[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 124 (Tuesday, July 30, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5633-S5635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ISSUES FACING AMERICA

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, when I turn on the TV or read the papers, 
I read a lot about politics, and I read about this candidate attacking 
that candidate and the other candidate attacking another candidate, and 
on and on it goes.
  But somehow or another, as a nation, here in Congress and on the 
campaign trail and in the corporate media, we, as a nation, have a 
habit of forgetting to talk about some of the most important issues 
that affect ordinary Americans. We talk about a lot of stuff, but, 
somehow, we will neglect to talk about the most important issues facing 
our country.
  And at the top of my list is the reality that in America we are 
rapidly becoming an oligarchic form of society. What does that mean? It 
means that today we have more income and wealth inequality than at any 
time in the history of the United States of America.
  It means that there are three people--one, two, three 
multibillionaires--who own more wealth than the bottom half of American 
society. Three people here, 160 million people there--that sounds like 
an issue we might want to be talking about.
  We might just want to be asking about how well the economy is doing 
for ordinary people as opposed to the people on top. And when we ask 
that question, the answer is pretty clear. The top 1 percent have 
never, ever in American history had it so good. They are making money 
head over heels.
  What we are seeing at the same time is a working class in this 
country that is struggling--struggling to pay the bills, struggling to 
put food on the table, struggling to see that their kids get ahead.
  According to the Rand Corporation, not exactly a progressive entity, 
over the last 50 years, we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from 
ordinary Americans to the top 1 percent. In fact, there has been a 
shift of $50 trillion going from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 
percent. What does that say about American economic policy?
  And, at the same exact time, over the last 50 years, we have seen 
something else that is rather extraordinary. Despite the huge increase 
that we have all observed as a result of technology and increased 
worker productivity, it turns out that real inflation-accounted-for 
wages for the average American worker is lower today than it was 50 
years ago.
  Every worker in America is producing a lot more than was the case 50 
years ago because of this new technology, and yet real inflation-
accounted-for wages are lower today than they were 50 years ago. People 
on top are making out fantastically well; working class people are 
falling further and further behind.
  And let us not forget that, today in America, 60 percent of our 
people are living paycheck to paycheck. I grew up in a family that 
lived paycheck to paycheck. We lived in a rent-controlled apartment for 
my whole childhood. I know something about it.
  And what it means that people from California to Vermont--they are 
struggling, living under great stress, trying to figure out how they 
are going to be able to take care of their families, at the same time 
as the people on top never had it so good.
  But when we talk about oligarchy, it is not just massive income and 
wealth inequality. It is not just the fact that the working class in 
this country is going nowhere in a hurry. It is also the growing 
concentration of ownership in America. In sector after sector, whether 
it is media, whether it is financial services, whether it is 
transportation, whether it is healthcare, you have fewer and fewer 
large corporations that control what goes on in those sectors.
  And when you have concentration of ownership, you have price-fixing, 
you have corporate greed, and that is one of the reasons why inflation 
has had the impact that it has had and why we have seen that much 
inflation.
  Unbelievably, there are three Wall Street investment firms today--
BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street--that combined control assets of 
$20 trillion and combined are the major stockholders in 95 percent of 
the Standard & Poor corporations. That is what power is about--three 
entities, three private Wall Street investment firms being able to be 
combined as the major stockholders in 95 percent of our corporations.
  So oligarchy is about massive income and wealth inequality. Oligarchy 
is about the rich becoming much richer--CEOs of large corporations now 
making

[[Page S5634]]

350 times what their workers make. Oligarchy is about 60 percent of our 
people living paycheck to paycheck, despite huge increases in worker 
productivity.
  But I will tell you what oligarchy is also about: The billionaire 
class is not just satisfied to control the economic life of this 
country. They are moving aggressively to control the political life of 
this country.
  So while ordinary Americans get the right to vote--they have one 
vote--the billionaire class, as a result of this disastrous Citizens 
United Supreme Court decision, they have the right not just to cast one 
vote as a citizen but to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars 
into super-PACs that will elect their friends and defeat their 
political opponents.
  Now, if anyone in America thinks that is what American democracy is 
supposed to be about, well, I have a strong disagreement with you. 
Democracy is one person, one vote; not billionaires buying elections 
through their super-PACs. And I would hope that, here in Congress and 
on the campaign trail, leaders of this country make it clear that we 
have got to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens 
United, which allows billionaires to buy elections, and move to public 
funding of elections. And that is where we should be going if we 
believe in democracy.
  When we talk about the issues facing working families, when I go 
around the country--and I was just up in Maine the other day, as a 
matter of fact--you ask people about our healthcare system. You ask 
them a simple question. You say: Is this healthcare system working for 
you?
  And almost without exception, what the American people say is: Our 
healthcare system today is broken. It is dysfunctional, and it is way, 
way, way too expensive.
  And when people say that, they are right. And I hope everybody knows 
that, in America today, we spend twice as much per person on healthcare 
as do the people of any other country--twice as much. And yet despite 
spending over $13,000 for every man, woman, and child--18 percent of 
our GDP on healthcare--our outcomes are worse than other countries that 
spend half as much per capita.
  Our life expectancy is way down, behind many other countries, and, 
really obscenely, the life expectancy in the United States between the 
people on top and working-class people is 10, 12 years. In other words, 
if you are rich, you will live as long as people in other developed 
countries, but if you are working class or poor, the odds are you are 
going to live 10 or 15 years less.
  Now, I don't know how much we talk about that, but I think maybe it 
is time that we do. And maybe we talk about the reality that we remain 
today the only country in the industrialized world that does not 
guarantee healthcare for all people as a human right, and that 85 
million of our people are uninsured or underinsured.
  And it is not just healthcare. It is prescription drugs, and we are 
working hard on this. As chairman of the HELP Committee, that is what 
we are doing, trying to drive down the costs of prescription drugs.
  But today, because of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and 
the inactivity of the Congress, in many cases we are paying 10 times 
more for the same exact prescription drugs as do the people in other 
countries. And on and on it goes.
  We have, as a nation, the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost 
any major country on Earth. This is the richest nation on Earth, and we 
have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country 
on Earth.
  In terms of our seniors, 50 percent of senior citizens in this 
country are living on $30,000 a year or less, and 25 percent are living 
on $15,000 a year or less. And I do not know how anybody, let alone a 
senior citizen, lives on $15,000 a year or less.
  So what do we do? Well, maybe for a change--I know it is a radical 
idea--we might want to hear on the floor of the Senate and maybe in the 
House, actually discuss issues of relevance to working people. I know 
that is kind of an extremist, a far-left idea, that we talk about the 
real issues facing working families, but, you know, that is what I 
think. And maybe we come up with some serious proposals and ideas that 
address some of these crises.
  And there may be differences of opinions, but let's at least discuss 
these issues. It seems to me that when so many of our elderly people 
are struggling, when half of older workers have nothing in the bank as 
they face retirement, you know, we might want to pay attention to that 
issue.
  Now, over in the House, some 90 percent of the Republicans think that 
what we want to do is cut Social Security benefits. Well, I don't think 
that that is a particularly good idea. I think that is a dumb idea.
  And I think we should do exactly the opposite. Instead of cutting 
Social Security benefits, we should expand Social Security benefits and 
extend the life and the solvency of Social Security.
  Well, how do you do that? It ain't hard to do. Right now, somebody 
that makes $16 million a year contributes the same amount into the 
Social Security trust fund as somebody who makes $160,000 a year. Does 
that make sense to anybody? Not to me.
  If you lift the cap and ask the wealthy--the top 2, 3 percent--to 
start paying into the Social Security trust fund that same 6 percent 
that the working people pay, do you know what you could do? You can do 
two things: You can expand Social Security benefits by $2,200 a year. 
That is pretty good. It may not sound like a lot of money to somebody 
that is wealthy, but if you are trying to get by on $20,000 a year, do 
you know what? That $2,200 can help a lot.
  And when you lift that cap, the other thing you do is you can make 
Social Security solvent for the next 75 years so we end this discussion 
about Social Security going broke.
  We had a hearing recently on the HELP Committee on medical debt, and 
what we learned, unbelievably, is that in our broken, dysfunctional 
healthcare system, half of people in this country who are dealing with 
cancer, because of the high cost of cancer treatment--half of these 
people--either go bankrupt or they deplete all of their financial 
resources.
  I mean, does anybody who has a heart, anybody who has a soul, anybody 
who has a sense of morality think that it makes sense that when people 
come down with a terrible illness and are worried about living or dying 
that they have to also worry about whether or not their family is going 
to go bankrupt?
  And I think we should learn here at the Federal level, here in the 
Senate, a lesson that a lot of States and cities and counties are 
doing, and that is ending medical debt. We should not punish people, 
force bankruptcy on people, who are struggling with serious illnesses.
  Wherever I go in my home State of Vermont, my city of Burlington, all 
over the country, people are worried about the high cost of healthcare 
in America. It is no great secret that rents are soaring. It is no 
great secret that, shamefully as a nation, we have some 600,000 
Americans sleeping out on the streets today. It is clear to me that 
instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires and to large corporations, 
maybe--just maybe--we may want to invest in building low-income, 
affordable, and senior citizen housing, and we may want to put a cap on 
the kinds of rent increases--as President Biden suggested--that these 
large Wall Street firms are now raising the rents that they are raising 
for people who live in their homes.
  I don't know how to describe this except to say that I am personally 
embarrassed and I think the American people are embarrassed that right 
now in this country, we have a Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. 
All over this country, we have workers--if they are not making 7 and a 
quarter, they are making 10, they are making 12, 13 bucks an hour. 
People can't make it. I don't care where you are. If you are in rural 
Kentucky, in Burlington, VT, or New York City, nobody makes it on $12, 
$13 an hour.
  We have not raised the Federal minimum wage in decades. I brought a 
bill up here a few years ago. We got all of 46 votes. We didn't get one 
Republican vote; we lost six Democratic votes.
  Well, the American people do not think that folks in this country 
should be forced to work at starvation wages, and I hope we can bring 
forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a

[[Page S5635]]

living wage. In my view, that living wage should be at least $17 an 
hour.
  When we talk about workers' rights, I can tell you from personal 
experience, having been involved in a number of strikes and union 
organizing campaigns, corporations spend hundreds of millions of 
dollars--illegally--trying to prevent workers from forming unions. That 
is why we must pass the PRO Act that will provide severe penalties 
against any corporation, any employer that uses illegal tactics to deny 
workers the right to form a union.
  Mr. President, when we talk about childhood poverty, as I am sure you 
will recall, a few years ago, as a result of the American Rescue Plan, 
we provided $300 a month per child for the vast majority of working 
parents in this country. That tax credit had the impact, incredibly, of 
lowering the childhood poverty level in this country by over 40 
percent. One provision in one large bill lowered the childhood poverty 
level by over 40 percent. For minority communities, it was even greater 
than that. Maybe--just maybe--as a nation, we might want to end the 
disgrace of having the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any 
major country on Earth and make permanent a strong child tax credit 
similar to what we had in the American Rescue Plan.
  These are just some of the issues that are out there, and there are 
many others.
  I talk to elderly people often who say: All right. We are not going 
to pass--you don't have the political support to pass Medicare for All. 
The drug companies and the insurance companies are too powerful. You 
can't take them on right now. But at least--at least--can we expand 
Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision?
  Millions of elderly people in America can't afford to go to a 
dentist. People have no teeth in their mouths. Yes, we can do that, and 
we should do that.
  So all that I wanted to say is that at a time when many, many 
Americans are giving up on democracy--they are hurting. They look to 
the government, they vote, and nothing happens. The rich get richer; 
they get poorer. They are saying, ``Hey, all of this democracy and all 
this election stuff--it is all a crock. It doesn't matter,'' and they 
are willing to look at authoritarianism as a substitute for the 
democracy we have.
  So, to my mind, not only is it the right thing and the moral thing to 
start paying attention to the needs of a long-neglected working class--
long neglected by the Democratic Party; long neglected by the 
Republican Party--not only is it time to pay attention to those needs, 
if you are interested in preserving democracy, you might want to do 
that as well.
  So the thrust of my message today is that the time is long overdue 
for this Congress, this Senate, to have a serious discussion on the 
serious issues facing the working families of this country.
  With that, I yield the floor.

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