[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 208 (Wednesday, December 20, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8175-S8176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





    REPUBLICAN TAX BILL AND ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I understand that my Republican 
colleagues and President Trump are busy celebrating the passage of the 
tax bill that was voted on at 1:30 in the morning. They are very 
excited, and they are very happy about it. I understand that. I guess, 
if one is a billionaire like President Trump or is a wealthy campaign 
contributor, you do have a whole lot to celebrate. Maybe, if you are 1 
of the 6,000 lobbyists here in Washington, DC, who helped to write the 
bill, you are celebrating a lot today. Yet, if you are one of the vast 
majority of the American people who is in the middle class, you should 
not be celebrating today. In fact, you should be pretty nervous.
  The passage of this legislation marks a great victory for the Koch 
brothers and other wealthy campaign contributors who will see, at a 
time of massive income and wealth inequality, huge tax breaks for 
themselves. In other words, the wealthiest people will become much 
wealthier. Meanwhile, the deficit--what is owed by our kids and our 
grandchildren--will increase by $1.5 trillion as a result of this bill. 
The largest and most profitable corporations--companies like Apple, 
Microsoft, Pfizer, and General Electric--despite record breaking 
profits, are going to see very, very large tax breaks to the tune of 
many billions of dollars.
  Now, at a time when the very wealthy are becoming much richer, tens 
of millions of American families are struggling to keep their heads 
above water economically. There are 40 million Americans who are living 
in poverty. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center tells us that in terms of 
this legislation, 83 percent of the tax benefits will go to the top 1 
percent by the end of the decade, who are already doing phenomenally 
well, and that 60 percent of the benefits will go to the top one-tenth 
of 1 percent. Meanwhile, at the end of 10 years, some 92 million 
middle-class households will be paying more in taxes.
  On top of all of that, as the only Nation--major country--on Earth 
not to guarantee healthcare to all people, this bill will result in 13 
million Americans losing their health insurance. I understand the 
President was really excited about this. Hey, what a great day. There 
are 13 million more Americans who are losing their health insurance 
when we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare 
to all people.
  In the ending of the individual mandate, what all of the experts tell 
us is that our healthcare premiums will go up. If you are an average 
person out there, your healthcare premiums will very likely go up as a 
result of this legislation. Meanwhile, starting next year--I am not 
talking about 10 years from now--some 8 million middle-class families 
will pay more in taxes.
  Doesn't it say a lot about Republican priorities when they make 
permanent the tax breaks for corporations; yet they make temporary the 
tax breaks for working families, which will expire in 8 years?
  Furthermore, I would hope that every American is listening closely to 
what Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is talking about. I have to give 
Ryan credit for being pretty honest about the intentions of the 
Republican Party. Just this morning, he was on ABC, saying what he has 
said for quite a while, and that is that the Republican plan is a two-
step approach. Step No. 1 is passing the legislation that passed last 
night here and today in the House. Step No. 2 is, having run up a 
deficit of $1.5 trillion, they are now going to come back and offset 
that deficit by making massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid.
  According to Ryan, they have a two-step program. Step No. 1 is to 
give massive tax breaks to the rich and large corporations and to run 
up the deficit by $1.5 trillion. Step No. 2 is to offset that deficit 
by cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
  How unspeakable and outrageous is this plan? How much does it go 
against what the American people want? This gives huge tax breaks to 
billionaires--to the Trump family, to the Koch brothers--and then pays 
for those tax breaks by cutting Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid.
  There are millions of senior citizens and people with disabilities in 
Vermont and all across this country who, today, are struggling to buy 
food, to heat their homes, and to buy the prescription drugs that they 
need because they are trying to survive on $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 a 
year in Social Security. There are people who have worked their entire 
lives and have exhausted themselves as they approach retirement. Do not 
tell those people who live on $12,000, $13,000 a year in Social 
Security that you are going to cut their benefits through a Chained CPI 
or by some other mechanism in order to give tax breaks to billionaires. 
How outrageous that would be.
  Don't tell older workers--many of them with health problems after 
their having worked 20, 30, 40 years--that you are going to give 
billions of dollars in tax breaks to Microsoft, Pfizer, or General 
Electric, but then you are going to ask them to work more years in 
order to be eligible for Medicare.
  I understand that every Member of the Congress would like to go home 
for the holiday season, and so would I. This is the time of year during 
which Vermont is very, very beautiful. The truth is that it would 
really be unconscionable for us to leave Washington after giving tax 
breaks to billionaires and large corporations while we ignore the 
enormous problems that are facing the middle class and working families 
of our country.
  When Donald Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 
Program, the DACA Program, nearly 800,000 lives were thrown into chaos 
and uncertainty. Without the legal protections afforded by the DACA 
Program, hundreds of thousands of young people today are living in 
terrible fear and anxiety about losing the legal status they currently 
have in the only country they have ever known. These are young people 
who grew up in the United States, went to school in the United States, 
are working in the United States, and are in our military. This is 
their home. It would be unspeakable to take away their legal status and 
subject them to deportation.
  Since the President's announcement in September, more than 11,000 
people have already lost their protections under DACA, with 
approximately 22,000 set to lose their legal protections by the March 
5, 2018, deadline. These are hundreds of thousands of wonderful young 
people. We cannot turn our backs on them. We must deal with DACA before 
we leave for the holiday break. Any end-of-the-year spending agreement 
must address the fear and uncertainty caused by the administration's 
reckless actions, and a clean Dream Act must be signed into law.
  This is not just what Bernie Sanders wants; this is what the American 
people in overwhelming numbers want. A Quinnipiac poll came out just 
the other day in which 77 percent of the American people supported 
maintaining legal status for these young people and allowing them to 
move forward toward citizenship--77 percent--and that is consistent 
with other polls that have been taken. A vast majority of Democrats, 
Republicans, and Independents understand that it would be incredibly 
cruel and harmful to our country in so many ways to deny legal status 
to the Dreamers. We cannot turn our backs on the Dreamers. We must 
address their crisis right now.
  It has been almost 3 months since funding for community health 
centers has lapsed. Our Nation's 1,400 community health centers serve 
more than 27 million people in roughly 10,000 communities throughout 
the country. In my home State of Vermont, one out of four Vermonters 
gets their primary healthcare, dental care, low-cost prescription 
drugs, and mental health counseling at a community health center.
  How does it happen that the Republican leadership can spend months on 
a bill to give tax breaks to billionaires but not address the lack of 
funding, the reauthorization of the Community Health Centers Program or 
the Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides healthcare to 9 
million children?
  In this country, there are 1.5 million workers and retirees in multi-
employer pension plans who could see the pensions that they worked for 
over their entire lives cut by up to 60 percent. People were promised 
these pensions a few years ago, and in a disastrous act, Congress took 
away that promise, and

[[Page S8176]]

working people could lose the pensions they were promised by up to 60 
percent cuts in those pensions. Congress needs to act before the end of 
the year to make sure that no one in America in a multi-employer 
pension plan will see their pension cut.
  Those are real issues impacting real people, but there are more. 
There was an article recently in the Washington Post, and it said that 
because of major cuts to the Social Security Administration, people 
with disabilities are not getting their claims processed in a timely 
manner. The result was that in 1 year, if you can believe it, 10,000 
people with disabilities died before they got their claims processed.
  What the Republicans have been very active on is making sure that the 
Social Security Administration does not get the funding it needs, which 
means that it is harder for people who have retired and people who have 
disabilities to get the information they need or the claims that they 
have processed in a timely manner. We must make sure that every senior 
and person with a disability gets treated with dignity. We have to 
restore adequate funding to the Social Security Administration.
  One of the great outrages that currently is taking place in this 
country and really is quite beyond belief is that at a time when we 
live in a competitive global economy and when we need the best educated 
workforce in the world to be able to do the new jobs that are being 
created, which require more education, we have over 40 million people 
in our country who have left college or graduate school in debt and 
sometimes deeply in debt. I am talking about people I have met who have 
gone to medical school or dental school and are $300,000 or $400,000 in 
debt. People graduate college $100,000 or $150,000 in debt. This is a 
crisis that is impacting millions of people. It is impacting our entire 
economy. It is an issue that must be addressed. Maybe, just maybe, 
before we give tax breaks to billionaires, we might want to 
significantly lower the debt burden so many people in this country have 
in their student debt.
  This is the year 2017, soon to be 2018. This is the wealthiest 
country in the history of the world. Yet there are communities in 
Vermont, Utah, and communities all over this country that do not have 
adequate broadband service. How does a business start up in a community 
if that community does not have rapid broadband or good cell phone 
service? The answer is, it doesn't. It can't. That is one of the 
reasons why rural America is hurting so badly. We must invest in rural 
infrastructure to make sure every community in this country has 
quality, affordable broadband.
  There is an opioid epidemic sweeping this country, impacting Vermont, 
my neighboring State of New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky, and all 
parts of this country are seeing people dying from overdoses from 
opioids and heroin. This is an epidemic that must be addressed. We 
can't simply walk out of here and leave people all across the country 
without the resources they need to treat people who are addicted and to 
prevent our young people from becoming addicts. We need to invest in 
treatment and prevention for the opioid epidemic.
  As we speak, there are over 30,000 vacancies in the Veterans' 
Administration. That means that we have to make sure every veteran in 
this country who goes to the VA gets the quality and timely healthcare 
he or she needs. We can't turn our backs on the veterans. We have to 
invest in the VA.
  The bottom line is that, as much as all of us would like to get out 
of Washington and go home, we simply cannot turn our backs on tens of 
millions of working people and people in the middle class. It is not 
good enough to pass tax breaks for billionaires and then leave town. So 
I hope the Republican leadership will immediately bring to this floor 
the legislation that we need to address the many crises facing the 
middle class of this country.
  With that Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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