[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3465-3466]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, if one watches the Presidential campaign, 
one finds that virtually all of those who have run for President and 
those who remain in the campaign are talking about change, change, and 
change. While I think each of them may differ with the other as to 
exactly what they mean by change, what they are picking up is the very 
serious unhappiness of the American people in terms of the direction 
this country is going.
  What people perceive and what the candidates are picking up on is 
that the middle class is shrinking. We have tens of millions of people 
who wake up in the morning, they go to the gas station, they are paying 
$3.20 for a gallon of gas. Home heating oil is soaring. In many cases, 
the wages of workers are going down. People are losing their health 
insurance. They are losing their pensions. They are seeing their jobs 
go to China and other low-wage countries. The people in our country do 
not feel good about the state of our economy. They want changes. They 
want to move this country in a different direction. Fundamentally, I 
believe, what they want is a new set of national priorities.
  As my colleagues may know, this afternoon the Senate Budget Committee 
voted on and passed a new budget. This budget, appropriately enough, 
rejects President Bush's incredibly bad budget, which continues the 
process of providing huge tax breaks to people who don't need it and 
then cutting back on the needs of the middle class and working families 
in terms of massive cuts in Medicare, in Medicaid, eliminating 
completely the weatherization program, and cutting back significantly 
on LIHEAP at a time when the need for heating assistance is greater now 
than ever before. Altogether, it is a budget which puts money where we 
should not be putting money and cuts back on those programs which 
people desperately need.
  Next week, as I understand it, the budget will be coming to the 
Senate floor. We will be debating the budget that was passed by the 
Budget Committee this afternoon. While I happen to believe the budget 
we passed was a good budget--certainly a major, major, major 
improvement over what President Bush gave us we can make significant 
improvements upon what we passed this afternoon. So I will be offering 
several amendments. The major one will essentially be asking the Senate 
to change the national priorities of this country and to begin 
responding to the millions of working families who know that something 
is wrong in America. They know that while poverty increases, while the 
middle class shrinks, the people on top have never had it so good. They 
know that ordinary people understand there is something strange when 
the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world cannot provide 
quality health care to all of its people; that our infrastructure is 
deteriorating before our very eyes; that we have the highest rate of 
childhood poverty in the industrialized world; that all over our 
country food shelves are being descended upon--not by unemployed people 
alone, not by disabled people, not by poor people but by people who are 
working 40 or 50 hours a week and can't afford with their wages to 
provide the nutrition their families need. People understand there is 
something deeply, deeply wrong in this country, and that we have to 
move in a new direction.
  My amendment is very simple. It is going to give the Members of the 
Senate a very stark choice about whether we want change, about whether 
we want to move this country in a new direction. This is what it does. 
It couldn't be simpler. It says that at a time when the wealthiest 
people in this country have never had it so good since the 1920s in 
terms of a huge increase in their income, in terms of the fact that we 
now have by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of 
any major country, where the top 1 percent now earn more income than

[[Page 3466]]

the bottom 50 percent, what we are saying is that it is time we rescind 
President Bush's tax breaks that go to people who make at least $1 
million. That is the top three-tenths of 1 percent; 99.7 percent of the 
people would not be impacted by this amendment. It says: Let us rescind 
those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and when we do 
that, we will raise about $51 billion.
  Now, what can we do with that $51 billion, and what does this 
amendment include? First, it says that since President Bush has been in 
office, we have had record-breaking deficits. We now have a $9 trillion 
national debt. We are fighting a war we are not paying for, but that 
our kids and our grandchildren will be paying for. So in this 
amendment, of the $51 billion we raise by rescinding tax breaks for 
millionaires, we are going to put $10 billion into deficit reduction. 
That leaves $41 billion.
  This is what this amendment would do. It would provide $15 billion 
for special education. The Presiding Officer may remember that some 
years ago the Congress--the Government of the United States--made a 
commitment to school districts all over America and said: If you 
mainstream kids with disabilities, if you put them into public schools, 
if you treat them as every other kid, we will provide 40 percent of the 
cost of that special education. That is what the Government said. 
Unfortunately, the Government did not keep its word.
  So what we see in Vermont--and I suspect in Colorado and all over the 
country--is the school districts are paying enormous sums of money out 
of local taxes, often regressive property taxes, to fund special 
education. All over America, what we are seeing is more and more kids, 
for whatever reason--and that is a long discussion we need to have--are 
having problems, are being seen as having special ed needs. It is an 
expensive proposition. We are saying, let's begin to keep our word to 
school districts all over America. Let's relieve the pressure of local 
property taxes. Let's put $15 billion into special education.
  In addition, what this amendment would do is provide a $7 billion 
increase for Head Start. One of the great scandals in our Nation today 
is that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty--far higher than 
any other industrialized country; that working parents are finding it 
almost impossible to acquire quality, affordable child care; that Head 
Start openings are much greater than can be accommodated all over the 
country. We are saying Head Start is a program that works. It provides 
an opportunity for early childhood education for low-income kids.
  Let's expand that program to make sure working families can take 
advantage of that program and let's put $7 billion into expanding Head 
Start.
  We also, for the same reasons, put $2.2 billion into the child care 
and the development block grant program that will ensure every eligible 
family receives access to child care.
  I know in my State--and, again, I suspect in most States in this 
country--people are being weighed down by very high local taxes, 
including regressive property taxes.
  What this amendment does is provide $5 billion for school 
construction, modernization and repairs, to fix our crumbling schools. 
What this does is not only help local property taxes and not only help 
our school kids get modern buildings in which to learn, it also creates 
a lot of jobs as we rebuild one of the long neglected areas of our 
infrastructure, and that is our crumbling schools.
  This amendment would also provide an additional $3 billion for 
LIHEAP, the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program. I just, this 
afternoon, spoke to the directors of various community action programs 
in the State of Vermont. In my State--and my State may be a little bit 
different than some because it gets pretty cold there. We have had 20 
below zero weather in the last couple weeks. There is a real level of 
stress regarding the availability of LIHEAP because the cost of home 
heating fuels is soaring. There is just not that availability. There is 
not enough money in the LIHEAP fund. We would put $3 billion more into 
LIHEAP, which helps, by the way, not only low-income families and 
senior citizens in the wintertime in cold-weather States, but it helps 
other families in States where the weather gets to be 110 degrees.
  As I mentioned earlier, in this great country, the wealthiest country 
in the history of the world, we must be embarrassed that we have large 
numbers of people who literally go hungry, who don't have enough food. 
That number is growing. I know Senator Harkin, among others, has called 
for a significant increase in the Food Stamp Program. That is exactly 
what we should be doing. This amendment would provide $5 billion for 
food stamps to make sure millions of families with kids have enough 
food to sustain them.
  Lastly, this amendment would provide $3.8 billion to allow the 
special supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants, and 
Children, the WIC Program, to provide nutritious food to over 4 million 
families. Kids whose mothers have good nutrition and good prenatal 
experience, obviously, will do better in life. We want to make sure the 
WIC Program has the resources they need.
  So, ultimately, what this amendment is about is pretty simple: We say 
that in a time when millions of Americans, low- and moderate-income 
people, are in need, it is the obligation and the right of the U.S. 
Government to reach out and address those serious problems facing the 
middle-class and working families of our Nation. And at a time when the 
wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good and at the 
same time have been given huge tax breaks by the Bush administration, 
we say it is appropriate to rescind those tax breaks in order to help 
millions of people in need. That is what this amendment is about. It 
calls for a fundamental change in national priorities, and it moves 
this country in a very different and, I think, more moral direction. I 
look forward to the support of my colleagues for this amendment that we 
will offer as part of the budget debate.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. 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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