailing and calling their 
Senators, their Congress people, and say: Wait a second. Are you nuts? 
Do you really think millionaires and billionaires need a huge tax break 
at a time when this country has a $13.7 trillion national debt? What 
are you smoking? How could you for one second think that makes any 
sense whatsoever?
  I will tell the Presiding Officer something. I don't know what my 
phones are doing today in my office right now. But in the last 3 days 
we have gotten, I am guessing, 5,000 phone calls and e-mails, and about 
99 percent of them are in disagreement with this proposal.
  I am looking at a chart. We have gotten 2,100 calls that just came in 
today. I don't know what kind of calls other Members of the Senate are 
getting, but certainly those are the calls I am getting.
  This point cannot be made strongly enough: What our Republican 
friends want to do--and they have been pretty honest and up front about 
it, especially some of the extreme, rightwing people who have been 
running for office and, in some cases, have won--they have been honest 
enough to say they want to bring this country back to where we were in 
the 1920s. Their ultimate aim is the basic repeal of almost all of the 
provisions that have been passed in the last 70 years to protect 
working people, the elderly, and children. They believe in a Darwinian-
style society in which you have the survival of the fittest; that we 
are not a society which comes together to take care of all of us. You 
take care of me in need and I take care of you and your family; that we 
are one people. Their strategy is pretty clear. They want to ultimately 
destroy Social Security.
  What we are beginning to hear more and more of is why don't we raise 
the retirement age to 68 or 69. That deficit reduction commission, 
which I thought was--the people on that commission were bad appointees 
by the President. We could have put together some good economists to 
say how do we in a fair way--in a fair way--address the deficit and 
national debt crisis. That wasn't what that commission did. So these 
folks are talking about major cuts in Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid.
  At a time when it is so hard for young people to afford to go to 
college, they want to raise the costs by asking our young people while 
they are in college to be accruing the interest on their loans.
  So I think if the President believes that if this agreement is 
passed, the Republicans are going to come to the table and we are all 
going to live happily in the future, we are all going to work together 
in a nonpartisan way, I think he is not understanding the reality. 
These people are going to come back and they are going to come back 
very aggressively for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid, environmental protection, education, childcare, Pell grants, 
you name it, because their belief is--I don't quite understand it--that 
it is somehow good public policy to give tax breaks for the wealthiest 
people in this country who, in many ways, have never had it so good, 
while you cut programs that the middle class and working families of 
this country desperately depend upon.
  So I would suggest that this big debate we are having right now on 
whether we should accept the proposal agreed to by the President and 
the Republicans is just the beginning of what is coming down the pike. 
If we surrender now on this issue, we can expect next month and the 
following month another governmental crisis, another threat of a 
shutdown, unless they get their way. So I think rather than asking the 
working families of this country to have to compromise, instead of 
asking our kids to pay more in taxes to bail out billionaires, maybe--I 
know this is a radical idea--but maybe we should ask a handful of our 
Republican friends to join us. Maybe a handful of honest conservatives 
over there who have been telling us for years their great concerns 
about deficit spending and a huge national debt, maybe they should be 
prepared to vote against the proposal which raises the national debt 
and our deficit by giving tax breaks to some of the richest people in 
the world.
  Quite frankly, I don't think I am going to be able to convince them. 
I don't know that the Presiding Officer is going to be able to convince 
them. But I think their constituents can convince them. I think the 
American people can convince them. I think, as I said earlier, if the 
American people stand up, we can defeat this proposal and we can create 
a much better proposal.
  Clearly, we must extend tax breaks for the middle class. Clearly, we 
must make sure unemployed workers continue to get the benefits they 
desperately need. But equally, clearly, we must make sure we are not 
raising the national debt which, as sure as I am standing here, will 
result in cuts in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and 
education and other programs if this proposal is passed.
  So this is not only an important proposal unto itself: $900 billion 
plus even in Washington is nothing to sneeze at. But it is an important 
proposal in terms of the direction in which our country goes into the 
future. If we accept this proposal of a 2-year extension for the 
richest people in America, I believe it will eventually become either a 
long-term extension or a permanent extension. If we accept the proposal 
that lowers the rates on the estate tax which benefits only the top 
three-tenths of 1 percent--99.7 percent of Americans get nothing--but 
if we give them what they want, I believe over a period of years it 
will lead to the complete abolishment and ending of the estate tax 
which will cost us over $1 trillion over a 10-year period.
  So I hope this issue is not one just progressives or moderates feel 
strongly about. I hope honest conservatives, who in their heart of 
hearts believe this country is seriously in danger when we have 
unsustainable deficits and a huge national debt, will tell their 
elected officials here in Washington not to pass a piece of legislation 
which increases the national debt significantly and, in fact, will 
allow for the permanent--over years, in my view--extension of these tax 
breaks.
  So that is what this debate is about. It is about fundamentally 
whether we continue the process by which the richest people in this 
country become richer, at a time when we have the most unequal 
distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth.
  As I have said earlier, this is not an issue that is discussed--I 
don't know--well, I do know why. It is just not an issue that people 
feel comfortable talking about because they don't want to give affront 
to their wealthy campaign contributors or take on the lobbyists who are 
out there. But that is the reality. Throughout the entire world, the 
United States has the most unequal distribution of income. The top 1 
percent is earning 23.5 percent of all income. That is more than the 
bottom 50 percent. That is not just immoral, it is bad economics 
because if the middle class gets crushed entirely, who is going to be 
buying the goods and services produced in this economy?
  So this piece of legislation, as important as it is unto itself--and 
it is very important--is equally important in terms of what it says 
about where we are going into the future. Are we going to protect the 
middle class and working families of our country? Are we going to make 
sure every young person in America, regardless of income, has the 
ability to go to college, or are we going to allow college to become 
unaffordable for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bright, young 
people, or else force them to leave school deeply in debt?

  Are we going to create a health care system which guarantees health 
care

[[Page S8780]]

to all of our people--high-quality health care--or are we going to 
continue a situation where 45,000 Americans die each year because they 
don't have access to a doctor? Are we going to invest in our energy 
system so we break our dependence on foreign oil? We spend about $350 
billion a year importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign 
countries--almost $1 billion a day--which should be used to make this 
country energy independent, which should be used to transform our 
energy system away from fossil fuel into energy efficiency and 
sustainable energy, technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal, and 
biomass.
  By the way, none of that has been addressed, as I understand it, in 
this proposal.
  So my point is not just that this proposal is a bad proposal as it 
stands before us now, but it is going to move us in the future in a 
direction that I do not believe this country should be going.
  I mentioned earlier my own personal family's history is the history 
of millions and millions of Americans. My father, as it happened, came 
to this country at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. He 
worked hard his whole life. He never made very much money, but he and 
my mom--my mom graduated high school; she never went to college--had 
the satisfaction, the very significant satisfaction, of knowing their 
kids got a college education. My older brother Larry went to law 
school, and I graduated from the University of Chicago.
  I think what is going on in this country and why the anxiety level is 
so high is not just that people are worried about themselves--parents 
worry more about their kids than they do about themselves. But what 
parents are sitting around and worrying about now is they are saying: 
Will, for the first time in the modern history of this country, my kids 
have a lower standard of living than their parents?
  Will my kids earn less income? Will my kids not have the education I 
have? Will my kids not have the opportunity to travel and learn and 
grow as I have done? Are the best days of America behind us? That is 
really the question. I don't think that has to be the case.
  But I will tell my colleagues, as I mentioned earlier, if we are 
going to change the national priorities in this country, if we are 
going to start devoting our energy and our attention to the needs of 
working families and the middle class, we have to defeat this proposal 
and we have to defeat similar types of proposals which come down the 
pike. When this country has a $13.7 trillion national debt, it is 
insane--nothing less than insane--to be talking about huge tax breaks 
for people who don't need them. Again, as I mentioned earlier, 
ironically, we have a lot of these millionaires out there who 
apparently love their country more than some of the people in this 
Chamber.
  You have some of the richest people in America--Bill Gates and all 
the good, charitable work he does, and Warren Buffet and many others--
who are saying: I am doing just fine. I am a billionaire or a 
multimillionaire. I don't need your tax breaks. I am worried about the 
fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty; invest in our 
children. I am worried that our infrastructure is crumbling; invest in 
our infrastructure. I am worried that 45,000 Americans are dying this 
year who don't have access to health care; invest in health care. I am 
worried about global warming; invest in transforming our energy system. 
These are patriotic Americans. They love their country. They are saying 
to us: We don't even want it.
  So we are giving money to people who, in some cases, don't even want 
it. I do know there are others out there who do want it. I think if 
there is one issue that we as a Congress and a government have to 
address, it is the extraordinary level of greed in this country. We 
have to stand tall and draw a line in the sand and simply say: Enough 
is enough. How much do you want? How much do you need? How many yachts 
can you own? How many homes can you have? Isn't it enough that the top 
1 percent now earns 23.5 percent of the income in this country? How 
much more do they want? Do they want 30 percent, 35 percent? Isn't it 
enough that the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 
percent? How much more do they need?
  I mentioned earlier, when I talked about the situation that got us 
into this horrendous recession--and that is the collapse of Wall 
Street--I talked about what I think most Americans understand very 
well; that is, the incredible greed and recklessness and dishonesty 
that exists on Wall Street. We must not allow ourselves to encourage 
and continue the kind of greed we have seen in recent years. It is an 
abomination that the people who caused this economic crisis--the worst 
recession since the Great Depression--that the people on Wall Street 
who caused it are now earning more money than they did before we bailed 
them out.
  Earlier today, I was reading some e-mails that came to my office from 
Vermonters who were struggling to keep their heads above water. They 
were terribly painful and poignant stories about honest, good, decent 
people who are now choosing whether they should put gas in their car or 
buy the food or prescription drugs they need. It is not just a Vermont 
story; it is an American story. It is a reality out there for tens of 
millions of Americans.
  In my view, we can negotiate a much better agreement than the one 
President Obama and the Republican leadership did. There are some good 
parts of that agreement, which obviously should be retained and perhaps 
even strengthened. Those include, of course, making sure we extend 
unemployment benefits to those who need it and, of course, that we 
extend tax breaks for the middle class. There are some very good other 
provisions in there which I think are worthwhile.
  I think if the American people stand and agree with those of us who 
say no more tax breaks for the very wealthiest people in this country, 
we can defeat this proposal, and we can come up with a much better one 
that is fairer to the middle class of this country and is fairer to our 
young children.
  I do not want to see our young kids--my children and grandchildren--
have a lower standard of living than their parents. That is not what 
America is about. What I think we have to do is defeat this proposal. I 
think we have to urge our fellow Americans to stand and say no to tax 
breaks for those who don't need it. I think we have to work in a very 
serious way about creating the millions and millions of good-paying 
jobs that this country desperately needs. I personally believe that is 
a far more effective approach than giving the variety of business taxes 
that were in this proposal at a time when corporate America is sitting 
on $2 million of unused cash. They have the money. I think a much 
better approach, as I said earlier, is investing in our crumbling 
infrastructure. I think that makes us healthier and stronger as a 
nation for the future and in the global economy.
  I think it creates jobs quicker and in a more cost-effective way than 
these tax cuts. I also think it is high time the American people move--
they want us to move in an entirely new direction in terms of trade. I 
am always amazed how Republicans and Democrats alike--and I speak as 
the longest serving Independent in Congress--come election time, have 
ads on television saying: Oh, we have to do something about outsourcing 
and about our trade policy. But somehow, the day after the election, 
when corporate America continues to throw American workers out on the 
street and moves to China, moves to other low-wage countries, that 
discussion ceases to exist and that legislation never seems to appear.
  So it seems to me we have to defeat this proposal, and that in 
defeating this, we are going to tell the American people there are at 
least some of us here who understand what our jobs and obligations are; 
that is, that we are supposed to represent them, the middle class of 
the country, and not just wealthy campaign contributors or bow to the 
interests of the lobbyists who are all over this place.
  When I talked a moment ago about the need to invest in our 
infrastructure as a way to create jobs, being more cost-effective than 
some of these business tax breaks, I am looking now at a Wall Street 
Journal article of December 9, 2010. Here is the headline: ``Companies 
Clinging to Cash; Coffers Swell to 51-year High as Cautious Firms Put 
Off Investing in Growth.''
  That is a story by Justin Lahart. Here is the story. It makes the 
point I have been trying to express:

       Corporate America's cash pile has hit its highest level in 
     half a century. Rather than

[[Page S8781]]

     pouring their money into building plants or hiring workers, 
     nonfinancial companies in the United States are sitting on 
     $1.93 trillion in cash--

  I said $2 trillion, but it is $1.93 trillion in cash.

     --and other liquid assets at the end of September, up from 
     $1.8 trillion at the end of June, the Federal Reserve said 
     Thursday. Cash accounted for 7.4 percent of the companies' 
     total assets, the largest share since 1959. The cash buildup 
     shows the deep caution many companies feel about investing in 
     expansion, while the economic recovery remains painfully 
     slow, and high unemployment and battered household finances 
     continue to limit consumers' ability to spend.

  What have we been talking about? The Wall Street Journal is not my 
favorite paper, but they are saying that the way you are going to get 
the economy moving again is to put money in the hands of working 
people, who will then go out and buy the goods and services these 
companies produce. I have my doubts about whether these tax rates will, 
in fact, have the desired result.
  As I said earlier, and will say again, I think the most effective way 
to create jobs, and the most important way, is to rebuild our crumbling 
infrastructure. That is our roads, bridges, rail system, water system, 
wastewater plants, our dams, levees, and the need to improve broadband 
to make sure every community in America has access to good-quality 
broadband and access to cell phone service. Unfortunately, as best as I 
can understand, there has not been one nickel appropriated in this 
proposed legislation that would go to infrastructure improvements.
  I think this proposal should be defeated because it is not a strong 
proposal for the middle class. It is a proposal that gives much too 
much to people who don't need it, and it is a proposal that I think 
sets the stage for similar-type proposals down the pike. I apologize to 
anybody who has been listening for any length of time. I know I have 
been, to say the least, a bit repetitious.
  But the concern is that when the President and some of my Republican 
colleagues talk about some of these tax breaks being temporary, we are 
just going to extend them for 2 years, talking about this payroll tax 
holiday being just 1 year, I have been in Washington long enough to 
know that assertion doesn't fly; that what is temporary today is long-
term tomorrow and is permanent the next day. I fear very much that this 
proposal is bad on the surface. I fear very much that this proposal 
will lead us down a very bad track in terms of more trickle-down 
economics, which benefits the tricklers and not the ordinary Americans. 
I think it is a proposal that should be defeated.
  The point I wish to make is that is not just my point of view. I 
think it should be defeated. I think we can do a lot better. I have to 
tell you the calls that are coming into my office are--here is what we 
got today: 2,122 calls oppose the deal, and I think 100 calls are 
supportive of the deal. You can do the arithmetic on it. At least 95 
percent of the calls I got today are saying this is not a good deal. We 
can do better.
  I know that in the last 3 or 4 days we have gotten probably 6,000 or 
7,000 calls that say this. This is not just Vermont--many of those 
calls come from out of State, by the way. But I think that is true all 
over this country.
  Let me conclude. It has been a long day. Let me simply say I believe 
the proposal that was developed by the President and the Republicans is 
nowhere near as good as we can achieve. I don't know that we are able 
ourselves to get the handful of Republicans we need to say no to this 
agreement. I do believe that if the American people stand--by the way, 
it may not just be Republicans. There may be some Democrats as well. If 
the American people stand and say: We can do better than this; we don't 
need to drive up the national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires 
and billionaires, that if the American people are prepared to stand and 
we are prepared to follow them, I think we can defeat this proposal and 
come up with a better proposal which reflects the needs of working-
class and middle-class families of our country and, to me, most 
importantly, the children of our country.
  With that, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Gillibrand). The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________