[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12718-12719]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LETTERS FROM VERMONT

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I would like to bring to the attention of 
my colleagues an op-ed piece by Bob Herbert that appeared in The New 
York Times on Saturday, June 14.
  The editorial, entitled ``Letters From Vermont,'' uses excerpts from 
powerful letters that Vermonters sent to my colleague and friend, 
Senator Bernie Sanders. In inviting these personal testimonials from 
Vermonters, Senator Sanders has illuminated the debate--and, I hope, 
hastened action--on the struggles that millions of American families 
are facing in our current economy. Mr. Herbert's column has brought 
these letters to the attention of many, many more Americans.
  So that all Members may review this illustrative and telling column, 
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, June 14, 2008]

                          Letters From Vermont

                            (By Bob Herbert)

       Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices 
     and the economy in general,

[[Page 12719]]

     the press has not done a good job capturing the intense 
     economic anxiety--and even dread, in some cases--that has 
     gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many 
     who consider themselves solidly middle class.
       Working families are not just changing their travel plans 
     and tightening up on purchases at the mall. There is real 
     fear and a great deal of suffering out there.
        A man who described himself as a conscientious worker who 
     has always pinched his pennies wrote the following to Senator 
     Bernie Sanders of Vermont:
       ``This winter, after keeping the heat just high enough to 
     keep my pipes from bursting (the bedrooms are not heated and 
     never got above 30 degrees) I began selling off my 
     woodworking tools, snowblower, (pennies on the dollar) and 
     furniture that had been handed down in my family from the 
     early 1800s, just to keep the heat on.
       ``Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged. I am 
     thankful that the winter cold is behind us for a while, but 
     now gas prices are rising yet again. I just can't keep up.''
       The people we have heard the least from in this epic 
     campaign season have been the voters--ordinary Americans. We 
     get plenty of polling data and alleged trends, but we don't 
     hear the voices of real people.
       Senator Sanders asked his constituents to write to him 
     about their experiences in a difficult economy. He was blown 
     away by both the volume of responses and ``the depth of the 
     pain'' of many of those who wrote.
       A 55-year-old man who said his economic condition was 
     ``very scary,'' wrote: ``I don't live from paycheck to 
     paycheck. I live day to day.'' He has no savings, he said. 
     His gas tank is never more than a quarter full, and he can't 
     afford to buy the ``food items'' he would like.
       His sense of his own mortality was evident in every 
     sentence, and he wondered how long he could continue. ``I am 
     concerned as gas prices climb daily,'' he said. ``I am just 
     tired. The harder that I work, the harder it gets. I work 12 
     to 14 hours daily, and it just doesn't help.''
       A working mother with two young children wrote: ``Some 
     nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that's all 
     I have.''
       Another woman said she and her husband, both 65, ``only eat 
     two meals a day to conserve.''
       A woman who has been trying to sell her house for two years 
     and described herself as ``stretched to the breaking point,'' 
     told the senator, ``I don't go to church many Sundays because 
     the gasoline is too expensive to drive there.''
       Many of the letters touched on the extremely harsh winter 
     that pounded Vermont and exacerbated the economic distress. 
     With fuel prices skyhigh, many residents turned to wood to 
     heat their homes. A woman with a 9-year-old son wrote: ``By 
     February, we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining 
     room furniture. . . . I'd like to order one of your flags and 
     hang it upside down at the Capitol building. . . . We are 
     certainly a country in distress.''
       Senator Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the 
     Democrats, remarked on the disconnect between the harsh 
     economic reality facing so many Americans and the Pollyanna 
     claims of the Bush administration and others over the past 
     several years.
       The assertion that the economy was strong and getting 
     stronger, repeated with the frequency of a mantra, hid the 
     reality that working Americans have been taking a real 
     beating, said Senator Sanders.
       He pointed out that over the past seven or eight years, 
     millions of Americans have lost health insurance coverage, 
     lost pensions, and become deeply mired in debt. During that 
     period, the median annual household income for working-age 
     Americans fell by about $2,400.
       ``Americans work the longest hours of any people in the 
     industrialized world,'' the senator said. ``We even surpassed 
     Japan.''
       But despite all that hard work--despite explosive 
     improvements in technology and increased worker 
     productivity--the middle class is struggling, losing ground 
     and there's a very real possibility that the next generation 
     of workers will have a lower standard of living than today's.
       The letters to Senator Sanders offer a glimpse into the 
     real lives of ordinary people in an economic environment that 
     was sculpted to favor the very rich. One of the letters was 
     from a woman in central Vermont who said she and her husband 
     are in their mid-30s, are college-educated and have two young 
     children.
       ``We are feeling distraught,'' she said, ``that we may 
     never `get ahead' but will always be pedaling to just keep 
     up.''

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