[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 2589-2595]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE DISPARITIES IN WEALTH AND INCOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. 
Sanders) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, as the only Independent in the House of 
Representatives, my views are a little bit

[[Page 2590]]

different than many of my Democratic and Republican colleagues. So I 
want to share some thoughts today, thoughts that are not necessarily 
often expressed here on the floor of the House or often expressed, 
unfortunately, in our corporately controlled media. Also I would like 
to mention to Members of the House that if they need any further 
information on any of the issues that we are going to be discussing 
they can get it from our Web site which is www.Bernie.house.gov.
  Mr. Speaker, the corporate media does not talk about it terribly 
much, and we do not talk about it terribly often here on the floor of 
the House, but the United States of America is rapidly becoming three 
separate nations. We are becoming a Nation which has an increasingly 
wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with incredible 
wealth and power. That is one part of our Nation. The other part of our 
Nation is a middle class, the vast majority of our people, and that 
part of our society is shrinking. Middle class is shrinking. The 
average worker in America is working longer hours for lower wages. And 
the third part of our society, the low-income people, what we are 
seeing is a substantial increase in poverty, and we are seeing millions 
and millions of the poorest people in this country struggling hard just 
to keep their heads above water. One America incredibly rich, another 
America working longer hours for low wages, another America struggling 
hard to make ends meet.
  Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country. 
That is not new. And there has always been a gap between the rich and 
the poor. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist 
in this country today have not been seen since the 1920s. In other 
words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian Nation with a growing 
middle class, we are becoming a Nation with by far the most unequal 
distribution of wealth and income in the entire industrialized world. 
It is not England with its royalty. It is the United States of America 
which has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of major 
countries.
  Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the 
bottom 95 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent, yes, that is right, the 
wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The 
CEOs of our largest corporations now earn 500 times what their workers 
are making, while their employees are being squeezed, being forced to 
pay more for their health insurance, while pensions are being cut back 
for workers, while retiree benefits are being cut.
  The CEOs of large corporations are making out like bandits. And I am 
not just talking about the crooks who ran Enron or WorldCom or Arthur 
Andersen. I am talking about the highly respected CEOs like the retired 
former head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 
2000, he received $123 million in compensation and a $10-million-a-year 
pension benefit for his lifetime, and meanwhile he cut back on the jobs 
that GE had in America and shipped substantial amounts of those jobs 
over to China and Mexico. But he did take good care of his own needs.
  And I am talking about Lou Gerstner of IBM. He is the former head of 
IBM, who, from 1997 to 2002, received $366 million in compensation 
while slashing the pension benefits of his employees.
  I am talking about people like C.A. Heimbold, Jr. of Bristol-Myers 
Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make 
it almost impossible for many seniors in our country to afford the 
outrageously high cost of prescription drugs.
  Mr. Speaker, we do not talk about this issue enough, but we should, 
and that is that today the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, who 
constitute 1/100 of 1 percent of the population, a tiny, tiny 
percentage of Americans, receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 
million families in the United States of America; 1/100 of 1 percent 
receive as much income as the bottom 20 million families. And I defy 
anyone to tell me that that is in any way fair or that is in any way 
what the United States is supposed to be.
  New data from the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, shows that 
the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than 
doubled from 1979 to the year 2000. In other words, we are moving in 
exactly the wrong direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 
percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, according to data from the CBO, between 1973 and 2000, 
the average real inflation-accounted-for income of the bottom 90 
percent of American taxpayers actually declined by 7 percent, the 
average worker seeing a decline. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 
percent rose by 148 percent. The income of the top \1/10\ of 1 percent 
rose by 343 percent, and the income of the top \1/100\ of 1 percent 
rose by 599 percent.
  I know I am throwing out a lot of figures, and I suspect that I am 
boring some people, but the important point to be made here is the 
middle class is shrinking, and the people at the very top are doing 
extraordinarily well.
  Mr. Speaker, when I was growing up, the expectation was that for 
someone in the middle class, that person in that family would be 
working 40 hours a week and would earn enough money to take care of the 
needs of a family. One person, 40 hours a week, earning enough money to 
take care of the whole family. I think, Mr. Speaker, we can all agree 
that that is no longer the reality for very many families in this 
country. What has happened is, because of the shrinking of the middle 
class, the decline in real wages, it is very rare indeed in my State of 
Vermont or in any State in this country that we see a situation in 
which both people in a marriage are not now forced to work, leaving 
kids at home or in child care.
  In terms of what is happening to the middle class, we have lost over 
3 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years, and with over 8 
million workers unemployed, the unemployment rate today is at 5.4 
percent. But I think we all know that that unemployment, the official 
unemployment statistic, very much understates the reality facing 
workers in America. Today if one is living in a high unemployment area, 
and if they have given up looking for work, they are not a statistic. 
If they are working part time and want to work full time, but there are 
no full-time jobs available, they are not a statistic. So the reality 
is that real unemployment is substantially higher than official 
statistics indicate.
  In addition, of course, there are millions of Americans today with a 
college degree or higher education degrees who are working at jobs that 
require far less education than their abilities would provide.
  Mr. Speaker, here is a point that I want to spend a little bit of 
time on: Importantly, over the last 3 years, of the 3.3 million private 
sector jobs that have been lost, over 2.8 million of those jobs were in 
the manufacturing sector. And one of the reasons for that is that we 
have a disastrous trade policy which almost tells corporate America, 
leave the United States of America, go to China, go to Mexico, go to 
some disparate Third World country where people are paid pennies an 
hour. That is what we want them to do.
  The reality is that NAFTA has failed, our membership in the World 
Trade Organization has failed, and perhaps, above all, permanent normal 
trade relations with China has failed.
  Mr. Speaker, the time is now, and it is long overdue for the United 
States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the 
President of the United States, to stand up to the editorial writers 
all over this country who year after year after year have told us how 
wonderful unfettered free trade is, how many new jobs would be created. 
The results are in. They are wrong. Unfettered free trade has been a 
disaster for working Americans. It has been a disaster for the middle 
class. And it is high time we understood that. It is high time we ended 
our disastrous trade policies and begin to negotiate trade policies 
that work not just for corporate America, not just for CEOs who make 
huge compensation packages, but trade policies that are fair for the 
working people of this country.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that is not talked about enough, is 
not talked

[[Page 2591]]

about enough, is a very simple question, and the question is this: If 
in the last 20 or 30 years we have seen an explosion of technology, if 
we have seen the development of sophisticated computers, we have seen 
the development of e-mail, we have seen faxes, we have seen cell 
phones, we have seen satellite communications, we have seen robotics in 
factories, we are a Nation which has experienced a huge increase in 
productivity.

                              {time}  1630

  My question is, if the average worker today is far more productive 
than he or she was 20 years ago, why is that worker not working shorter 
hours and earning more money, rather than, in fact, working longer 
hours and earning less money? Why is it that in 1973 the average 
American worker in inflation-accounted-for wages made $14.09 an hour, 
while in 1998 he or she made only $12.77 an hour? There is something 
wrong when productivity is exploding and workers are earning less in 
real wages.
  In terms of manufacturing, we have, unbelievably but true, we have in 
the last 3 years lost 16 percent, 16 percent, of the jobs in our 
manufacturing sector. At 14.3 million jobs, we are at the lowest number 
of factory jobs since 1950, since 1950. In my own State of Vermont, one 
of the smallest States in this country, we have lost some 9,300 
manufacturing jobs since 2001. And here is the tragedy: We are not, 
when we lose manufacturing jobs, just losing jobs; we are losing good-
paying jobs. In Vermont, for example, on average, someone working in 
manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent income. And 
when that employee loses his or her job, in almost every instance the 
new job that is acquired pays less than the job that has been lost and 
provides lower benefits.
  So when we look at the economy, as important as it is to look at the 
rate of unemployment, it is equally important to look at the jobs that 
are being lost and what they paid and the new jobs that are being 
created and what they pay.
  In that regard, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute 
showed that in 48 out of our 50 States, more good-paying jobs were lost 
than were created. Nationally what they discovered is that new jobs 
created paid 21 percent less than the jobs that were being lost. We are 
losing decent-paying manufacturing jobs, good benefits; we are growing 
low-wage service industry jobs, poor benefits. In my State of Vermont, 
those numbers are higher. The new jobs being created are 29 percent 
less than the jobs we are losing.
  Now, when we talk about the economy, the $64 question on everybody's 
mind should be, what is going on for the future? What is going on for 
the future? Will the new jobs that are being created for our kids and 
our grandchildren be challenging jobs, be important jobs, be jobs that 
provide them with a middle-class standard of living? Those are the 
questions that parents are asking all over America; what kind of jobs 
will be available for our kids or our grandchildren?
  Every 2 years the Bureau of Labor Statistics does a study, and what 
their study is about is to project and to study what new jobs will be 
created in largest numbers over the next 10 years. They just completed 
a study covering the years 2002 to 2012. In other words, the question 
is, in what occupations are we going to see the most job growth, and 
what occupations will we see the least job growth?
  Let me quote from Business Week as to what the results of that study 
showed: ``According to a forecast released February 11 by the Federal 
Bureau of Labor Statistics, a large share of new jobs will be in 
occupations that do not require a lot of education and pay below 
average.'' Pay below average. That is what is being projected in terms 
of new jobs for our kids.
  Think for a moment. All of this technology, all of this emphasis on 
education, and the new jobs that are going to be created pay below 
average. Of the 10 occupations that are expected to grow the most, only 
2 would require a bachelor's degree; 1 of those 10 jobs requires an 
associate degree, 7 require a high school degree.
  So the conclusion there, the reality there, is that many of the new 
jobs being created for the future are waiters jobs and waitresses jobs, 
food preparation jobs, customer service representatives, jobs that 
require on-the-job training, jobs that do not require a college 
education and jobs that are low wage.
  In other words, Mr. Speaker, it tells us that a profound lie is being 
perpetrated on the American people. It tells us that unless we change 
our public policies very quickly, the middle class will continue to 
shrink, and the jobs being created for the coming generations will, by 
and large, be low-wage, unskilled work. That is not the America that I 
want to see for our kids or grandchildren, nor do I think that is the 
America that most Americans want to see.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of manufacturing, 
when we talk about the loss of decent-paying jobs to China and other 
countries, let us understand that this year alone the United States has 
had a $500 billion record-breaking trade deficit, $500 billion more in 
goods and services than we are sending out.
  In 2003, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, was $120 
billion, and that number is projected to increase in future years. In 
fact, the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if 
present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 
billion in 5 years. I hope those Members of Congress who told us how 
great most favored nation status with China would be, how great 
permanent normal trade relations would be, hear those numbers. $120 
billion trade deficit today. The expectation is that in 5 years that 
number will be $330 billion.
  Mr. Speaker, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us 
millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. It is squeezing 
wages, because companies have now the opportunity to easily go to 
Mexico or to China. They are putting the squeeze on American workers, 
and they are saying if you do not take cuts in wages, if you do not put 
more into your own health care package out of your own pocket, we are 
going to be going.
  This trend of wage squeezing is most apparent and most dramatic among 
people who only have a high school diploma who are now going out into 
the labor market. They are seeing a huge decline in wages today 
compared to what the case was 20 years ago, and the reason for that is 
obvious; 20 or 30 years ago there were factory jobs available that 
enabled high school graduates to earn a middle-class standard of 
living. Today those jobs are gone, and they are only available at 
McDonald's, at Wal-Mart, and people cannot make it on those wages.
  I think, Mr. Speaker, if I were to summarize what is happening in our 
economy today, I think the easiest way to do it would be to point out 
that not so many years ago General Motors was the largest employer in 
America. General Motors, with a strong union, paid its workers and pays 
its workers today a living wage, good wages, good benefits.
  But today, Mr. Speaker, the largest employer in the United States of 
America is Wal-Mart, not General Motors. That is the transition, from a 
GM economy of good wages, to a Wal-Mart economy of poverty wages. Today 
Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 annually, wages which 
are below the poverty level. That is what is going on in the American 
economy. Our largest employer now pays workers wages that are below the 
poverty level.
  Ironically, and pathetically, many of these workers qualify for 
Federal food stamp programs, which means that Wal-Mart is being 
directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Wal-Mart, our largest employer, 
has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their 
workers are entitled to, and some months ago Federal agents raided 
their headquarters and 60 of their stores across this country, 
arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. That is our largest 
employer.
  A recent study, and this is really incredible and an issue that I 
intend to move vigorously on, a recent study indicated that for every 
Wal-Mart Super

[[Page 2592]]

Store that employed 200 workers, taxpayers were subsidizing these low-
paid workers to the tune of $420,000 per year, which equates to about 
$2,100 per employee. Can you believe that? Wal-Mart salaries and 
benefits are so low that taxpayers throughout this country have got to 
provide health care benefits and food stamp benefits and housing 
benefits to supplement the pathetically low wages that Wal-Mart, our 
largest employer, is providing.
  Now, here you add insult to injury, Mr. Speaker. It turns out that 
while the taxpayers of this country, the middle class of this country, 
is subsidizing Wal-Mart, 5 out of the 10 wealthiest people in America 
are in, yes, you got it right, the Walton family, and the widow of Sam 
Walton as well. So these five people who own Wal-Mart are some of the 
wealthiest people in America. Each of them is worth about $20 billion. 
Five people owning Wal-Mart, $20 billion apiece, $100 billion for one 
family, and, guess what? The middle class of America is subsidizing 
their employees because they are paying their workers poverty wages.
  Now, if that makes sense to somebody, please give my Web site an e-
mail. You tell me, www.Bernie.house.gov. If that makes sense to you, 
you e-mail that to me. That is what the transformation of the American 
economy is all about, the loss of good-paying jobs, the creation of 
poverty-wage jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, not only has permanent normal trade relations with China 
been a disaster, but so has NAFTA. We have an increased trade deficit 
with Mexico. We have lost many, many jobs to Mexico. The irony there is 
that people might think, well, you know, NAFTA was bad for workers in 
the United States, but maybe it helped the poor people in Mexico.
  Well, think again. Think again. NAFTA has been a disaster for the 
poor and working people of Mexico. Since 1994, when NAFTA went into 
existence, the number of people classified as poor or extremely poor 
has risen from 62 million to 69 million out of a population of 100 
million. Since 1994, Mexico's agricultural sector, their rural area, 
has lost 1.3 million jobs, which is one of the reasons that we are 
seeing an increase in illegal immigration.
  Frankly, Mr. Speaker, it did not take a genius to predict that 
unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster, which is why I 
and many other Members in the House have opposed it from the beginning. 
When you have disciplined, educated people in China available to work 
at 20 or 30 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability 
of bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff-
free, why would American corporations not shut down their plants in 
this country and run to China?

                              {time}  1645

  It did not take a genius, frankly, to anticipate that that would 
occur.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, General Electric is one of the largest corporations 
in America, and here is what their CEO Jeffrey Immelt had to say about 
China at a GE investor meeting on December 6, 2002, and I put it up 
here on this chart. I think it is so important that the American people 
really should take a strong look at this statement from the leader, 
from the CEO of one of the largest corporations in America, and here is 
what he said: ``When I am talking to GE managers,'' GE is a 
conglomerate, they have many separate companies, ``When I am talking to 
GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be 
there.'' And then he continues: ``I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from 
China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in 
China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is 
extremely attractive.''
  In other words, what Mr. Immelt is saying very directly, and 
virtually every other corporate head is saying, maybe not quite as 
overtly, is we are packing up, folks, and we are leaving. Why should we 
pay American workers 15 or 20 bucks an hour? Why should we allow unions 
to be formed? Why should we obey environmental regulations when we can 
go to China and have a workforce in which if workers there try to form 
a union, they go to jail. If they speak up for democratic rights, they 
go to jail. If they want environmental protection or worker safety, 
they go to jail. What a fantastic place for Mr. Immelt and his other 
CEO friends to move to, and that is precisely what they are doing. They 
are selling out the working people of this country; they are selling 
out this country entirely.
  Should anybody be surprised that Motorola eliminated almost 43,000 
American jobs in 2001 while investing over $3 billion in China, or that 
it plans to invest $10 billion there by the year 2006? Think about your 
State. Think about your community. Is Motorola building a new factory 
there? No, they are not. They are off in China.
  Who would be shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of 
thousands of American workers out on the street while investing $1.5 
billion in China? From 1975 to 1995, GE eliminated 269,000 jobs; and on 
and on it goes.
  IBM signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 
3 years. Honeywell is moving rapidly to China. Should anyone be 
surprised that they have built 13 factories in China, or that Ethan 
Allen furniture has cut jobs at saw mills in America and 17 
manufacturing plants, including the State of Vermont, as they move 
furniture manufacturing to China? And recently, Mr. Speaker, and this 
is very alarming, very alarming news, General Motors, one of the 
largest corporations in America, they have announced that they will be 
investing billions of dollars in China in order to build and 
manufacture automobile parts. Will this be the beginning of the end of 
the automobile industry? Will the automobile industry follow so many of 
the other industries as it shrinks and shrinks, and as our jobs go 
abroad, good-paying jobs?
  Mr. Speaker, as I think many Americans know, just several weeks ago, 
the chairman of the President's Economic Council, President Bush's 
economic adviser made the outrageous statement that outsourcing in the 
long run is good for the United States. Outsourcing is good for the 
United States. And their report suggested that if products can be built 
cheaper in other countries, why, that is where they should be 
manufactured. What a disgrace. So workers who are making today 15 or 20 
bucks an hour, well, yes, the products that they manufacture are going 
to be costing more to produce than when they are made in China by 
workers making 20 cents an hour. And the President's chief economic 
adviser says, well, that is where they should be manufactured. I think 
that is beyond comprehension.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, as bad and as frightening and as disastrous as the 
decline of manufacturing is in the United States, there is another 
trend which is taking place which might even be more frightening. Now, 
over the years, from the first President Bush to President Clinton to 
this President Bush, from corporate America, from newspaper editorials, 
from defenders of our trade policy here on the floor of the House, what 
they told us is they said, well, yes, in free trade, unfettered free 
trade, there are winners and there are losers. Yes, we might lose some 
of those blue collar factory jobs; but do not worry, America, because 
while we lose those blue collar factory jobs, we are going to be 
creating new white collar information technology jobs that pay people 
much higher wages than those blue collar jobs that we are losing. That 
is what they told us.
  Unfortunately, as the American people are beginning to learn big 
time, the advocates of unfettered free trade are wrong again. We now 
know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only casualty of 
unfettered free trade. We now know that we are going to see and are 
seeing the loss of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of good-paying 
white-collar information technology jobs, many of them going to India 
and other countries.
  According to Forrester Research, a major consultant on this issue, 
they said, ``Over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. service industry 
jobs, $136 billion in wages, will move offshore.'' The information 
technology industry will

[[Page 2593]]

lead the initial overseas exodus. Among many other companies moving 
high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over 
the next 3 years on research and development on outsourcing in China.
  Recently, Intel Corporation chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. 
could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas 
competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China. In other 
words, Mr. Speaker, not only has our unfettered free trade cost us much 
of our textile industry, our footware industry, our apparel industry, 
our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronics 
industry, our furniture industry, and many other industries. It is now 
going to cost us millions of high-tech jobs as well.
  Mr. Speaker, just last week, I sat down in my office with eight 
workers from the State of Vermont who work for National Life Insurance 
Company, and they told me that their jobs and the jobs of many of their 
colleagues will soon be going to India, and that in the near future, 
they will be sitting next to Indian workers and training them on how to 
do their jobs. And that is what is happening throughout America. 
Corporate America is selling out not only blue collar workers; they are 
selling out white collar workers.
  According to the University of California at Berkeley Business 
School, let me quote from a study that came out on October 29, 2003. 
This is the University of California Berkeley Business School: ``A 
ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs is sweeping the 
United States,'' according to a study published by the University of 
California Berkeley researchers who say the trend could leave as many 
as 14 million service jobs in the United States vulnerable. The study 
also indicates that jobs remaining in the U.S. could be subject to 
pressure for lower wages.
  And why would that be? Well, here are some comparisons between wages 
in the U.S. and India where a lot of these high-tech jobs are going. In 
the U.S., a telephone operator earns $12.50 an hour; in India, less 
than a dollar an hour. A payroll clerk in the U.S. averages $15 an 
hour, while in India that person makes less than $2 an hour. So what we 
are beginning to see, what we are beginning to see in occupations such 
as medical transcription services, stock market research for financial 
firms, customer service centers, legal online database research, 
payroll and other back-office activities, what we are now seeing is 
those jobs, often good-paying jobs, are also heading out of this 
country.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear on several issues. I am not 
anti-Chinese. I am not anti-Indian. I am not a xenophobe. I am an 
internationalist. I am more than aware that 1 billion people on this 
planet live on less than a dollar a day, and I think that the United 
States and the other countries in the industrialized world have a moral 
obligation to do everything that we can so that children get the 
education they need in developing countries, people get the health care 
and the prescription drugs that they need, that the water that people 
drink around the world is drinkable. That is our moral obligation. But 
in order to help poor people around the world, we do not have to 
destroy the middle class of this country. There are other ways to do 
that. And ironically, many of these neo-liberal-type approaches are 
being rejected in Latin America and many other countries around the 
world because they are not working. The IMF approach, the World Bank 
approach are being rejected in country after country where governments 
are being forced to cut back on education, health care, and food 
subsidies. People do not want to see foreign companies coming in, 
driving out locally owned manufacturing and their locally owned 
business.
  So the issue is not, do we help poor people around the world. We do. 
But do we do it in ways that do not destroy the middle class in this 
country, and I think we can.
  The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is we have got to end the race to the 
bottom. The goal of our economic policy should be to lift up poor 
people in the world, not lower the standard of living of American 
workers. And, Mr. Speaker, that is why, among other things, I have 
introduced legislation which would terminate, end completely, permanent 
normal trade relations with China. Trade in itself is a good thing, but 
it is only a good thing when it works for both sides. The New York 
Yankees do not trade their number one shortstop for a third-string, 
minor leaguer and say, well, that is just trade. You trade for equal 
value. And I believe that the United States has got to negotiate trade 
agreements with China, India, any country on Earth that work for them 
and work for us, but that are not one-sided, that work only for the 
CEOs of large corporations and work against the best interests of the 
middle class in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about what is happening to the middle 
class, when we talk about the loss of decent-paying jobs, when we talk 
about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, we should also 
mention something that rarely, rarely gets discussed on the floor of 
this House.

                              {time}  1700

  That is, that the American worker today is now working longer hours 
than the worker in any other industrialized country. Over the last 30 
years, workers in middle-income, married-couple families with children 
have added an average of 20 weeks at work, the equivalent of 5 more 
months. Most of the increase comes from working wives, many more of 
whom entered the labor market over this period, adding more work, more 
weeks per year and more hours per year; in fact, middle-incomewise 
adding close to 500 hours of work per year between 1979 and 2000.
  Mr. Speaker, in my State and I believe all over this country, the 
American people are physically exhausted. They are stressed out because 
they are working not one job in many instances, but two jobs, 
occasionally three jobs. According to statistics from the International 
Labor Organization, the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, 
up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That is an increase of almost 1 week of 
work per year. People are working today in order just to earn enough 
money to pay the bills, and they are becoming exhausted.
  Mr. Speaker, I have talked a little bit about what is going on with 
the middle class and the conversion of our economy from a growing and 
strengthened middle class, where we did things like manufacture real 
goods, to a shrinking middle class, where Wal-Mart is now our major 
employer, but let me now talk about the people who are not even in the 
middle class, people who are low income. We have got to ask a question 
about what is happening to the 11 million Americans who are trying to 
survive on the pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour which exists here 
in the Congress.
  Now, can one imagine at that time, when the President of the United 
States and the Republican leadership have provided hundreds of billions 
of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent, there has not 
been one word of discussion about raising the minimum wage to a living 
wage? Tax breaks for billionaires, but allow millions of low-income 
workers to try to make ends meet on $5.15 an hour? What an outrage.
  Mr. Speaker, when we look at our national priorities, we have got to 
recognize the national shame that in America today poverty is 
increasing, and we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of 
any major country on Earth. We are a Nation that gives tax breaks to 
billionaires, but we have 3.5 million people who will experience 
homelessness in this year, 1.3 million of them children. What kind of 
priorities is that? What kind of priorities do we establish when 
millions of senior citizens in America today are unable to afford the 
outrageously high cost of prescription drugs?
  What about veterans, men and women who have put their lives on the 
line defending this country? Those veterans today, if they walk into a 
VA hospital or clinic, will more likely than not be placed on a waiting 
list. Tax breaks for billionaires, but we cannot keep our promises to 
the veterans

[[Page 2594]]

of this country, many of whom came back from war wounded in body and 
wounded in soul, and now this President is attempting to raise premiums 
for our veterans, attempting to raise the cost of prescription drugs 
for our veterans. What sense of decency is that? What kind of 
priorities are that when you say, yeah, if you are a millionaire or a 
billionaire, we give you a tax break, but if you are a veteran who put 
your life on the line defending this country, sorry, we just do not 
have enough money to take care of you?
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the health care crisis in America, 
obviously it goes well beyond the problems facing our veterans. We have 
got to be honest and we have got to acknowledge that our health care 
system today is in a state of crisis, and we have a lot of information 
on that issue and on prescription drugs on our Web site, which is 
www.Bernie.house.gov. The reality in terms of health care is that today 
43 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and more and more 
people are underinsured, higher and higher premiums, higher and higher 
copayments and higher and higher deductibles.
  Mr. Speaker, to my mind, the only solution to the growing crisis in 
health care, the escalating costs, the fact that more and more people 
are uninsured or underinsured, is for the United States Government to 
do what every other industrialized country on Earth has done, and that 
is establish a national health care system which guarantees health care 
as a right of citizenship to every man, woman and child. It is morally 
unacceptable that when a worker loses his or her job, that worker can 
find himself without any health care, and if injury occurs or an 
accident occurs, that person can go bankrupt paying off the medical 
bills, see their credit destroyed and, in some cases, never, ever 
recover financially from those health care bills.
  Either health care is a right of all people, or it is not. Either we 
provide the best health care in the world to the rich, or we say that 
everybody in America should have health care through a nonprofit, cost-
effective, national health care system.
  The irony here, Mr. Speaker, is that some people say, well, that is a 
great idea, good idea, everybody should have health care; we cannot 
afford it. Wrong. Our system or our nonsystem today is by far the most 
wasteful and bureaucratic in the entire world. Mr. Speaker, we spend 
twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other 
country on Earth. It is not that we are not spending enough money, it 
is that this is a system geared toward profit-making for the insurance 
companies and for the pharmaceutical industry rather than in providing 
cost-effective quality care to all of our people.
  Study after study have shown that if we move toward a single payer 
national health care program, we can provide good quality health care 
to every man, woman and child without spending a nickel more than we 
are currently spending because we are going to get rid of all of the 
bureaucracy, and all of the bill collectors, and all of the advertising 
and all of the CEOs making exorbitant salaries. We are going to put 
health care dollars into health care.
  Some people may say, well, Bernie, you know, good idea, but you are 
way out of touch with the American people; they like the current 
system. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. A recent ABC poll indicated that 62 
percent of our population said that they would favor a system of 
universal health care financed by the government, paid for by the 
taxpayers, as opposed to the employer-based system we now have.
  The American people want change. They are tired of this irrational, 
wasteful, bureaucratic health care system which is causing so much pain 
in America where elderly people cannot even fill the prescriptions 
their doctors are making, and President Bush's Medicare proposal is not 
going to help them; where people today are getting sick, and they 
cannot walk into a doctor's office because they cannot afford the 
deductible, and some of those people are dying; where doctors now are 
telling us that the patients they are seeing are far sicker than used 
to be the case because people just do not have health insurance.
  Mr. Speaker, given the very serious problems facing our country, and 
especially the middle class, it is appropriate, I think, to ask what 
President Bush and his administration have done to address some of 
those problems. What are their priorities? What are they doing to 
increase wages in America, to expand the middle class, to lower 
poverty, to make sure that all of our Americans get the health care 
that they need? I found it ironic that when the President gave his 
State of the Union Address, he had almost nothing to say about health 
care, almost nothing at all, and the reason is that he is not doing 
anything on health care, that he is tied to the insurance companies and 
the drug companies who make huge contributions for his campaign, for 
the Republican Party, and, in fact, they are not prepared to address 
the very serious problems facing the middle class of this country.
  Not only has the President and the Republican leadership provided 
hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for millionaires and 
billionaires, people who contribute heavily to their campaigns, they 
are making it now more difficult for workers to join unions and earn 
higher wages. They have incredibly pushed an agenda which would deny 
overtime pay to some 8 million Americans. Now at a time when workers 
are forced to work longer and longer hours, and many of their income 
depend on that overtime pay, the President wants to deny some 8 million 
Americans the overtime pay that they are getting today.
  Interestingly enough, we are seeing some bipartisan concern about the 
rapidly escalating deficit, which this year will be over $500 billion, 
and our national debt, which is now at $7 trillion. Some of you may 
have heard the other day that Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed, 
he has a response to this growing deficit. Greenspan, who supported 
hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest 
people, who supported the President's tax proposal, which in a decade 
will cost us $1 trillion, he has a solution to the problem. His 
solution is let us cut Social Security, let us cut Medicare. In other 
words, tax breaks for billionaires, run up a deficit, and then you deal 
with the deficit crisis by cutting back on the cost-of-living increases 
for our seniors in Social Security and in Medicare and making the 
retirement age when people receive Social Security later and later. I 
think that is an outrage.
  That is why I have asked the President, who appointed Mr. Greenspan 
to his position, that is why I have asked the President to fire Mr. 
Greenspan. You do not support policies which give huge tax breaks to 
the rich, run up the deficit and then tell the elderly and the sick 
that they are the ones who will have to balance the budget.
  We should be very, very clear that these tax breaks, not only are 
they, in my view, immoral in terms of providing scant resources to 
people who do not need them, while we have children sleeping out on the 
street, but, in fact, what they are doing is leaving a terrible legacy 
for our children and our grandchildren. Think for a moment about the 
morality of tax breaks for people who do not need it today and telling 
our kids and grandchildren that they are going to have to pay off that 
debt either in higher taxes or in cuts in such programs as education, 
veterans' needs, affordable housing and many other needs facing the 
middle class.
  But, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you something else. I think that there 
is more behind this than one would initially think, and I think that 
there is really an ulterior motivation in driving up this deficit, in 
driving up the national debt, and I think we heard Mr. Greenspan tell 
us what it is. If this President drives up the national debt, what we 
will be hearing in years to come is we cannot afford to retain those 
government services which protect the middle class, protect the 
seniors, protect the sick, protect the children, protect low-income 
people.

[[Page 2595]]



                              {time}  1715

  In my view, Mr. Speaker, this President is the most extreme, 
reactionary President in the modern history of this country. And I 
think that he and his right wing friends want to bring us back to the 
19th century, when ordinary people had almost no rights at all. I think 
behind their driving up the national debt is their desire to cut back 
and eliminate one program after another which the middle class and 
working families of this country depend upon.
  Greenspan now says, well, let us lower COLA benefits for seniors. Let 
us raise the retirement age. Ultimately, in my view, and I speak only 
for myself, I think they want to destroy Social Security completely and 
privatize it. And then, if they are successful, the day will come where 
if you are a senior citizen and you do not have a lot of money and you 
did not invest well, or the stock market goes down, you know what, you 
do not have anything.
  I think they want to privatize Medicare, not just cut back. And if 
they are successful in doing that, what happens if you are a low-income 
senior who is quite sick? Do you think there are private insurance 
companies who are going to provide benefits to you? Why? They cannot 
make any money out of you.
  These people want to eliminate the minimum wage. There are dozens and 
dozens, if not a majority of Republicans on the floor of the House, and 
Alan Greenspan, I should add, who not only do not want to raise the 
minimum wage above $5.15 an hour; they want to abolish the minimum 
wage. Their belief is that if an employer can get somebody to work for 
them for $2 an hour, government should not be involved.
  There are people who want to weaken environmental standards so that 
our children have to breathe more and more pollution.
  Mr. Speaker, let me conclude my remarks by suggesting that if any of 
the Members here want more information on any of these issues they can 
find it on my Web site, bernie.house.gov.

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