[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 20, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3162-S3164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE MIDDLE CLASS
Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I am here to talk about the future of
our country and the future of our middle class, which I know the
Presiding Officer cares deeply about as well.
A few years ago in Michigan something quite extraordinary happened.
In 1914 a man named Henry Ford did
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something that all his business friends said was crazy. He doubled the
wages of his workers to $5 a day. The headlines at that time showed
that those on Wall Street literally thought he was going to ruin the
economy, and everyone said he was going to go under. It was the
craziest thing they had ever seen.
Exactly the opposite happened. In fact, there were stories a month
after he did this--by the way, tens of thousands of people showed up
for these jobs. Around the plant there were newspaper interviews about
how all the small businesses had seen their profits double and how they
were hiring new people for the hotdog stand or the clothing
entrepreneur who was selling shoes and suits, and so on. Small
businesses said that it had been wonderful for them.
We all know what happened to Henry Ford. He went on to become one of
the wealthiest men of his generation by doing the right thing and
understanding that we all do better if everybody has a fair shot to
make it and that he would do better as a business person if everybody
had a shot. In fact, we are very proud, and we believe we started the
middle class in Detroit, MI.
We celebrate success in this country. We also understand that we are
all in this together--our family, our community, and our country. We
can do great things by ourselves, but ultimately what makes us great as
Americans is that we are connected and in it together. That is the idea
on which America was built. Everybody contributes their fair share, and
we give everybody a fair shot to work hard and get ahead in life.
Just like Henry Ford, we understand that the economy is not working--
our country is not as strong as it could be--unless it is working for
everyone and not just the wealthy few.
In fact, Henry Ford showed that you can become very wealthy yourself
by doing the right thing. We now have choices to make. Unfortunately,
today a small number of incredibly rich people are doing the opposite
of what Henry Ford did. They are literally trying to buy a government
that works only for them at the expense of every other American.
The Supreme Court's outrageous Citizens United decision and other
decisions that have followed have paved the way for multimillionaires
to spend secret money on fake front groups and hundreds of millions of
dollars on television and radio ads to twist the facts or just make
things up so they can impose their own extreme views on our country.
I want to speak about the two people who are at the forefront of this
effort and what their views mean for the people I represent in
Michigan, the people in Wisconsin, and the future of middle class
families all across America. The Koch brothers, two petrochemical
magnates, are reportedly now worth over $100 billion. Last month, their
fortune grew by $1.3 billion in just 1 day. How many average Americans
would work a lifetime--added up together across the country--to try to
reach the $1.3 billion they made in a day? They have built what the
Washington Post called ``a far-reaching operation of unrivaled
complexity, built around a maze of groups that cloak its donors'' in
secrecy. This ``maze of groups'' raised $400 million in 2012.
Just last week we found out one of the groups, Americans for
Prosperity, plans to spend $125 million in secret, undisclosed money in
this year's election alone--$125 million on people who support their
views of America.
One expert on taxes and political groups, a professor at Notre Dame
Law School, said he had never seen anything like the network of Koch
groups before. He said:
It is designed to make it opaque as to where the money is
coming from and where the money is going . . . It would only
be worth it if you were spending the kind of dollars the Koch
brothers are, because this was not cheap.
These are front groups that pose as senior citizen groups,
environmental groups, and veterans groups. I could go on and on about
all of the fake groups through which they are funneling money.
The Koch brothers may be able to hide their money and hide behind
shadowy groups, but they can't hide their radical views from the
American people. Let me be clear. It is not only me who is saying they
are being radical. Charles Koch described his own views as ``radical.''
Senator Sanders recently spoke on the Senate floor about some of the
Koch brothers' extreme anti-middle-class views. I want to thank him for
shedding light on some ideas that I know the vast majority of Americans
disagree with and many of us find frightening, frankly, for the future
of our country.
We don't have to guess what these views are since David Koch ran for
Vice President on the Libertarian ticket in 1980 and loudly trumpeted
them for all to see. What did David Koch promise to do when he ran for
the second-highest office in the country? He promised to end the
``fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social
Security system,'' which has lifted a generation of seniors out of
poverty and given them dignity as they have moved on over the years.
He promised to abolish Medicare and Medicaid. By the way, the
majority of Medicaid funds is used on low-income seniors in nursing
homes. He promised to get rid of the post office. He didn't suggest
that it be cut it back to 5 days a week, he wanted to get rid of it. I
suppose you can deliver the mail yourself or go hire somebody from
someplace to somehow deal with the mail. What about trying to get your
Social Security check? I guess it doesn't matter. Since he thinks you
should not get Social Security or Medicare, it doesn't matter if you
get that check as a senior.
He proposed to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency--the
agency that makes sure we have clean air to breathe and safe water we
can drink. For those of us in the Great Lakes region, we have the
blessing of being able to fish and boat and have the beauty of the
Great Lakes.
He promised to end all programs for children and seniors, low-income
veterans, and repeal all taxation--no funding for the police
department, fire department, roads, military, and veterans.
We just heard Senator Cornyn--and I agree with him--talk about our
veterans and the great concern we have with what is happening to our
veterans. The people supporting our colleagues on the other side of the
aisle, the top two donors, said there should be no taxation and that we
should get rid of the minimum wage. Remember how Henry Ford became one
of the wealthiest men of his generation. He helped build the middle
class by doubling their wages. By the way, if we were using Henry
Ford's formula, the minimum wage would be close to $15 right now.
The Koch brothers don't want a minimum wage, Social Security or
Medicare. They don't want help for anyone. They expect people to go out
and earn $1.3 billion in a day and purchase whatever they need.
Seniors, children, people with disabilities, including our veterans,
would be left with no support, and, of course, no taxes for the Koch
brothers and their big-shot friends.
This is truly a radical agenda. Here is the truly shocking part. The
Koch brothers' agenda, which, again, Charles Koch himself proudly calls
a ``radical'' agenda, is exactly the agenda we are seeing emerge from
the Republican House of Representatives right now. Too many Members in
our Senate Republican caucus want to privatize Social Security and
gamble seniors' money away in the stock market. They want to eliminate
Medicare as we know it. They passed the Ryan budget, which does that.
They want to privatize the post office.
They passed a budget that guts efforts to help Americans in need or
invest in the future of education and innovation. This is not what was
said in 1980. This is what has passed and is being promoted right now,
which is why they are putting so much money into the elections. Their
agenda is being promoted right now, which they themselves call radical.
They refuse to join us in giving Americans a raise so that people who
work 40 hours a week in a full-time job and make minimum wage--by the
way, a majority of them are women who are raising children--are at
least above poverty level and have a fair shot to get ahead.
We also don't have to guess how this radical, ``I've got mine and
you're on your own'' Koch brothers agenda works in practice. We have
seen how this plays out in Michigan.
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In Gaylord, MI--beautiful northern Michigan--hundreds of workers used
to work at a plant making particleboard--that is, until the Koch
brothers bought their company, closed the plant, and left town. Instead
of good-paying jobs that paid workers $15 to $20 an hour so they could
with their family enjoy the great outdoors in Michigan and send their
kids to college--jobs that gave workers a fair shot to get ahead--the
Koch brothers left behind rubble and scrap metal. But that is not all
the Koch brothers left behind.
Imagine you are outside with your family--or even inside your
apartment or home--and suddenly you see a giant cloud of toxic black
dust blowing towards you. It is piling up, and later you discover that
this black dust includes a toxic metal that is believed to cause
cancer. Imagine you own a restaurant and are forced to sweep up the
same toxic dust from your patio, and you have to worry about what it is
doing to your pregnant wife and unborn child. This is not something out
of a Charles Dickens' novel or a story about the pollution in China
today. This actually happened to the people in Detroit. Why? Because a
company owned by the Koch brothers decided to illegally store piles of
petcoke--a byproduct of refined, dirty tar sands oil--alongside the
Detroit River. These piles were up to four stories high and piled up
next to where people lived.
Just the other day I read a story about the exact same thing
happening to people in Chicago. Another company owned by the Koch
brothers is storing giant piles of petcoke in a residential area, which
is something I know Senator Durbin is very concerned about. It doesn't
stop there.
Last Wednesday, Senator Levin, Congressman Fred Upton from Kalamazoo,
and I wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency about a toxic waste
site in Kalamazoo, MI. We want to make sure it finally gets cleaned up.
Guess who owns that toxic waste site and hasn't cleaned it up for years
and years. That is right, the Koch brothers.
We have come together in this country and decided that it is not fair
for the rest of us to have to breathe dirty air and drink dirty water
so a multibillionaire can have an even bigger profit. The Koch
brothers, however, whose companies have been fined numerous times,
apparently think it is just fine to pollute our air and our water and
then say to every American: You are on your own; you clean it up.
The New York Times reported this weekend that David Koch even ran ads
calling for the complete deregulation of the energy industry. Can we
believe it. A billionaire oilman who thinks there should be no rules
for Big Oil at the expense of the public.
So whether it is clean air and clean water rules, whether it is
Medicare, whether it is Social Security, funding for seniors in nursing
homes through Medicaid, other vital services that keep the promise of
the American dream within reach for every American, the Koch brothers
want to get rid of those things in order to help themselves and their
powerful friends. They want to rig the game in their favor. They are
trying very hard to do that, with hundreds of millions of dollars of
secret money and phony groups. They are willing to use their billions
to create a government that works for them--just them and their
friends. Heads they win; tails the rest of America loses.
That is not what this country is about. We need to stop this assault
on our democracy and our middle class by passing a constitutional
amendment to get this secret money out of our elections. That is why I
am so proud to join in supporting and cosponsoring an amendment
sponsored by Senator Tom Udall that so many of our caucus are
supporting because we need to make it clear that this is not acceptable
in a democracy. In the meantime, though, we need to make sure the
American people understand the real agenda behind the front groups and
the secret money. That is why I am here today. That is why our majority
leader and others speak out. It is because it matters. It is the money
promoting the agenda, the money promoting actions such as closing
plants and petcoke going into the rivers in our neighborhoods.
It is an agenda that is not the agenda of the American people. In
America, everyone deserves a fair shot to work hard and get ahead--
everybody. It is not about rigging the game for a few. People shouldn't
be able to buy all the rules of the game by putting secret money and
front groups out there and saying things that aren't true and getting
people in there whom they know will just work for their own radical
agenda. That is not what America is about. We have too many people
barely holding on to the middle class, struggling to get into the
middle class, and all they want is a fair shot to make it. That is what
we are about. That is what we are fighting for every single day.
I see my colleague on the floor who is offering a constitutional
amendment that would address this issue of getting the light of day on
the money in politics in our great country. I wish to again, in his
presence, commend Senator Udall for doing that, and I urge my
colleagues to come together. What is happening right now with the money
is the worst of America, not the best of America. We can do better than
that. People expect us to do better than that. I am going to continue
with my colleagues in the Democratic caucus to fight to make sure that
happens.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The deputy whip.
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