[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 93 (Monday, June 27, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4115-S4122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is a pivotal moment in the history 
of our country. In the coming days and weeks, decisions will be made 
about our national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every 
American in this country for decades to come. The time is now for the 
American people to become significantly involved in that debate and not 
leave it to a small number of people here in Washington.
  At a time when the wealthiest people and the largest corporations in 
our country are doing phenomenally well and in many cases have never 
had it so good, while the middle class is disappearing and poverty is 
increasing, it is absolutely imperative that any deficit-reduction 
package that passes this Congress not include the horrendous cuts, the 
cruel cuts in programs that working people desperately need that are 
utilized every day by the elderly, by the sick, by our children, and by 
the lowest income people in our country, that the Republicans in 
Congress, dominated by their extreme rightwing, are demanding.
  America is not about giving tax breaks to billionaires and attacking 
the most vulnerable people in our country. We must not allow that to 
happen.
  In my view, the President of the United States needs to stand with 
the vast majority of the American people and say no to the Republican 
leadership and make it clear that enough is enough. No, we will not 
balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable people in this 
country--on our children, on our seniors and the sick. No, we will not 
do that. Working families in this country have already sacrificed 
enough in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, lost homes, lost pensions. 
The working families of this country are hurting right now. Enough is 
enough.
  Now is the time to say to the millionaires and the billionaires in 
this country and to the largest corporations that in many ways have 
never had it so good that they must participate in deficit reduction, 
that there must be shared sacrifice, that deficit reduction cannot be 
based on cutting back on the needs of working families and the middle 
class but that the rich and large corporations have also got to 
participate in this process.
  Furthermore, it is absolutely necessary, if we are talking about a 
sensible deficit-reduction package, that we take a hard look at 
unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon.
  Let's make it very clear that we will not be blackmailed again by the 
Republican leadership in Washington that is threatening to destroy the 
full faith and credit of the U.S. Government so that, for the very 
first time in our Nation's history, we might not pay the bills we owe. 
That is their threat. We will destroy the record of always paying our 
bills, never failing to do that, unless they get everything they want.
  Instead of yielding to the incessant, extreme Republican demands, as 
the President in many respects did in last December's tax cut agreement 
and this year's spending negotiations, the President has to get out of 
the beltway. He has to connect with the needs of working families and 
ordinary Americans and rally the overwhelming majority of our people 
who believe that deficit reduction must be based on shared sacrifice, 
that the wealthy and the powerful and the large corporations cannot 
continue to get everything they want while we wage a cruel and 
unprecedented attack on the most vulnerable people in this country. It 
is time for President Obama to stand with the millions who have already 
lost their jobs, their homes, their life savings, instead of the 
millionaires, who in many cases have never had it so good.
  Unless the American people in huge numbers tell the President not to 
yield 1 inch to Republican demands to destroy Medicare and Medicaid 
while continuing to provide tax breaks to the wealthy and the powerful, 
unless the American people rise up and say enough is enough, I am 
afraid that what will happen is the President will yield once again and 
the wealthy and the powerful will laugh all the way to the bank, while 
working people will be devastated.
  Today, I am asking the American people that if you believe deficit 
reduction should be about shared sacrifice; if you believe the 
wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations should be 
asked to pay their fair share as part of deficit reduction; if you 
believe that, at a time when military spending has almost tripled since 
1997, we must begin to take a hard look at our defense budget; and if 
you believe the middle-class and working families have already 
sacrificed enough, I urge you to make sure the President hears your 
voice, and he needs to hear it now. I urge the American people to go to 
my Web site, sanders.senate.gov, and sign a letter to the President 
letting him know that enough is enough. I also urge the American people 
to contact the White House directly through their Web sites and leave a 
message for the President there.
  As you know, this country faces enormous challenges. In fact, we have 
not suffered through such a difficult moment since the Great Depression 
of the 1930s. We do not talk about it very much, but the reality is 
that the middle class in this country is disappearing while at the same 
time poverty is increasing.
  When we talk about the state of our economy, it is important to talk 
about it within the context of deficit reduction because when you 
understand what is going on in the economy, you know you cannot get 
blood out of a stone. You cannot keep attacking people who have been 
devastated in the last few years in terms of unemployment, in terms of 
losses of pension, in terms of losses of health care.
  When we talk about the economy, we have to understand that the 
situation is in many cases even worse than official statistics 
indicate. For example, we read in the papers that the official 
unemployment rate is now 9.1 percent. But the truth is--and no 
economist disagrees with this--that official statistic ignores the 
number of people who have given up looking for work and people who are 
working part time when they want to work full time. If you add all of 
that together, you are looking at a real unemployment rate in this 
country of about 16 percent. Are those really the people whom we should 
go to for deficit reduction? Are they not suffering enough right now? 
Young people graduating college who can't find a job, let's hit them 
hard. Older people who have lost their jobs and can't find a new one or 
are working for half the wages they previously worked at, let's go 
after those people. Fifty million people have no health insurance. 
Let's attack them. Working mothers and fathers cannot find affordable 
childcare. Let's go after them.
  We must understand that when we look at the economy, the middle class 
is hurting and hurting badly. Over the last 10 years, on top of the 
high unemployment rates, the median family income in this country has 
declined by over $2,500. Do you know why working families are angry? 
That is why they are angry. They are working longer hours for lower 
wages. Are those really the people you want to ask to balance the 
budget? I don't think so. I think any sense of fairness, any sense of 
morality that one might have suggests you do not beat up on people who 
are already suffering. You don't try to get blood out of a stone.
  As a result of the greed and the recklessness and the illegal 
behavior on Wall Street which caused this terrible recession, millions 
more Americans have lost their homes, they have lost their pensions, 
and they have lost their retirement savings. We hear it every day in 
calls that come to our offices. Unless we reverse our current economic 
costs, our children will have, for

[[Page S4116]]

the very first time in modern American history, a lower standard of 
living than their parents. It is the American dream in reverse. Kids 
are going to do worse than their parents unless we reverse current 
economic trends.

  We can throw out a lot of numbers around here, a few hundred billion 
and a trillion. But the truth is that behind those numbers in my State 
of Vermont and all over this country, there are real people who are 
hurting terribly, and as Members of the Senate our job is to pay 
attention to those people and not just the well-paid lobbyists, 
representing the most powerful special interests in the world, who 
surround this Capitol every single day.
  Last year I asked my constituents in Vermont to share some personal 
stories with me. I asked them basically: How are you doing in this 
recession? The stories I got back from Vermont, I am sure, are 
absolutely similar to the stories you would get in Delaware or anyone 
would get in Michigan or any other State in this country. I asked them: 
How are things going? Let me tell you as a result of the e-mail we sent 
out, we had more than 400 Vermonters responding to that e-mail, and 
what they had to say was poignant. Sometimes these stories were so 
powerful, it was almost hard to read more than a few at a time. The 
message I received from Vermont--I suspect similar messages are coming 
from every State in this country--is that people are finding it hard to 
get jobs. They are now working for lower wages than they used to earn. 
We are seeing older workers who have depleted their life's savings, and 
they are worried about how they are going to retire. What happens to 
them when they are unable to work anymore? Who is going to take care of 
them?
  We hear from young adults in their twenties and thirties who are 
deeply in debt from college loans, and they don't know how they are 
going to pay off those loans. We hear from people of all ages, all 
walks of life, from every corner of Vermont, who have sent us their 
stories. Let me read a few of them, to make the point to put some flesh 
and blood behind the statistics we often throw out.
  We have a letter from a 51-year-old woman from central Vermont. This 
is what she wrote:

       Dear Senator Sanders, Don't really know what to say, I 
     could cry. My significant other was out of work for a year, 
     now he works in another state. I've been out of work since 
     April. Our mortgage company wants the house because we can't 
     make the payments. I can't find a job to save my soul that 
     will pay enough to make a difference. How bad does it have to 
     get! My mother went through the Great Depression and here we 
     go again. I figure that I'm going to lose everything soon! 
     I'm a well educated person who can't see through the fog.

  A gentleman in his mid-fifties from Orange County, VT, writes:

       After being unemployed three times since 1999 due to global 
     trade agreements, I now find myself managing a hazardous 
     waste transfer facility that pays about 25 percent than what 
     I was making in 1999.

  You hear that all of the time. Yes, many people, of course, are 
working, but many older workers today are dealing with the humiliation 
and the economic tragedy of now earning substantially less than they 
earned 10 or 20 years ago.
  He continues:

       My wife's children have moved back in, unemployed. And we 
     are saving very little for retirement. If things don't 
     improve soon we will likely have to work until we die. We 
     consider ourselves lucky that we are employed. Our children's 
     friends tend to show up around meal time. They are skinny. We 
     feed them. This is no recession, it's a modern day 
     depression.

  Are those the people we want to go after when we talk about deficit 
reduction? Are they not suffering enough already?
  A woman in her late forties from Westminster, VT, writes:

       I am a single mom in Vermont, nearly 50. I patch together a 
     full time job making $12 an hour and various painting jobs 
     and still can't afford to get myself out of debt, or make 
     necessary repairs on my home. No other jobs in sight, I apply 
     all the time to no avail. Food and gas bills go up and up, 
     but not my income. I have no retirement at all, can't afford 
     to move, feeling stuck, tired, and hopeless.

  ``Stuck, tired and hopeless.'' I suspect that sentiment reflects how 
many millions of Americans are feeling today.
  I have another letter from a 26-year-old man from Barre, VT. He 
writes:

       In 2002, I received a scholarship to Saint Bonaventure 
     University, the first in my family to attend college. Upon 
     graduation in 2006, I was admitted to the Dickinson School of 
     Law at Penn State University, and graduated in 2009 with 
     $150,000 of student loan debt.

  Mr. President, $150,000. That is high. But there are people all over 
this country who have extremely high student loans, and they don't know 
how they are going to pay them off.
  Then he continues:

       In Western New York I can find nothing better than a $10 an 
     hour position stuffing envelopes. I live in a small studio 
     apartment in Barre without cable or Internet. I have told my 
     family I don't want them to visit because I am ashamed of my 
     surroundings. My family always told me that an education was 
     the ticket to success, but all my education seems to have 
     done in this landscape is make it impossible to pull myself 
     out of debt and begin a successful career.

  On and on it goes. Over the last couple of weeks we have been 
focusing in my office on the crisis in dental care, the fact that in 
Vermont and all over this country millions of people cannot find a 
dentist.
  I want to give you an idea. I am raising these issues today, and I am 
quoting from folks in Vermont. Again, these stories are not just from 
Vermont. In fact, Vermont is doing better in this recession than most 
States in this country are doing. So take what we are talking about 
here in Vermont and multiply it by several times for other States.
  A gentleman writes to me within the last couple of weeks. He says: 
``I can't afford health insurance, so dental work is definitely out.'' 
And he talks about how studies have linked bad dental care to heart 
problems and cancer, but he cannot get to a dentist.
  The reason I raise this issue is to try to give us a better 
understanding of who some of the people are who will be impacted by the 
Draconian cuts the Republicans are talking about. Let us be clear. They 
are talking about throwing millions and millions of people off 
Medicaid.
  Let me tell you what that means. Earlier this year, as you know, 
Arizona passed budget cuts that took patients off its transplant list. 
Remember reading about that? I think most of the country read about 
that. Essentially because of the financial reasons, what they said in 
Arizona is: Yes, you need a transplant; yes, you are not all that old, 
but I am sorry, we cannot afford it for you, and you are going to have 
to die. And people have died. In that State and in other States 
throughout this country hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people 
are being thrown off Medicaid.
  So what does that mean? What does it mean if you are a low-income 
worker and you are getting your health insurance through Medicaid and 
you lose Medicaid? What happens when you develop a pain in your chest 
and you think you may be having a heart problem but you cannot get to a 
doctor? What happens? Have our Republican friends thought that through 
when they proposed $700 billion in cuts in Medicaid? What happens to 
the children by the millions who are thrown off Medicaid? We have 50 
million people today who have no health insurance. If the Republican 
plan goes through, we are talking about tens of millions more. What 
happens to those people? As Americans are we content to see kids get 
sick because they cannot get to a doctor or people die because they 
don't get to a doctor on time? I don't think so.
  I have learned and have been told throughout my whole life that 
education is the key to success. We hear that on the floor of this 
Senate every single day. Education, education. Kids have got to do well 
in high school so they will be able to go to college. The reality right 
now is hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go 
to college because they don't have the money, and we are losing their 
intellectual capabilities to make us a stronger nation. If the 
Republicans get their way, and make savage cuts in Pell grants, no one 
has any doubt that hundreds of thousands more young people will never 
be able to walk into a college or a university. That is not only a 
tragedy for the individuals, for the young people themselves, it is a 
tragedy for this Nation. Every day we are involved in fierce 
competition in the global economy, and we are not doing well in 
educational levels. We are

[[Page S4117]]

seeing other countries graduate more of their students from college, 
and that gap is growing wider. If you cut back on Pell grants and other 
forms of college aid, it is clear that a bad situation will be made 
much worse.

  Let's get even more basic, more basic than health care, more basic 
than education, and that comes to nutrition, whether people in larger 
and larger numbers in this country are going to go hungry. According to 
a 2009 study, there are over 5 million seniors who face the threat of 
hunger, almost 3 million who are at risk of going hungry and almost 1 
million seniors who do go hungry because they cannot afford to buy 
food. In that context our Republican friends want to balance the budget 
on the backs of the hungry, cut back on food stamps, cut back on other 
nutrition programs. So what happens if you are 80 and food prices are 
going up and you don't have enough to eat? Well, apparently there are 
some people here in the Senate who don't worry about that, but I 
personally do not believe that is what America is about. I think the 
American people, by huge numbers, do not want to see hunger increase 
for our seniors or our children.
  This is a lot of pain the Republicans are tossing out while at the 
same time they are vigorously protecting their wealthy and powerful 
friends. In my view, the President of the United States has to stand 
tall. He has to take the case to the American people and he has to hold 
the Republicans responsible if, in fact, the debt ceiling is not 
raised, and all of the repercussions that will occur if that happens.
  I have given you just an inkling of what is going on in the real 
world, and I know all over this country, ordinary Americans, working-
class people, have a lot more to say about what is going on in their 
lives. As we speak, people are fighting desperately to keep their homes 
from falling into foreclosure. They are struggling with 29 percent, 30 
percent interest rates on their credit cards, which they are never able 
to pay off. Marriages have been postponed because the young people 
don't have the money to settle down, lives have been derailed, 
retirement savings have been raided to pay for college tuition or to 
keep businesses afloat or to simply put gas in the car at $3.80 a 
gallon in order to get to work. That is what is going on in the real 
world. That is what it means when we talk about the middle-class 
collapsing and poverty is increasing.
  While all of that happens, it is important to note there is another 
economic reality taking place in this country. Poverty is increasing. 
We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on 
Earth. We are seeing an increase in senior citizens who are going 
hungry, more and more families unable to send their kids to college. 
But there is another reality out there, and that is that the gap 
between the wealthiest people in this country and everybody else is 
growing wider and wider and has not been this wide since before the 
Great Depression of 1929 began. Let us be very clear, and there is 
nothing to be proud about, but the United States today has, by far, the 
most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on 
Earth.
  Today, the top 1 percent earns over 20 percent of all income in this 
country, which is more than the bottom 50 percent. One percent owns 
more income than the bottom 50 percent. Over the recent 25-year period, 
80 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 
percent. Even more dramatic, even more incredible, even more unfair in 
terms of distribution of wealth, which is accumulated income, as hard 
as it may be to comprehend, in America today the top 400 individuals 
own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Again, 400 
Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
  Given those realities, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to 
suggest that when we move forward with deficit reduction, that deficit 
reduction must include shared sacrifice. The wealthy and large 
corporations also have to help this country deal with record-breaking 
deficit.
  The reality is simple but unfortunate. That reality is that the rich 
are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class 
continues to disappear. That is what is going on in this country, and 
there is no hiding it. We have to acknowledge it. We have to go on from 
there.
  Everyone knows that in our country today we are facing a major 
deficit crisis, and we have a national debt of over $14 trillion. What 
has not been widely discussed and what must be discussed is how we got 
into that deficit situation in the first place. If we are going to deal 
with the deficit, we have to know how we got into it. What is very 
clear is that this huge record-breaking deficit and a $14 trillion 
national debt did not just happen overnight, and it didn't happen by 
accident. It happened, in fact, as a result of a number of policy 
decisions made over the last decade and votes that were cast right here 
on the floor of the Senate and in the House of Representatives.
  When we talk about the deficit and the national debt, let's never 
forget that in January of 2001--a little over 10 years ago--when 
President Bill Clinton left office, this country had an annual Federal 
budget surplus of $236 billion with projected budget surpluses as far 
as the eye could see. That was when Clinton left office some 10 years 
ago. Now we have a $1.5 trillion deficit and a growing national debt.
  It is totally appropriate as we talk about deficit reduction that we 
ask some simple questions: How did we get to where we are today in 
terms of the deficit? What happened in that ensuing 10 years? How did 
we go from huge projected surpluses into horrendous debt? The answer 
really is not complicated, and there is not a lot of disagreement. We 
know exactly what has happened. The Congressional Budget Office has 
documented it. There was an interesting article on the front page of 
the Washington Post on April 30 talking about it as well, and here is 
what happened. I don't think there is a lot of disagreement about this.
  When our Nation spends $1 trillion on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq 
and forgets to pay for those wars, we run up a deficit. When we provide 
over $700 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this 
country and choose not to offset those tax breaks, we run up a deficit. 
When we pass a Medicare Part D prescription drug program written by the 
drug companies and the insurance companies that does not allow Medicare 
to negotiate prescription drug prices and ends up costing us far more 
than it should--$400 billion over a 10-year period--and we don't pay 
for that, we run up a deficit. When we double military spending since 
1997, not including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we don't pay 
for that, we run up the deficit.
  Now, I always find it amusing when some of my Republican colleagues 
come to the floor and lecture some of us about how serious the deficit 
is and how serious the national debt is. Yet, ironically, many of us 
voted against those proposals which, in fact, caused the deficit crisis 
we are in right now. I paid a lot of attention during the debate over 
the war in Iraq. I don't recall many of our friends on the Republican 
side or the Democrats who voted for that war saying: Gee, we can't go 
to war because it is going to cost this country a huge sum of money. I 
don't remember hearing that.
  When we bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion, I don't 
recall many of my friends saying: Oh, my goodness, we can't afford to 
do that. When we gave $700 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 
people in this country, where was the concern then about deficit 
reduction? Further, and maybe even most significant, the deficit we are 
in right now was caused by the recession we are in, which was, of 
course, caused by the greed and illegal behavior on Wall Street, which 
caused the economic condition of the moment: massive unemployment and 
loss of a very substantial amount of revenue that otherwise would have 
come into our tax coffers.
  The end result of all of these unpaid-for policies and actions year 
after year of the deficits I just described is a staggering amount of 
debt. When President Bush left office, President Obama inherited an 
annual deficit of $1.3 trillion with deficits as far as the eye could 
see, and the national debt more than doubled--more than doubled--under 
President Bush because of all of these policy decisions made by 
Republicans and some Democrats. The reality is, if we did not go to war 
in Iraq, if we did not pass huge tax breaks for millionaires and 
billionaires, if we did not pass

[[Page S4118]]

a prescription drug program with no cost control written by the drug 
and insurance companies, and if we did not deregulate Wall Street which 
allowed them to do the things they did, which ended up in Wall Street's 
collapse and the ensuing recession, we would not find ourselves in the 
mess we are in today. It really is that simple.
  In other words, the only reason we have to increase our Nation's debt 
ceiling today is that we are forced to pay the bills the Republican 
leadership in Congress--and some Democrats--and President Bush racked 
up.
  Given the decline in the middle class, given the increase in poverty, 
and given the fact that the wealthy and large corporations have never 
had it so good, Americans might find it strange that the Republicans in 
Washington would use this moment to make savage cuts in Medicare, 
Medicaid, education, nutrition assistance, and other life-and-death 
programs, while at the same time pushing for even more tax breaks for 
the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations. 
Unfortunately, while the average American may think this is pretty 
weird, inside the beltway that is exactly what happens, and this is 
very much part of the Republican ideology.
  Republicans in Washington have never believed in Medicaid or in 
Medicare or in Federal assistance in education or providing any direct 
government assistance to those in need. They have always believed tax 
breaks for the wealthy and the powerful would somehow miraculously 
trickle down to every American despite all history and all evidence to 
the contrary. So in that sense it is not strange at all that they would 
use the deficit crisis we are now in as an opportunity for an 
ideological attack against some of the most vulnerable people in our 
country.
  That is exactly what the Ryan Republican budget, passed in the House 
of Representatives earlier this year and supported by the vast majority 
of Republicans in the Senate just last month, is all about. It is a 
long budget, so let me give just a few examples of what the Ryan 
Republican budget would do.
  The Republican budget passed by the House this year would end 
Medicare as we know it within 10 years. The nonpartisan Congressional 
Budget Office estimates that under the Ryan proposal, in 2022, a 
private health care plan for a 65-year-old equivalent to Medicare 
coverage would cost about $20,500. Yet the Republican budget would 
provide a voucher for only $8,000 of those premiums. Seniors would be 
on their own to pay the remaining $12,500, a full 61 percent of the 
total. Now, how many of the 20 million near elderly Americans who are 
now ages 50 to 54 will be able to afford that?
  So let's review what we have. Let's say when a person becomes 65 in 
10 years and they are earning or living on $15,000 in Social Security, 
they are going to be asked to pay $12,500 more for health care than is 
currently the case. How do they do that? What kind of health care plan 
are they going to buy when they are old and sick and are given an 
$8,000 voucher? How many days in the hospital will they be able to 
have? You can run up an $8,000 bill in 1 day, in 2 days. So this ending 
of Medicare as we know it, forcing seniors to somehow come up with all 
kinds of money that in many cases they don't have, will be a disaster 
for tens of millions of people.
  The Republican budget would also force 4 million seniors in this 
country to pay $3,500 more on average for their prescription drugs by 
reopening the Medicare Part D doughnut hole. That goes into effect as 
soon as that bill would be passed, if it were to be passed.
  Under the Republican budget, nearly 2 million children would lose 
their health insurance over the next 5 years by cuts to the Children's 
Health Insurance Program according, again, to the Congressional Budget 
Office. At a time when 50 million Americans have no health insurance, 
the Republican budget would cut Medicaid by over $770 billion, causing 
millions and millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, and 
it would cut nursing home assistance in half.
  Right now, Medicaid pays the lion's share of nursing home care. If we 
make savage cuts in Medicaid, what happens to the elderly who are in 
nursing homes and what happens to their children in terms of trying to 
provide the help their parents desperately need?
  The Republican budget would completely repeal the affordable health 
care act, preventing an estimated 34 million uninsured Americans from 
getting the health insurance they need.
  At a time when the cost of college education is becoming out of reach 
for so many Americans, the Republican budget would slash college Pell 
grants by about 60 percent next year alone, reducing the maximum award 
from $5,500 to $2,100.
  At a time when over 40 million Americans do not have enough money to 
feed themselves or their families, the Republican budget would kick 
some 10 million Americans off of food stamps. What kind of sense of 
morality is that, that when people today are struggling hard in order 
to feed themselves, we throw another 10 million people off food stamps?
  It is no secret to anyone that our Nation's infrastructure is 
crumbling. The Republican budget passed in the House and supported by 
all but a handful of Republicans here in the Senate would slash funding 
for our roads, bridges, rail lines, transit systems, and airports by 
nearly 40 percent next year alone. One of two things would happen: 
Either, as a result of this, our infrastructure continues to 
deteriorate or else hard-pressed cities and towns are going to have to 
raise property taxes and other regressive taxes in order to come up 
with a differential. Yet, despite the fact--we talked about cuts in 
health care, Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition, environmental 
protection--yet, despite all of those cuts, when it comes to military 
spending, which has tripled since 1997, the House Republican budget 
does nothing to reduce unnecessary defense spending. In fact, defense 
spending would go up by $26 billion next year alone under the 
Republican plan.
  Interestingly enough, at a time when the rich are becoming richer, 
when the effective tax rates for the wealthiest people--at 18 percent--
are about the lowest on record, at a time when the top 2 percent have 
received hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, at 
a time when corporate profits are at an alltime high and major 
corporations making billions of dollars in profits are not paying a 
nickel in taxes, my Republican colleagues, in their approach toward 
deficit reduction, do not ask the wealthiest people in this country or 
the largest corporations to tribute one penny--one penny--toward 
deficit reduction.
  Poverty is increasing. Republicans cut programs for the most 
vulnerable people in this country. The middle class is disappearing, in 
need of great help. Republicans cut the safety line from them. The 
rich, who are getting richer, and large corporations, making huge 
profits and in many cases not paying anything in taxes at all, their 
requirement is to receive even more in terms of tax breaks.
  Now, that may make sense to some people. It does not make sense to 
me. In fact, what the Republicans want to do is provide over $1 
trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires by permanently 
extending all of the Bush income tax cuts, reducing the estate tax for 
multimillionaires and billionaires, and lowering the top individual and 
corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent. The rich get 
richer. They get tax breaks. The poor get poorer. They lose their 
ability to send their kids to college or to have nutrition programs or 
health care.
  The Republican idea of moving toward a balanced budget is to go after 
the middle class working families and low-income people, and to make 
sure millionaires and billionaires and the largest corporations in this 
country, which are in many cases doing phenomenally well right now, do 
not have to share in the sacrifices being made by everybody else. They 
will be protected.
  The Republican approach to deficit reduction in Washington is the 
Robin Hood philosophy in reverse: We take from the poorest people and 
we give to the richest people. And it is not as if that approach is 
good for our economy. Mark Zandi, the former economic adviser to John 
McCain when he was running for President, has estimated that the 
Republican budget plan will cost 1.7 million jobs by the year 2014, 
with 900,000 jobs lost next year alone.
  The House Republican budget is breathtaking in its degree of cruelty. 
But do not take my word for it. In a

[[Page S4119]]

letter to congressional leaders, after the House GOP plan was 
introduced, nearly 200 economists and health care experts wrote:

       Turning Medicare into a voucher program would undermine 
     essential protections for millions of vulnerable people. It 
     would extinguish the most promising approaches to curb costs 
     and to improve the American medical care system.

  Ezra Klein, a columnist at the Washington Post, wrote last April:

       The budget Ryan released is not courageous or serious or 
     significant. It's a joke, and a bad one. For one thing, 
     Ryan's savings all come from cuts, and at least two-thirds of 
     them come from programs serving the poor. The wealthy, 
     meanwhile, would see their taxes lowered, and the Defense 
     Department would escape unscathed. It is not courageous to 
     attack the weak while supporting your party's most inane and 
     damaging fiscal orthodoxies. But the problem isn't just that 
     Ryan's budget is morally questionable. It also wouldn't work.

  The deficit we are struggling with right now has been caused by 
unpaid-for wars, tax breaks for the rich, a Medicare Part D 
prescription drug program written by the insurance companies, the 
bailout of Wall Street, a declining economy, and less revenue coming 
into our Treasury. The Republican ``solution'' is to balance the budget 
on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the children, and the poor, to 
cut back on environmental protection, to cut back on transportation, 
while providing even more tax breaks to those who do not need it. That 
is unacceptable, and that is what the American people have to stop.
  It is not just wealthy individuals who are making out like bandits. 
As hard as it may be to believe, some of the largest, most profitable 
corporations in this country are not only avoiding paying any Federal 
income taxes whatsoever, but they are actually receiving tax rebates 
from the IRS. The Republican response to this reality is to provide 
even more tax breaks to these corporate freeloaders. That may make 
sense to someone. It does not make sense to me.
  What I want to do, Mr. President--and I ask unanimous consent to do 
so--is to have printed in the Record a list of a number of corporations 
that are making huge profits and are paying virtually nothing in taxes 
and in some cases getting a rebate.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       (1) Exxon Mobil. In 2009, Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in 
     profits. Not only did Exxon avoid paying any federal income 
     taxes that year, it actually received a $156 million rebate 
     from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
       (2) Bank of America. Last year, Bank of America received a 
     $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS, even though it made 
     $4.4 billion in profits and just a couple of years ago 
     received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury 
     Department of nearly $1 trillion.
       (3) General Electric. Over the past five years, while 
     General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United 
     States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
       (4) Chevron. In 2009, Chevron received a $19 million refund 
     from the IRS after it made $10 billion in profits.
       (5) Boeing. Last year, Boeing, which received a $30 billion 
     contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got 
     a $124 million refund from the IRS.
       (6) Valero Energy. Last year, Valero Energy, the 25th 
     largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last 
     year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS 
     and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million 
     tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
       (7) Goldman Sachs. In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid only 1.1 
     percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit 
     of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion bailout 
     from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
       (8) Citigroup. Last year, Citigroup made more than $4 
     billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes, even 
     though it received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal 
     Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
       (9) ConocoPhillips. ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil 
     company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits 
     from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax 
     breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction during 
     those years.
       (10) Carnival Cruise Lines. Over the past five years, 
     Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, 
     but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 
     1.1 percent.

  Mr. SANDERS. Let me briefly read from this list of corporate 
freeloaders.
  No. 1, ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the world. In 2009, 
ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits, and not only did ExxonMobil 
avoid paying any Federal income taxes that year, they actually received 
a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. Well, 
do you think maybe we might want to ask ExxonMobil to pay a little in 
taxes so we do not have to throw children off their health insurance? 
Maybe.
  Bank of America. Last year, Bank of America, the largest bank in 
America, received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS even though it 
made $4.4 billion in profits and just a couple of years ago received a 
bailout from the Federal Reserve in the Treasury Department of nearly 
$1 trillion. Well, what do you know about that? We are bailing out the 
largest banks in this country, whose greed caused the recession, and 
then they get a rebate from the IRS rather than paying any taxes. Yet 
our Republican friends think the solution to deficit reduction is not 
to ask Bank of America to pay its fair share but to end Medicare as we 
know it and force low-income seniors to pay substantially more for 
their health care.
  No. 3, General Electric. Over the past 5 years, while General 
Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received 
a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS. I do not know. What do you think? 
Do you think we should ask GE maybe to help us out just a little bit 
with deficit reduction?
  Chevron, a major oil company, received a $19 million refund from the 
IRS after it made $10 billion in profits.
  Last year, Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the 
Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from 
the IRS.
  And on and on it goes.
  Valero Energy.
  Goldman Sachs. In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid only 1.1 percent of its 
income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion. Gee, 
most Americans would be pretty happy to pay 1.1 percent of their income 
in taxes. But then again, they are not Goldman Sachs.
  Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, Carnival Cruise Lines.
  On and on and on. You have large, extremely profitable corporations 
that either pay nothing in taxes or get a rebate from the IRS. Maybe--
just maybe--when we talk about deficit reduction, we might want to ask 
those people to help us out rather than go after the elderly, the sick, 
the children, and the poor.
  Large corporations today are sitting on a recordbreaking $2 trillion 
in cash. The problem is not that corporations are taxed too much; the 
problem is that consumers do not have enough money to buy their 
products, and the Republican agenda would make that far worse. 
Corporate tax revenue last year was down by 27 percent compared to 2000 
even though corporate profits are up 60 percent over the last decade. 
These guys make more and more money; their contribution to the Treasury 
goes down.
  When we talk about how we can--in a fair way, in a responsible way--
deal with our deficit and our national debt, man, here is one very 
clear example, as shown in this picture. Here you have, in the Cayman 
Islands, a building. I think it is a four-story building, and it looks 
like a normal-size four-story building. Yet it has 18,857 companies 
that call this building their home. Now, one of two things is going on: 
Either these guys are very, very crowded--18,000 corporations in this 
one four-story building; maybe they are very crowded, and we should 
call in the zoning people in the Cayman Islands to check that out--or 
maybe something else is going on. Of course, what is going on is this 
is a total, absolute fraud. This is a building that does not house 
anybody. It is a phony address that 18,000-plus corporations use for 
the explicit purpose of not paying taxes to the United States of 
America.
  There are studies out there which suggest that large corporations and 
wealthy individuals are avoiding $100 billion in taxes every year by 
setting up these offshore tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, 
and the Bahamas. Maybe, maybe, maybe, before we tell young people they 
cannot go to college or single moms they cannot get childcare for their 
kids or low-income seniors we are going to cut back on their nutrition, 
maybe, just maybe, we might want to end this blatant outrage, which 
costs us $100 billion every single year.
  In 2005, one out of four large corporations paid no income taxes at 
all even

[[Page S4120]]

though they collected $1.1 trillion in revenue. What about looking 
there for revenue? Our Republican friends say: Oh, no, no, no. We can't 
do that. We have to force elderly people to pay more in Medicare, throw 
kids off Medicaid.
  Now, what is a very interesting point--and, frankly, we are all 
politicians. You do not get elected to the Senate if you do not 
understand something about politics. What I do not understand--and 
certainly what President Obama needs to understand--is that the 
overwhelming majority of the American people do not agree with the 
Republican approach, which says: Give tax breaks to billionaires and go 
after the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That is not 
just Bernie Sanders talking. I am not much into polls, to be honest 
with you, but I think it is important to just try to get a little bit 
of a reflection of where the American people are coming from.
  According to a recent Boston Globe poll--a couple weeks ago, the 
Boston Globe did a poll in the State of New Hampshire and was mostly 
interested in the Presidential campaign, how Presidential candidates 
are doing in New Hampshire, but they asked some other questions. In New 
Hampshire--I know because they are a neighbor of mine--they are the big 
antitax State. They are the conservative State in New England. Here is 
what the folks in New Hampshire said in that recent poll.
  Seventy-three percent support raising taxes on people making over 
$250,000 a year, 78 percent oppose cutting Medicare, 71 percent oppose 
cutting Medicaid, and 76 percent oppose cutting Social Security.
  The Republican approach is the opposite. They want to cut Medicare, 
they want to cut Medicaid, they want to cut Social Security, and they 
certainly do not want to ask the wealthiest people in this country to 
pay a nickel more in taxes.
  That is one poll. Let's look at another poll. In fact, poll after 
poll has more or less mirrored what New Hampshire voters are saying.
  A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found the following: 81 
percent of the American people believe it is totally acceptable or 
mostly acceptable--that is how they frame these polls--to impose a 
surtax on millionaires to reduce the deficit. Let me repeat that. 
Eighty-one percent of the American people--in the Wall Street Journal-
NBC poll--think it is totally acceptable or mostly acceptable to impose 
a surtax on millionaires to reduce the deficit.
  Eighty-one percent of the American people think it is a good idea. 
Yet we cannot get one Republican to ask the wealthy to pay a nickel 
more in taxes. Talk about being out of touch with what the American 
people want.
  Seventy four-percent--in that same poll--of the American people 
believe it is totally acceptable or mostly acceptable to eliminate tax 
credits for the oil and gas industry, and on and on it goes.
  Seventy-six percent believe it is totally unacceptable or mostly 
unacceptable to cut Medicare to significantly reduce the deficit.
  Here is an interesting poll that maybe some of my Republican friends 
want to pay attention to; that is, that while the leaders of the tea 
party here in Washington are fighting to dismantle Medicare and 
Medicaid, it turns out that in another poll done by McClatchy, 70 
percent of those people who identify themselves with the tea party 
oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid to reduce the deficit. That is the 
tea party.
  Here is the last poll I wish to highlight. There are many more out 
there. It was done by the Washington Post and ABC News. Here is what 
that poll says. It says 72 percent of Americans support rising taxes on 
incomes over $250,000 to reduce the national debt, including 91 percent 
of Democrats, 68 percent of Independents, and 54 percent of 
Republicans.
  So here you have in Congress, surrounded by lobbyists and powerful 
special interests, a Congress heavily dominated by large campaign 
contributors, of Members of the Senate moving in exactly the opposite 
direction of where the American people want to go. The American people 
want shared sacrifice. The American people believe that when the 
wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well and the 
gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, yes, the 
wealthiest people have to contribute to deficit reduction.
  The American people believe we have corporations making 
recordbreaking profits and not paying a nickel in taxes. Yes, they have 
to start paying taxes. The American people overwhelmingly believe it is 
bad for this country to go after Medicare and Medicaid and programs 
that working families desperately depend upon.
  Instead of listening to millionaires and billionaires, it is time for 
our leaders in Washington to start listening to the overwhelming 
majority of the American people who do want the wealthiest people in 
this country and the most profitable corporations to contribute to 
deficit reduction. It is time for shared sacrifice.
  The middle class, the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor 
have already sacrificed enough. It is time for those people on top, the 
people who are doing extremely well, to also understand they are 
Americans, they are part of our country, and they have to contribute to 
deficit reduction. The fact is, moving toward deficit reduction in a 
way that is fair is not as complicated as some would have us believe. 
In fact, if you are not beholden to Wall Street, large corporations and 
wealthy campaign contributors and you are not frightened about the 
number of 30-second ads that may be thrown at you if you take these 
guys on, it is quite easy.
  I know there are many people out there of good faith who have 
different ideas about how we can move forward toward a balanced budget, 
toward deficit reduction. I am not saying I have all the answers. But 
let me just give you a few examples, a few examples as to how we can 
reduce the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, and 
that includes, of course, asking the wealthy and large corporations to 
begin paying their fair share of taxes and does not do undue harm for 
ordinary Americans.
  We can do it. We can do it. If you are concerned about deficit 
reduction, I am concerned about deficit reduction. But we can do it, 
calling for shared sacrifice and in a way that does not attack programs 
that millions and millions of children, elderly, and working families 
are terribly dependent upon.
  Let me just give you a few ideas. I know other people have other good 
ideas. First, we simply repeal the Bush tax breaks for the top 2 
percent. We can raise at least $700 billion over the next decade. That 
is it. The rich are getting richer. Bush gave them huge tax breaks. You 
repeal that, $700 billion.
  I know some of my Republican friends say: Oh, my goodness. If you do 
not give tax breaks to the very wealthy, it will have a negative impact 
on jobs. This is the trickle-down economic theory. You give tax breaks 
to the rich, large corporations, and we create all kinds of great jobs. 
That idea has been tested. That idea was tested. That was the idea of 
former President George W. Bush. But during his 8 years as President, 
when that idea was in effect, the private sector lost--lost--over 
600,000 jobs, and we had one of the worst economic decades, in terms of 
job creation, ever seen in this country. We tried that theory. We did 
give tax breaks to the rich and large corporations, and we lost 600,000 
jobs during that 10-year period.
  Meanwhile, when Bill Clinton raised taxes on the top 2 percent, you 
know what. The world did not quite cave in. In fact, during Clinton's 
Presidency, we created over 22 million jobs, and he left office with a 
huge budget surplus. But that is just one argument. You heard polls say 
we should impose a surtax on millionaires. The vast majority of the 
American people believe that. If you did a 5.4-percent surtax on 
millionaires and billionaires, that would raise $383 billion over 10 
years.
  You want another idea? At a time when our manufacturing sector is 
collapsing, when 50,000 factories have shut down in the last 10 years, 
when millions of workers have lost good-paying jobs, the U.S. 
Government continues to reward companies that move U.S. manufacturing 
jobs overseas through loopholes in the Tax Code known as deferral and 
foreign source income.
  That, clearly, from a financial point of view, in terms of revenue to 
our government, as well as policies which result in the loss of 
millions of good manufacturing jobs, is not something we should 
sustain. If we ended that absurdity, that policy alone, the Joint

[[Page S4121]]

Tax Committee has estimated we could raise more than $582 billion in 
revenue over the next 10 years. So what about that--$582 billion of 
revenue and we stop the outsourcing of jobs so maybe we can rebuild our 
manufacturing sector. Sounds to me like a pretty sensible idea.
  My Republican friends think it is a better idea to throw poor 
children off Medicaid or force elderly people to pay far more than they 
can afford for Medicare. But ending this absurd policy, which 
encourages companies to throw American workers out on the street, makes 
a lot more sense to me than what the Republicans are talking about.
  Fourth, if we ended tax breaks and subsidies for big oil and gas 
companies, we can reduce the deficit by more than $40 billion over the 
next 10 years.
  Fifth, if we prohibited abusive and illegal offshore tax shelters--
what I just talked about a moment ago--we could bring in $1 trillion 
over 10 years. That says to the corporations and the wealthy: Sorry, 
you are no longer going to be able to stash your wealth in the Cayman 
Islands and avoid paying taxes.

  Sixth, if we established a Wall Street speculation fee of less than 1 
percent on the sale and purchase of credit default swaps, derivatives, 
stock options and futures, we could reduce the deficit by more than 
$100 billion over the next decade and also--also--tell Wall Street we 
are not going to tolerate their outrageous behavior which led us into 
this recession in the first place. We are going to try to get a handle 
on their speculation.
  Seventh, if we tax capital gains and dividends the same way we tax 
work, ordinary work, we can raise more than $730 billion over the next 
decade. Why should somebody who clips dividend coupons pay a 
substantially lower tax rate than somebody who is out working on our 
streets or is a nurse or is a teacher? Warren Buffett has often said he 
pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. Today, the 
effective tax rate of the wealthiest 400 Americans is just 18 percent, 
the lowest on record.
  On and on. We have a number of ideas out there, not the least of 
which is taking a hard look at the military. There are debates as to 
how much we can cut, but certainly we should all be in agreement that 
it no longer makes sense to sustain weapons systems that were built in 
order to fight the Cold War against the Soviet Union. They are not our 
enemy right now.
  I can tell you that I, my office, requested a GAO report that found 
that the Pentagon had $36.9 billion in spare parts it does not need and 
which are collecting dust in government warehouses. We can do better 
than that. Frankly, in my view--I think I speak for the majority of the 
people in my State of Vermont, I suspect, in this country--it is time 
to begin bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan at an 
accelerated rate. We have been in Afghanistan now for 10 years. It is 
time for the Afghan people and their military to take responsibility, 
in terms of defeating the Taliban. We should be supportive of those 
efforts. But we should bring our troops home a lot sooner than the 
President has suggested. When we do that, among other things, we are 
also going to save a substantial sum of money.
  Further, I will not deny for one second that there is waste and fraud 
and bureaucracy in almost every government program out there. I think 
we have to take a hard look at them all. I believe that in addition to 
the Pentagon, we can save hundreds of billions of dollars a year by 
eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy.
  The ideas I have enumerated, and some I have not but which will 
become part of the Record, if we did all or some of these things, we 
could easily reduce the deficit by well over $4 trillion over the next 
decade, if not, in fact, much more. It would be done in a way that is 
fair, and it would not unnecessarily and needlessly ruin the lives of 
some of the most desperate and fragile and hurting people in our 
country today, millions of people who are just struggling to make ends 
meet. Those people would be spared.
  The extreme rightwing agenda of more tax breaks for the wealthy, paid 
by the dismantling of Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition, and the 
environment, may be popular in the country clubs and cocktail parties 
of the wealthy and the powerful, but it is way out of touch with what 
the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
  As you know, late last week Congressman Cantor, the Republican 
majority leader in the House, and Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican whip, 
walked out of the budget negotiations being led by Vice President 
Biden. The reason they walked out was pretty clear. They were not 
willing to close one single loophole in the Tax Code that allows the 
wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying taxes by stashing their 
money in the Cayman Islands and all the other loopholes that currently 
exist.
  My sincere hope is that President Obama will use this Republican 
walkout, their unwillingness to talk about the wealthy and large 
corporations contributing anything toward deficit reduction--that he 
will use this as an opportunity to rally the American people and make 
it clear he will never support Republican demands to move toward a 
balanced budget solely on the backs of working families, the elderly, 
the children, the sick, and the poor. But I don't think the President 
will do it unless the American people send him a message that enough is 
enough.

  The American people do not support the Republican agenda. The 
American people support the concept of shared sacrifice as we move 
toward deficit reduction. But the President has to hear from the 
American people. He has to hear that they will not accept decimating 
Medicare, Medicaid, Pell grants, education, and the environment in 
order to give more tax breaks to the wealthy. The President has to 
stand up for the millions of Americans who have seen their homes, their 
jobs, and their savings vanish, instead of the millionaires who have 
never had it so good.
  It is my belief if the American people make that demand of the 
President and tell the President not to yield on this issue, we can win 
this budget struggle. If people would like to sign it--and I hope they 
would--we have a letter to the President, which I will read in a 
moment, on my Web site, sanders.senate.gov--and, also, as I mentioned 
earlier, they can contact the White House directly by going straight 
through the White House Web site and sending a message.
  If hundreds of thousands of people do that, the President, I hope, 
will have the strength and determination to say to the Republicans: 
Sorry, we are not going to balance the budget on the weak and the 
vulnerable.
  This is the letter that is on my Web site, which I hope the people 
will sign. This is what it says, which encapsulates much of what I have 
been saying for the last hour:

       Dear Mr. President,
       This is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. 
     Decisions are being made about the national budget that will 
     impact the lives of virtually every American for decades to 
     come. As we address the issue of deficit reduction, we must 
     not ignore the painful economic reality of today--which is 
     that the wealthiest people in our country and the largest 
     corporations are doing phenomenally well, while the middle 
     class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. In fact, the 
     United States today has, by far, the most unequal 
     distribution of wealth and income of any major country on 
     earth.
       Everyone understands that over the long term we have got to 
     reduce the deficit--a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall 
     Street greed, tax breaks for the rich, two wars, and a 
     prescription drug program written by the drug and insurance 
     companies. It is absolutely imperative, however, that as we 
     go forward with deficit reduction, we completely reject the 
     Republican approach that demands savage cuts in desperately 
     needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, 
     our children, and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest 
     among us to contribute one penny.
       Mr. President, please listen to the overwhelming majority 
     of the American people who believe that deficit reduction 
     must be about shared sacrifice. The wealthiest Americans and 
     the most profitable corporations in this country must pay 
     their fair share. At least 50 percent of any deficit 
     reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax 
     breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that 
     benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street 
     financial institutions. A sensible deficit reduction package 
     must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and 
     wasteful Pentagon spending.
       Please do not yield to outrageous Republican demands that 
     would greatly increase suffering for the weakest and most 
     vulnerable members of our society. Now is the time to stand 
     with tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to 
     survive economically, not with the millionaires and 
     billionaires who have never had it so good.

[[Page S4122]]

       Respectfully yours.

  That letter is at sanders.senate.gov. I think we have many thousands 
of signatures on that letter already. I hope we can get more. If people 
prefer to go to the White House Web site, they can do that. That would 
be important. The main point is that the President has to know that we 
will not accept a deficit reduction package that just comes out heavily 
on working families.
  The reason I raise these issues today is that I am, frankly, very 
worried because we have gone through this negotiating process two times 
in the last 6 months. That is why we need the American people to weigh 
in on this issue.
  In fact, we have seen this movie before. The Republicans, led by 
their extreme right wing, have been successful in getting their way 
because of their refusal to compromise and willingness to hold the 
credit and economic security of the American people hostage.
  As many people will remember, in December the Republican leadership 
was prepared to hold the middle-class tax cuts and unemployment 
benefits hostage in order to extend the Bush tax breaks to the top 2 
percent. As we all know, the Republicans won. As a result, over $200 
billion was added to the deficit over the next 2 years. Not only did 
the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy get extended, they also got a 
reduction in the estate tax which benefits the top three-tenths of 1 
percent.
  Specifically, the December tax cut agreement extended the Bush income 
tax rates, and it cost us very substantially.
  It is not just the Bush tax cuts that were extended. In March of this 
year our Republican friends said that unless we made very significant 
cuts, the Republicans were prepared to shut down the government, 
disrupt the economy, and deny paychecks to some 800,000 Federal 
workers--if they could not get their way. They said: We are going to 
shut down the government unless you make these Draconian cuts.
  One of the cuts I was disturbed about--among many--was $600 million 
to build new community health centers, which would keep people alive 
and end up saving money. There are other Draconian cuts, as well. They 
also cut Pell grants, making it harder for students to go to college. 
The point is, they acted as bullies and said: If we don't get our way, 
we are prepared to shut down the government.
  Now we are back here again, and this is part 3 of the act. Part 1 was 
whether the middle class would get its tax breaks and whether 
unemployment benefits would be extended. The Republicans won. Part 2 is 
whether the government would be shut down. The Republicans mostly won 
and got almost everything they wanted.
  Here we are, act 3, the biggest act of all; and the question is 
whether the Republicans will, in fact, not raise the debt ceiling. If 
they do that, it is quite possible that not only our country but the 
entire world might be plunged into a major financial crisis.
  This is what they are threatening: If we don't get everything we 
want, we are prepared not to pay our government's debt for the first 
time in the history of our country. We are prepared to see interest 
rates go up in a very fragile global economy. And we are prepared to 
see more and more instability.
  In many ways, the Republicans in Washington are acting like 
schoolyard bullies. As we know, bullying is a very serious problem in 
our schools. Every educator worth his or her salt would tell us that 
when dealing with a bully, we must not give in to their tactics or 
tolerate their temper tantrums or allow them to hurt innocent people. 
We have to deal with them sternly and consistently. We cannot allow 
them to win by dictating the rules of the game and trampling over 
everybody else if they don't get their way.
  We have a serious debt problem that must be solved, but it must be 
solved in a way that is fair and in a way that calls for shared 
sacrifice.
  Let me conclude by suggesting that the American people are concerned 
about the deficit. They are also concerned about the economy, and they 
are also concerned that so many of our people--of all ages, in all 
parts of this country--are hanging on economically by their 
fingernails.
  The American people understand that it is just not fair at all to 
come down on people who are already hurting and leave unscathed the 
wealthiest people in this country and large profitable corporations.
  What I say today to the President of the United States is this: Mr. 
President, stand tall. Do not yield to Republican blackmail. Stand with 
the vast majority of the American people who believe that deficit 
reduction requires shared sacrifice--that everybody makes a sacrifice, 
not just working families, the elderly, the sick, and the poor.
  With that, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________