[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18255-18256]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      WAR AGAINST THE MIDDLE CLASS

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, there is a war going on in this country, 
and I am not referring to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am talking 
about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful 
people in this country against the working families of the United 
States of America, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class 
of our country.
  The reality is, many of the Nation's billionaires are on the warpath. 
They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end, and apparently 
there is very little concern for our country or for the people of this 
country if it gets in the way of the accumulation of more and more 
wealth and more and more power.
  Mr. President, in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income 
earners in the United States made 23\1/2\ percent of all income. The 
top 1 percent earned 23\1/2\ percent of all income--more than the 
entire bottom 50 percent. That is apparently not enough. The percentage 
of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 
1970s. In the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of 
all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to 14 percent. In the late 
1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent. And today, as the middle 
class collapses, the top 1 percent earns 23\1/2\ percent of all 
income--more than the bottom 50 percent. Today, if you can believe it, 
the top one-tenth of 1 percent earns about 12 cents of every dollar 
earned in America.
  We talk about a lot of things on the floor of the Senate, but somehow 
we forget to talk about the reality of who is winning in this economy 
and who is losing. It is very clear to anyone who spends 2 minutes 
studying the issue that the people on top are doing extraordinarily 
well at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is 
increasing. Many people out there are angry, and they are wondering 
what is happening to their own income, to their lives, to the lives of 
their kids.
  If you can believe this, since between 1980 and 2005, 80 percent of 
all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent--80 
percent of all new income. That is why people are wondering and asking: 
What is going on in my life? How come I am working longer hours for 
lower wages? How come I am worrying about whether my kids will have as 
good a standard of living as I had? From 1980 until 2005, 80 percent of 
all income went to the top 1 percent.
  Today, the Wall Street executives--the crooks on Wall Street whose 
actions resulted in the severe recession we are in right now; the 
people whose illegal, reckless actions have resulted in millions of 
Americans losing their jobs, their homes, their savings--guess what. 
After we bailed them out, those CEOs today are now earning more money 
than they did before the bailout. And while the middle class of this 
country collapses and the rich become much richer, the United States 
now has by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of 
any major country on Earth.
  Mr. President, when we were in school, we used to read the textbooks 
which talked about the banana republics in Latin America. We used to 
read the books about countries in which a handful of people owned and 
controlled most of the wealth of those countries. Well, guess what. 
That is exactly what is happening in the United States today. And 
apparently the only concern of some of the wealthiest people in this 
country is more and more wealth and more and more power--not all of 
them, by the way. Not all of them. There are many wealthy people in 
this country who understand and are proud to be Americans, who 
understand that one of the things that is important is that all of us 
do well. And this is an issue--greed is an issue--we have to deal with.
  In the midst of all of this growing income and wealth inequality in 
this country, we are now faced with the issue of what we do with the 
Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. And if you can believe it, we have 
people here--many of my Republican colleagues--who tell us: Oh, I am so 
concerned about our recordbreaking deficit. I am terribly concerned 
about a $13.7 trillion national debt. I am terribly concerned about the 
debt we are going to be leaving to our kids and our grandchildren. But 
wait a minute. It is very important that we give, over a 10-year 
period, $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent. Oh yeah, we 
are concerned about the debt, we are concerned about the deficit, but 
we are more concerned that millionaires--people who earn at least $1 
million a year or more--get, on average, $100,000 a year in tax breaks. 
So we have a $13.7 trillion national debt, and

[[Page 18256]]

growing, we have growing income inequality--the top 1 percent earning 
more income than the bottom 50 percent--but the highest priority of 
many of my Republican colleagues is to make sure millionaires and 
billionaires get more tax breaks. I think that is absurd.
  But it is not only income tax rates that we are dealing with; it is 
the estate tax as well. And let's be clear. While some of my friends 
want to eliminate completely the estate tax--which has been in 
existence in this country since 1916--every nickel of all of those 
benefits will go to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. If we did as 
some of my friends would like--eliminate the estate tax completely--it 
would cost us $1 trillion in revenue over a 10-year period, with all of 
the benefits going to the top three-tenths of 1 percent.
  So I am sure that in a little while my friends will come to the floor 
and say: We are very concerned about the deficit, we are very concerned 
about the national debt, but do you know what we are more concerned 
about? Giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country.
  Mr. President, the tax issue is just one part of what some of our 
wealthy friends want to see happen in this country. The reality is that 
many of these folks want to bring the United States back to where we 
were in the 1920s, and they want to do their best to eliminate all 
traces of social legislation which working families fought tooth and 
nail to develop to bring a modicum of stability and security to their 
lives.
  There are people out there--not all, but there are some--who want to 
privatize or completely eliminate Social Security. They want to 
privatize or cut back substantially on Medicare. Yes, if you are 75 
years of age and you have no money, good luck to you getting your 
health insurance at an affordable cost from a private insurance 
company. I am just sure there are all kinds of private insurance 
companies out there just delighted to take care of low-income seniors 
who are struggling with cancer or another disease.
  Furthermore, there are corporate leaders out there, and many Members 
of Congress, who not only want to continue but they want to expand our 
disastrous trade policies. My wife and I went shopping the other day--
started our Christmas shopping--and we looked and we looked, and 
virtually every consumer product that was out there in the stores was 
China, China, and China. We seem to be a country in which we have a 
51st State named China which is producing virtually all of the products 
we as Americans consume.
  Our trade policy has resulted in the loss of millions of good-paying 
jobs as large corporations and CEOs have said: Why do I want to 
reinvest in America when I can go to countries where people are paid 50 
cents, 75 cents an hour? That is what I am going to do; to heck with 
the working people of this country. So not only are we saddled with 
this disastrous trade policy, but there are people who actually want to 
expand it.
  One of the things we are going to see is while we struggle with a 
recordbreaking deficit and a large national debt--caused by the wars in 
Iraq and Afghanistan, caused by tax breaks for the wealthy, caused by 
an unpaid-for Medicare Part D prescription drug program, caused by the 
Wall Street bailout driving up the deficit, driving up the national 
debt--some people will say: Oh my goodness, we have all those expenses, 
and then we have to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, 
but we want to balance the budget. Gee, how are we going to do that?
  Obviously, we know how they are going to do that. They are going to 
cut back on health care, they are going to cut back on education, they 
are going to cut back on child care, and they are going to cut back on 
Pell programs. We just don't have enough money for working families and 
nannies. We are going to cut back on food stamps. We are surely not 
going to expand unemployment compensation. We have a higher priority, 
Mr. President: We have got to, got to, got to give tax breaks to 
millionaires. I mean, that is what this place is all about, isn't it? 
They fund the campaigns, so they get what is due them.
  Amazingly enough, we have the CEOs on Wall Street and the large 
financial institutions that want to rescind or slow down many of the 
provisions--the very modest provisions--in the financial reform bill. I 
voted for the financial reform bill, but I will tell you clearly that 
it did not go anywhere near far enough, but it went too far for our 
Wall Street friends and their lobbyists, who are all over here. And for 
the hundreds of millions of dollars Wall Street spends on this place, 
they want to rescind, slow down some of the reforms there.
  These people want to cut back on the powers of the EPA and the 
Department of Energy so that ExxonMobil can remain the most profitable 
corporation in world history while oil and coal companies continue to 
pollute our air and our water. Last year, ExxonMobil made $19 billion 
in profit. Guess what. They paid zero in taxes. They got a $156 million 
refund from the IRS. I guess that is not good enough. We have to give 
the oil companies even more tax breaks.
  So I think that is where we are. We have to own up to it. There is a 
war going on. The middle class is struggling for existence, and they 
are taking on some of the wealthiest and most powerful forces in the 
world whose greed has no end. And if we don't begin to stand together 
and start representing those families, there will not be a middle class 
in this country.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.

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