[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 12, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2375-S2378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BUDGET PRIORITIES
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we are at an extraordinary crossroads in
American history, both from a moral perspective as well as an economic
perspective.
The reality today, as I think most Americans understand, is that the
middle class of our country is collapsing. Over the last 10 years,
median family income has gone down by $2,500. Millions of Americans who
have lost their jobs secured new jobs at substantially lower pay.
Younger workers are finding it very hard to get a job at a livable
wage.
Furthermore, what we don't talk about terribly often here on the
floor of the Senate or certainly in the corporate media is the rather
unfortunate reality that in the United States, we have the most unequal
distribution of income and of wealth of any major country on Earth.
Today, the top 1 percent of earners make 23 percent of all income. The
top 1 percent earn 23 percent of every dollar, and that is more than
the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent make more money than the
bottom 50 percent. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent
has nearly tripled--nearly tripled--since the 1970s. Between 1980 and
2005, 80 percent--80 percent--of all new income in America went to the
top 1 percent.
Today, when we talk about distribution of wealth--not income--the
numbers are, frankly, beyond belief. Today in America, if my colleagues
can believe it, the wealthiest 400 Americans--400 Americans, a very
small number out of a nation of over 300 million people--own more
wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. So 400 on one side, 150
million on the other, and that gap between the very, very rich and
everybody else is growing wider.
I don't have to describe economically what is going on in this
country because almost everybody understands it. Real unemployment
today is not 8.9 percent; it is closer to 16 percent. Today in America,
50 million people have no health insurance. Today in America, seniors
and disabled vets understand they have not received a Social Security
COLA in 3 years.
So what we start with when we look at America today is a middle class
which is disappearing, poverty which is increasing, and the people on
top doing phenomenally well. Given that reality, one might think the
Congress would be actively involved in trying to protect the middle
class and working families and lower income people, but if one believed
that, one would be sorely mistaken.
Just last December, 4 months ago, Congress passed legislation to
provide huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires by extending
the Bush tax cuts to the top 2 percent and by even more by lowering the
estate tax for the top three-tenths of 1 percent. So at a time when the
people on top are already doing phenomenally well, what Congress did
against my vote in December was make the wealthiest people even
wealthier.
Four months ago, after giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and
billionaires and growing the deficit, our Republican friends and some
Democrats come back and they say: Well, now we have a real deficit
problem. We made the problem worse in December, so now we really have
to deal with the deficit, and we are going to do it by making
devastating cuts to programs that low- and moderate-income Americans
desperately depend upon.
What we are looking at is the Robin Hood principle in reverse: We are
taking from working families who are struggling to survive--taking
hundreds of billions of dollars and giving it to millionaires and
billionaires. In my view, this is grossly immoral, and it is also very
bad economics.
Let me touch on some of the cuts that are coming down the pike in
this, the 2011 budget. At a time of soaring fuel prices--in the State
of Vermont and I am sure in Minnesota, a lot of people heat with oil--
the cost is going up. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program,
LIHEAP, would be cut by $390 million. In Vermont, many of the people
who use the LIHEAP program are low-income senior citizens. So we give
tax breaks to billionaires, and we go after low-income senior citizens
and say: Sorry, you may have to go cold.
At a time when the cost of college education is getting unaffordable
for many low- and moderate-income families in this country--hundreds of
thousands of young people have given up their college dream because of
the high cost of college--Pell grants would be reduced by an estimated
$35 billion over 10 years, including a nearly $500 million cut this
year, and Pell grants are the major source of Federal funding to help
low- and moderate-income college students go to school.
At a time when 50 million Americans have no health insurance,
community health centers would be cut by $600 million. This is an issue
on which I have worked very, very hard. Community health centers
provide access to primary health care, dental care, low-cost
prescription drugs, and mental health counseling for some 20 million
Americans right now. Our hope was to expand that to 40 million
Americans. When we do that, we save money because people do not end up
in the emergency room; they do not end up in the hospital sicker than
they should have been. So $600 million for community health centers was
cut. The Children's Health Insurance Program was cut by $3.5 billion.
At a time when poverty is increasing, the WIC Program--women,
infants, and children--a nutrition program for pregnant women and
children, will be cut by $500 million.
At a time when we have such high unemployment rates and we want to
put Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure,
including our rail system, which is now far behind Europe, Japan, and
even China, Federal funding for high-speed rail will be eliminated in
the budget we are going to be voting on very soon, representing a cut
of $2.9 billion. Public
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transportation would be cut by nearly $1 billion--a 20-percent
reduction.
I know in Vermont, and I expect all over this country, local
communities are struggling with their budgets. Police departments are
not getting the budgets and the manpower they need. Yet, in this budget
we will be voting on, local law enforcement funding would be cut by
$296 million.
At a time when homelessness is increasing, when we need more low-
income housing, public housing would be cut by $605 million.
That is the 2011 budget agreement that was just reached a few days
ago. What is absolutely incredible about that budget is that deficit
reduction falls totally on the backs of low-and moderate-income
families, on people who will not be able to get health care at
community health centers, young people who will not be able to go to
college, and senior citizens who will not be able to heat their homes
in the wintertime. That is where this budget is balanced--on the backs
of the weak, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly, and the poor.
Yet, at the same time as the wealthiest people are becoming wealthier,
this budget does not ask for one penny--not one penny--from
millionaires and billionaires.
At a time when major corporation after major corporation enjoys huge
tax loopholes--so not only do they avoid paying any Federal income
taxes, but in many cases, such as General Electric, they actually get a
rebate from the IRS--this budget does not ask corporate America to pay
one penny more in corporate income taxes.
That is where we are with the 2011 budget, and now we are looking in
a short period of time at the 2012 budget. If my colleagues think this
2011 budget is a moral and economic disgrace, wait until we hear what
this 2012 budget, the so-called Paul Ryan tea party budget, which, as I
understand it, will be voted upon in the House, likely passing later
this week--that budget will slash trillions of dollars from Medicare,
converting Medicare into a voucher program, meaning that seniors will
have to pay substantially more for their health care than they
currently do. The interesting question that has not yet been answered
about this is, if you will be--when this Ryan budget would go into
effect--a senior citizen living on $14,000 or $15,000 a year, which
millions of seniors currently live on, how are you going to be able to
come up with thousands and thousands of dollars to pay for your cancer
treatment or the other problems senior citizens have? There is no money
available for you to do it.
What Ryan's budget does is demand that low-income seniors pay with
money they don't have. I am not sure I have heard the answer to the
question: If you are a low-income citizen and you are asked to come up
with thousands of dollars, and you don't have that money, what do you
do? The Ryan budget would savage Medicaid, education, the environment,
infrastructure, and other programs that tens of millions of Americans
depend upon.
Here is the kicker. We savage Medicare, Medicaid, education, and many
other programs that moderate and middle-class families depend upon in
order to give even more tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this
country and the largest corporations. After savaging health care in
America for middle and low-income families, the Ryan budget would
reduce the tax rates for the wealthiest people in this country from 35
to 25 percent, and it would cut corporate income taxes to the same
level, from 35 to 25 percent.
I suspect there are people listening to me who don't believe that:
Come on, you are not serious; at a time when the middle class is
collapsing and the rich are getting richer, you are not telling me that
the House is about to vote on a budget that will give huge tax breaks
to millionaires and billionaires and throw millions more off of health
care--you are not serious. Check it out. I am serious. This is what the
Ryan tea party budget, which will likely pass the House, will do.
As I began saying, we are at a pivotal moment in the modern history
of this country. That question is whether we move, in a sense, into an
oligarchic form of society, where a few people on top have incredible
amounts of wealth and incredible amounts of political power, while the
middle class disappears and poverty increases. That is where we are
right now.
I hope very much the American people engage in this debate and tell
Members of the Senate and the House that it is morally wrong and very
poor economics to cut back on programs that are desperately needed by
working families, while giving huge tax breaks to people who absolutely
don't need them.
With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the issue of our
budget. Later this week, the House will vote on its fiscal year 2012
budget resolution. Congressman Paul Ryan, the author of that blueprint,
calls it a path to prosperity.
Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. SCHUMER. I will be glad to yield to the Senator.
Mr. INHOFE. I was scheduled to be speak at 4 o'clock. At the
conclusion of the Senator's remarks, would the Senator request that I
be recognized as in morning business for up to 30 minutes?
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move that immediately after I finish
speaking, the Senator--well, we had a Member who was going to go speak
after you did. Could the Senator limit his speech to 15 minutes or----
Mr. INHOFE. No, sir, I could not. I have to have 30 minutes. The
floor has been pretty empty today.
Mr. SCHUMER. OK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
immediately after I finish, Senator Inhofe be recognized for up to 30
minutes, and then Senator Franken be recognized immediately after
Senator Inhofe.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. So Mr. President, resuming my remarks, Paul Ryan, the
author of that blueprint, called it the path to prosperity. It may be a
path to austerity, but it is hardly a path to prosperity.
Nonetheless, with the negotiations finished just days ago on last
year's budget, Congressman Ryan has succeeded in jump-starting the
debate about next year's. The President himself will join this
conversation about how to do long-term deficit reduction in a major
address tomorrow at GWU--George Washington University. This is a debate
we must have, and the President's entrance into it comes not a moment
too soon. It will make for a powerful contrast with the Republicans'
plan.
The contrast we will hear from our President tomorrow will likely not
be in the commitment to deficit reduction. Paul Ryan's goal in his
budget is to trim the deficit by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
He does not succeed in meeting this target, according to CBO. In fact,
budget experts say his proposal only achieves $155 billion in net
deficit reduction. But the number itself is not the issue. Without a
doubt, we must be ambitious in setting a target for deficit reduction.
We cannot be gun-shy about achieving fiscal discipline. So, no, the
contrast will not be in how much we seek to reduce the deficit, it will
be in how we go about doing so.
The Republicans would like the looming debate to be one about
numbers, but, instead, it will be about priorities. The Ryan budget has
all the wrong priorities.
The House Republican budget puts the entire burden of reducing the
deficit on senior citizens, students, and middle-class families. At the
same time, it protects corporate subsidies for oil companies, let's
waste at the Pentagon go untouched, and would give even more tax breaks
to the millionaires amongst us. In short, the Ryan budget puts the
middle class last instead of first. As a result, it will never pass the
Senate.
In the days since he first rolled out his budget proposal,
Congressman Ryan has been hailed for taking on the tough challenges,
and we certainly salute him for putting out a plan. But a closer look
at his proposal shows that
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it is not bold at all. In leaving Pentagon spending and revenues
completely untouched, Ryan's budget hews exactly to his party's
orthodoxy.
Some of the columns I read say it takes courage. Well, maybe it takes
courage for someone who has a different political philosophy to say
what he said but not for a conservative Republican to say what he said.
It does not gore a single Republican ox. It is a rigid ideological
document.
Consider what Congressman Ryan wants to do on Medicare. In the name
of ideology, Paul Ryan's budget proposes getting rid of Medicare as it
exists today and replacing it with a private system that would cut
benefits. We have seen this movie before. Five years ago, President
Bush tried to sell the country on a plan to privatize Social Security.
The public rejected it. If they didn't like what President Bush tried
to do to Social Security, just wait until they see what Paul Ryan and
the House Republicans want to do to Medicare. Their budget plan
proposes putting the Medicare system into the hands of private
insurance companies. That is a recipe for disaster. It would mean an
end to Medicare as we know it.
Beginning in 2022, Americans turning 65 would no longer be enrolled
in Medicare but, instead, would receive a voucher to go shopping for
their own health insurance on the open market. Insurance companies,
however, would not be required to honor that voucher, which would
average about $8,000. Many private insurance plans for seniors far
exceed that price already today. Under the Ryan plan, seniors who
cannot find an affordable plan at the value of their voucher will
simply have to make up the difference themselves out of their own
pockets.
This problem would only worsen over time as health care costs rise.
Ryan caps Medicare spending at the level of inflation, even though
health care costs rise higher than that historically. As Ryan's voucher
covers a smaller and smaller fraction of actual health care costs,
seniors would have to cover the gap out of pocket.
That is why Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and President Clinton's former
OMB Director who worked with Congressman Ryan on his approach for a
time, has distanced herself from this final product. She told the
Washington Post she opposes the Ryan plan:
In the Ryan version he has lowered the rate of growth and I
don't think that's defensible. It pushed too much of the
costs onto the beneficiaries.
Let me repeat that last part of the statement of Alice Rivlin,
Congressman Ryan's partner for a time in this proposal. She writes:
It pushed too much of the cost onto the beneficiaries.
Other Medicare experts agree with Rivlin. Stephen Zuckerman, a health
care economist at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, said:
The most serious flaw is that the focus of that approach is
on limiting Federal spending on Medicare without concern
about the potential of this change to shift costs to Medicare
beneficiaries.
A better way to rein in Medicare spending would be to trim the waste
and inefficiency out of the delivery system. Anyone who has gone
through the health care system knows all the waste and inefficiencies--
the legendary stories of a doctor waving as you go into the emergency
room and you never see him again, and then there is a $4,000 charge,
these kinds of things. But it turns out that Ryan's plan does nothing
to reduce overall health care costs. It increases them. We have to
preserve the benefits to people but make the cost of delivering them
less expensive. That is what every other country in the world does.
That is what we have to do.
The Ryan plan does not do that. The Ryan plan not only does not try
to eliminate the waste and inefficiency out of the delivery system, it
does nothing to reduce overall health care costs. It actually increases
them.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in 2030
traditional Medicare insurance would cost just 60 percent of a private
policy purchased with Ryan's voucher. In other words, the Ryan health
care plan would cost two-thirds more than traditional Medicare. Not
only would the Ryan plan increase insurance costs, it would force
seniors to shoulder a higher share of these costs.
CBO said--this is CBO not Chuck Schumer, the nonpartisan CBO:
Under the proposal, most elderly people who would be
entitled to premium support payments would pay more for their
health care than they would pay under the current Medicare
system.
How much more? It is staggering when you look at the numbers. Here
they are, the seniors' share of health care costs. We know even with
Medicare seniors have to pay some of it themselves, but now they pay 25
percent; under the Ryan budget, 68 percent. So there is this voucher,
and it goes to the insurance companies, health care costs more, and
seniors pay more. Why the heck would we do that?
This is a crippling burden that would drive the average Medicare
recipient into poverty. It is not only too much to ask for our seniors,
it destroys the foundation of our health care system.
Madam President, just to check on the time, I believe I said after I
finished I asked unanimous consent that Senator Inhofe would follow me.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
Did the Senator wish for more than 10 minutes?
Mr. SCHUMER. I did, and that was the intention of my unanimous
consent request.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. The bottom line is the House Republican budget would
cause the cost of health insurance to rise and then would make seniors
pay a greater share of that higher cost. It is a cut in benefits plans,
plain and simple. If we are serious about reining in Medicare spending,
there is a far better starting place than the Ryan budget. It is the
health care law passed by Congress last year. Republicans are patting
themselves on the back lately for leading on entitlement reform. When
it comes to reining in the runaway costs of Medicare, the truth is the
President did it first, and he did it better.
In the health care law, we certainly did not complete the job, but we
made a good start on reducing waste and inefficiency and duplication in
the system. We started down the path of making delivery system reforms.
We set up a system for studying the effectiveness of different methods
and treatments so that care could be delivered more efficiently. We
made a downpayment on shifting the larger health care system away from
a fee-for-service model toward a system that pays providers for
episodes of care.
The Ryan proposal adopts none of these cost-saving approaches. In
fact, his budget calls for the repeal of the health care law
altogether. Left unsaid is that this would have the side effect of
reopening the doughnut hole, another hit to Medicare beneficiaries.
If the Ryan budget's only goal was to end Medicare, that would be
ample cause to work tooth and nail to defeat it, but the Ryan budget
doesn't even put most of its savings from ending Medicare toward
deficit reduction. Amazingly, it cuts Medicare, ends Medicare as we
know it, and takes whatever savings it produces and gives more tax
breaks to the wealthiest Americans. That is right. Ryan's budget not
only seeks to permanently extend President Bush's tax cuts for
millionaires, he wants to cut their taxes even lower than the Bush
levels.
In fact, under the Ryan proposal millionaires would pay a rate so low
that it was last seen in the days of Herbert Hoover. What about shared
sacrifice? As unbelievable as it sounds, Congressman Ryan wants to give
millionaires and billionaires an extra tax break. Ryan's budget
proposal would bring down the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent
for those who are very wealthy. This would make for the lowest level of
taxing the wealthiest among us since 1931 when the Great Depression was
raging and Herbert Hoover was President. This is the trade Congressman
Ryan proposes we make: Cut Medicare benefits for seniors so we can
afford to give millionaires an extra tax break.
This is exactly the opposite of what the public wants. They don't
think the millionaires and billionaires should even be getting George
Bush's tax cut, let alone an extra one on top of that. I have nothing
against millionaires and billionaires, God bless them. Many of them
made their money the good old-fashioned way, but they don't need a tax
break when we are cutting health
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care and everything else. Most Americans agree with me.
In last month's NBC Wall Street Journal poll that asked Americans
what proposals they most support to reduce the deficit, 81 percent of
Americans, including a majority of Republicans, as I recall, said they
would support a tax on millionaires, the highest polling answer. One of
the lowest polling answers was--you guessed it--cutting Medicare
benefits. So the Ryan budget has its priorities completely upside-down.
You may ask, if Congressman Ryan puts all his savings from Medicare
into millionaire tax breaks, how does he propose to achieve any deficit
reduction? The answer is, by targeting the programs most important to
the middle class.
It turns out that the Republican plan to end Medicare is also a plan
to end other important programs. For example, the Republican plan to
end Medicare is, additionally, also a plan to cut tens of thousands of
teachers. The Republican plan to end Medicare is, additionally, also a
plan to cut Head Start for kids. The Republican plan to end Medicare
is, additionally, also a plan to cut medical research on diseases such
as cancer. The Republican plan to end Medicare is, additionally, also a
plan to cut clean energy projects that create jobs and help us become
energy independent.
In all, the Ryan plan assumes a steady squeezing of government until,
by 2050, the total cost of everything, save for Social Security and
health care, is shrunk from 12 percent of the GDP to just 3 percent.
But he doesn't spell out a single detail of how to achieve those cuts.
He has a number but no specifics. That is the definition of a meat ax
approach as opposed to an approach that uses a smart, sharp scalpel.
Even though the Ryan plan doesn't spell out where the cuts would come
from to meet his goal, it isn't a total mystery. We can fill in the
blanks. The just completed debate on the 2011 fiscal budget offers
plenty of hints on the Republican approach to cutting spending. In the
debate we just had, Republicans wanted to cut the very programs that
create good-paying jobs and help the middle class. They targeted
everything from cancer research to financial aid to college. We fended
off many of their worst cuts by successfully pushing Republicans to
include $17 billion in cuts from the mandatory side. We also got them
to agree to reduce Pentagon spending by nearly $3 billion compared to
their original budget. This was not the Republican's preferred way to
reduce the deficit. Because of ideology, they disproportionately
targeted the domestic discretionary part of the budget for cutting.
But our deficit problems weren't caused by Head Start and cancer
research, and we won't fix them by going after Head Start and cancer
research. In the budget debates to come, we need to broaden the playing
field beyond domestic discretionary spending. We should include, for
instance, waste in the Defense Department. The Pentagon makes up half
of the discretionary side of the budget, but Republicans continue to
treat it as off limits. Ryan himself leaves it virtually untouched save
for a symbolic trim. To say there isn't waste at the Pentagon like
there is waste everywhere else in the budget is absurd.
The bottom line is, any budget that leaves defense and revenues off
the table is ultimately not serious. We need an all-of-the-above
approach that puts all parts of the budget on the table. A dollar cut
from mandatory spending or the Pentagon is just as good as a dollar cut
from nondefense discretionary spending.
Deficit reduction is an important goal, but the sacrifice must be
shared. The Ryan budget fails that test. The Democratic Senate will not
stand for any proposals that seek to balance the budget on the backs of
the middle class and seniors. I look forward to hearing the President's
remarks tomorrow. As for Congressman Ryan, I encourage him to go back
to the drawing board and come up with a fairer, more balanced plan.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me thank my good friend from New
York for allowing me to have this time. I do appreciate his generosity.
I have to say, I don't agree with what he said, but that comes as no
surprise to my friend from New York. I will only make one comment. One
statement I heard him say toward the end of his remarks was that every
other country in the world would do it this way. That is the whole crux
of it right there. I often wonder if you look at the other countries,
they are all trying to get to our system. They all envy America for its
system of freedom, of health delivery. We wonder sometimes if
government-run health care is bad--and that is what this is; that is
what the Obama administration is trying to do--if it is better, then
why doesn't it work anywhere? I have often looked at this. It doesn't
work in Canada, Denmark, the UK. It doesn't work in any of the other
places. Yet they always say: It will work here. A lot of my liberal
friends say: If I were running it, it would work. We have a great
system.
I guess a little class warfare is healthy now and then, and we had a
little bit of that in the last few minutes.
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