[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14137-14139]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          HURTING MIDDLE CLASS

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to make a few points this morning 
and say what I think is on the minds of many Americans.
  There is a reason why the favorability rating of Congress is at 10 
percent or less, and that is because the middle class of this country--
the vast majority of our people--is hurting. They are worried about 
what kind of future their kids are going to have, and they look at 
Washington and they ask: What is going on?
  Our Republican friends in the House on 42 separate occasions 
attempted to defund ObamaCare. And on 42 separate occasions, they 
failed. There was a Presidential election in which this issue of 
whether we expand health care to another 20 million Americans--whether 
we end the obscenity of preexisting conditions, where people who have 
had serious health problems are denied health care; whether we make 
sure kids 26 years of age or younger are on their parents' health 
insurance plan, whether we do more for disease prevention, et cetera--
was debated very heavily. Guess what. The Republican candidate who 
wanted to defund ObamaCare lost that election. Now, quite incredibly, 
what the Republicans are saying is: Yes, we failed 42 times, we lost 
the Presidential election, but now we are prepared to shut down the 
entire government unless we end this legislation.
  Well, that is not going to happen. They are not going to end 
ObamaCare. Surely we need to improve it. I myself believe we need a 
Medicare-for-all single-payer program. And let us discuss how we can 
improve the program, how we can join the rest of the industrialized 
world in guaranteeing health care to all people as a right of 
citizenship, and how we end the absurdity in this country of spending 
twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other 
country.
  My Republican friends have nothing to offer on this issue. We have 48 
million Americans with no health insurance. What are the Republican 
ideas? They do not exist.
  The point here is that no matter what your view may be about 
ObamaCare, it is incredibly irresponsible and reckless, and makes this 
country look incredibly foolish to the rest of the world, that they are 
prepared to shut down the government unless they get their way on this 
issue. But most importantly, all over America, while people are 
struggling, they are seeing this absurd debate about Republican efforts 
to shut down the government unless they defund ObamaCare.
  People are saying: What about us? While you have this silly political 
fight, what are you doing to improve our lives, what are you doing to 
address the fundamental economic realities in this country, which is 
that the middle class of this great country is

[[Page 14138]]

disappearing, more people are now living in poverty than at any time in 
history--46\1/2\ million--and the gap between the very wealthy and 
everybody else is growing wider.
  We have this unbelievable economic situation where, while the vast 
majority of Americans have seen a decline in their standard of living, 
people on top are doing phenomenally well.
  A report that came out last week from the Census Bureau quite 
incredibly tells us that in terms of median family income, that family 
right in the middle of American society now is earning less income than 
they did 24 years ago. Despite all of the increases in productivity, 
despite all of the new technology, that family in the middle is earning 
less income than 24 years ago. A typical middle-class family has seen 
its income go down by more than $5,000 since 1999 after adjusting for 
inflation. The average male worker earned $283 less last year than he 
did 44 years ago. The average female worker earned $1,700 less last 
year than she did in 2007. Meanwhile, people on the top do incredibly 
well. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all new income went to the 
top 1 percent, and we now have by far the most unequal distribution of 
wealth and income of any major country on Earth.
  We have a middle class that is disappearing, poverty is very high, 
and people on top are doing phenomenally well, 48 million Americans 
without any health insurance. The Republican solution to this plan is 
to bring down the government unless they can defund ObamaCare.
  I think it is important for the American people to understand--and it 
is not discussed enough on the floor of the Senate or in the media--
what the long-term plan of the Republican Party is. Is it simply to 
defund ObamaCare? No, it is not. Is it simply to shut down the 
government? No, it is not. It is important to understand what this 
rightwing, extremist ideology is all about and to have a serious 
discussion as to whether the American people want to go forward in that 
direction, which is a lot more than just defunding ObamaCare or 
shutting down the government.
  The Texas Republican Party every year publishes a platform. What is 
interesting about it is not just that Texas is a very large 
conservative State, but the ideas that emanate from Texas often become 
mainstream in the Republican Party a few years later. I think it is 
important to understand what, long-term, the Republican Party wants to 
do. Let me tell you some of the positions that were in the Republican 
Party platform in 2012, so we understand that what is being discussed--
some cuts in Social Security, voucherization of Medicare, massive cuts 
in food stamps--is not the endgame. That is the beginning of the game. 
This is from the 2012 Texas Republican Party platform.

       We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system 
     of private pensions based on the concept of individual 
     retirement accounts and gradually phasing out the Social 
     Security tax.

  I give them credit for being upfront and straightforward about the 
issue that is ending Social Security. That is it. Social Security has 
been the most effective and successful program in modern American 
history. It has taken tens of millions of seniors out of poverty. 
Basically, what the Texas Republican Party is saying is, We don't want 
to just cut Social Security, we want to end it. If you are old, what 
happens to you when you are 75 years of age and have no income coming, 
that is not their worry.
  Furthermore, speaking now as the chairman of the Veterans' Committee, 
I want every veteran in America to understand long-term goals. This is 
from the 2012 Texas Republican Party platform: ``We support the 
privatization of veteran's healthcare.''
  In other words, we have some 6 million veterans who are receiving 
good, quality health care at the VA. I myself think we should expand 
the program. There are at least 1 million veterans out there who are 
uninsured right now who could utilize VA health care. I myself think 
the eligibility requirements are too stringent. We should bring more 
people into the system. But our Republican friends in Texas, becoming 
mainstream, want to end veterans health care.
  Next point:

       We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities 
     are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution; 
     including the Departments of Education and Energy.

  The vast majority of people in the scientific community who study 
global warming think that global warming is a crisis today that is only 
going to get worse, and the only way to deal with that issue is having 
a concrete policy. They want to abolish the Department of Education. 
Millions of young people all over this country cannot afford the cost 
of college today. Low-income kids, middle-class kids are struggling 
educationally all over this country. They want to abolish the 
Department of Education.
  Furthermore, ``We . . . oppose . . . mandatory kindergarten.'' One of 
the great crises in this country is childcare and the crisis of early 
childhood education. Working families in Vermont and all over this 
country are having a hard time getting affordable childcare.
  ``We believe the Environmental Protection Agency should be 
abolished''--not cut but abolished, so we can go back to the days when 
companies could throw their garbage into our rivers and streams, 
pollute the air, make kids sick, and get away with it with impunity 
because there is nobody there saying it is against the law. Nobody can 
enforce the law. They want to abolish the Environmental Protection 
Agency and endanger the health and well-being of kids and Americans all 
over this country.
  Furthermore, ``We recommend repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment of the 
U.S. Constitution, with the goal of abolishing the I.R.S. and replacing 
it with a national sales tax collected by the States.''
  What does that mean? It means the ending of any form of progressive 
taxation. As I pointed out earlier, the wealthiest people in this 
country are doing phenomenally well. The middle class is disappearing. 
What that means is we end the ability to ask the wealthiest people in 
this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. We put the tax 
burden on the middle class and working families--so lower taxes for the 
rich, raise it for the middle class and working families.
  ``We favor abolishing the capital gains tax [and the estate tax].'' 
The estate tax applies to the very richest people in this country. Why 
not abolish it and put the burden of taxation on working families?
  Here is one that I think many Americans don't appreciate where they 
are coming from. I hope very much that this Congress will begin to 
address the huge crisis facing tens of millions of workers who are 
working for starvation wages. The bottom line is that one of the 
reasons poverty in America is increasing is that people can't make it 
on $7.25, $8, $9 an hour. We have to raise the minimum wage. It is now 
$7.25 nationally. We have to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
  There can be an honest debate about how much higher the minimum wage 
should go. I understand it. I think California has recently raised it 
to $10 an hour. The State of Washington has it higher. My own State of 
Vermont has it higher. We can have that debate. But this is what 
everybody in America should understand: In terms of debate with my 
Republican colleagues, that debate will not be how high we raise the 
minimum wage above $7.25. This is what the Texas Republican Party 
platform in 2012 says: ``We believe the minimum wage should be 
repealed.'' It turns out that more and more of my colleagues in the 
Senate have been upfront about that.
  What does that mean in the real world? What it means in those areas 
of our country where unemployment is extremely high and there is going 
to be a lot of competition for jobs, what employers will say is: Do you 
want to work? We are going to give you $3.50 an hour. If you don't want 
that, I have that person over there who is prepared to take that job 
because I have a line of people out there who are unemployed who are 
prepared to work for any wage--and we no longer are going

[[Page 14139]]

to have a floor on wages in America. That is what the Texas Republican 
Party believes. That is what more and more of my colleagues believe.
  The point I am making this morning is that the fight we are having 
right now over shutting down the government, the debate I am sure will 
ensue shortly after about whether we raise the debt ceiling and 
whether, for the first time in the history of the United States, we 
don't pay our bills, causing not only a national financial crisis but 
an international financial crisis--all of these issues are related to 
something that is much larger; that is, the transformation of American 
society in a radically different way than it is today. Almost without 
exception, what my Republican colleagues want to do now is take us back 
into the 1920s, where working people had virtually no protection at all 
on the job, no minimum wage, no job safety protection, where Social 
Security didn't exist, where Medicare didn't exist, so that if you were 
old and you got sick, your future was not very bright. If you were poor 
and you got sick, you had nothing. They want to take us back to a time 
when a handful of corporations and wealthy people controlled the 
economic and political life of this Nation.
  I do not believe that is where the American people want to go. I 
believe the American people want us to start focusing on issues of 
relevance to them; that is, the understanding that we need to create 
millions of decent-paying jobs by, among other approaches, rebuilding 
our crumbling infrastructure, the need to create jobs by making this 
country more energy efficient, so we can lower fuel bills and cut back 
on greenhouse gas emissions. What the American people want us to do is 
focus on the crisis of low wages in this country, to raise the minimum 
wage. They want us to make college education more affordable. They want 
us to end these horrendous loopholes that enable major multinational 
corporations to, in some cases, pay nothing in Federal taxes.
  I think the time is long overdue for this Congress to start 
representing the working families of this country, the middle class of 
this country, and not simply wealthy campaign contributors.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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