[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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