[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16396-16398]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  NOMINATION OF ROBERT S. ADLER TO BE A COMMISSIONER OF THE CONSUMER 
                       PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Robert S. 
Adler, of the District of Columbia, to be a Commissioner of the 
Consumer Product Safety Commission.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 4 
p.m. will be equally divided in its usual form.
  The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, are we in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are postcloture on the Adler nomination.


                               ObamaCare

  Mr. THUNE. Very good.
  Madam President, I wish to speak today about some of what is 
happening here with the agenda and where we might be headed. I think it 
is important to point out that the Democrats here, after this election, 
seem to be in disarray. We have fractures emerging on the left and the 
right.
  Senate Democrats and the President are blaming each other for the 
Democrats' devastating election loss. The President is threatening a 
veto on a bipartisan tax extenders package that was negotiated by the 
House Ways and Means Committee chairman and the Senate Democratic 
leader.
  The senior Senator from New York told an audience last week that 
passing ObamaCare was a mistake. To quote the Senator:

       But unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the 
     American people gave them.
       We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong 
     problem--health-care reform.
       . . . it wasn't the change we were hired to make.

  I could not agree more, but it is quite an admission from the third-
ranking Democrat in the Senate.
  Back in 2009, Republicans tried to tell Democrats we should focus on 
the economy and that any health care reform should be targeted at 
helping those struggling to afford health care rather than upsetting 
our entire system, but Democrats refused to listen. Now it appears at 
least some of them are wishing they had.
  The President tried to sell the health care law as a benefit for the 
middle class. At a 2010 tele-town hall, he told his listeners that 
``once this reform is fully in effect, middle-class families are going 
to pay less for their health care.''
  Unfortunately, as far too many Americans have found, the President's 
health care law has actually forced them to pay more. I have lost count 
of the number of letters I have gotten from constituents in South 
Dakota telling me how much their health insurance has gone up since the 
so-called Affordable Care Act passed.
  One constituent emailed me in November to tell me:

       Please do something about the Affordable Care Act. Health 
     insurance is no longer affordable. In March our family health 
     insurance policy went up $150.00/month. Now [we've] received 
     notice [of] another $112.00 increase effective January 1, 
     2015, for a total monthly premium of $857.00. This is more 
     than our mortgage and we cannot afford it!!

  Let me just repeat part of that last line. ``This is more than our 
mortgage.'' How are middle-class families supposed to afford what 
amounts to a second mortgage payment each month? The answer of course 
is they can't.
  The President can talk all he wants about the supposed benefits of 
his health care law, but the fact is ObamaCare has made life worse for 
this South Dakota family and it has made things worse for millions of 
families across the United States.
  Since ObamaCare was signed into law, family health insurance premiums 
have risen by about $3,000. That is a strain on any family budget just 
by itself, but it is even worse when we realize that the average 
family's income has dropped by nearly $3,000 over the course of the 
Obama Presidency.
  On top of this, ObamaCare has forced millions of Americans off health 
insurance plans they had and they liked. Frequently, they have been 
forced to pay more for their new plans while getting less.
  Thanks to ObamaCare, Americans have lost access to doctors they liked 
and trusted, they have lost access to convenient hospitals and they 
have lost access to medications and that is just the damage ObamaCare 
is doing to Americans' health care. That is not to mention the damage 
it is doing to the economy at large.
  As the Senator from New York made clear in his comments, he thinks 
the Democratic Party erred in passing ObamaCare because what Americans 
wanted was not health care legislation but jobs legislation, and he is 
right. But Democrats went ahead with ObamaCare anyway, and not only has 
it not helped the economy, as the President said it would, it is 
actually hurting the economy.
  Take one small part of ObamaCare, the tax on lifesaving medical 
devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps. This tax has already been 
responsible for putting thousands of Americans out of work, and it is 
on track to eliminate thousands more jobs if it isn't repealed.
  Then there is the ObamaCare 30-hour workweek rule, which is 
eliminating hours and reducing wages for thousands of American workers, 
and the numerous ObamaCare regulations that are making it difficult for 
small businesses to hire new workers.
  As Democrats are now realizing, ObamaCare was a big mistake. What 
Democrats should have done, as the senior Senator from New York admits, 
was focus on creating jobs and opportunities for middle-class families.
  The recent Gallup poll listing the overall health of the economy as 
Americans' top economic concern was just the latest poll in which 
Americans have listed jobs and the economy among their main worries. 
Yet Democrats have spent years ignoring the need for jobs and focusing 
on their own political priorities.
  As the senior Senator from New York said:

       When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle 
     class person thought, ``the Democrats aren't paying enough 
     attention to me.''

  That average middle-class person is right.
  In a few short weeks Republicans will take over the Senate, and we 
will be running things very differently.
  Our first priority will be passing legislation to create jobs and 
opportunities for American workers. A significant part of that will be 
working to undo the damage ObamaCare has done to the economy. We will 
work to repeal the medical device tax and restore the 40-hour workweek. 
I hope Democrats will join us. I have a feeling many of them will.
  As we have seen, opposition to these damaging ObamaCare provisions is 
not limited to Republicans. Democrats have joined us before to attempt 
to address these issues, and I look forward to working with these same 
Democrats and others in the new Congress.
  As for the President, I hope he will finally admit his law is hurting 
Americans and join us in undoing the damage. Unfortunately, his actions 
so far have not demonstrated much openness to cooperation or any sign 
that he understands the American people are calling for a new era in 
Washington.
  Democrats have spent the past several years focusing on the 
priorities of the far leftwing of their party instead of the American 
people's priorities--the economy and jobs. That is what the American 
people have been saying over and over they want their elected leaders 
to be focused on.
  I hope the new Congress will mark the start of a new era in which 
Democrats join Republicans to help create jobs and opportunities for 
Americans and remove obstacles to success. The American people have 
waited a long time for relief. It is time for Congress to give it to 
them.

[[Page 16397]]

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.


                      Economic Agenda for America

  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, it seems to me the American people at 
this particular moment in our history must make a very fundamental 
decision, and that decision is do we continue the status quo--which 
includes a 40-year decline of our middle class and a huge and growing 
gap between the very rich and everyone else--or do we fight for a bold 
and meaningful economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, 
protects our environment, and provides health care for every American?
  The question of our time is whether we are prepared to take on the 
enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class or do we 
continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?
  That is the question which the American people must answer. I hope 
and expect they are prepared to answer with a resounding yes and a 
desire to move this country in a very different direction.
  The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the 
Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been a pretty picture. Today we have 
more wealth and income inequality than any other major country on 
Earth, with the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 
percent, with one family, the Walton family of Walmart, owning more 
wealth itself than the bottom 40 percent.
  Today in the United States we have the highest rate of childhood 
poverty of any major country on Earth, and we are the only major 
country on this planet that does not guarantee health care to all 
people as a right.
  The United States once led the world in terms of the percentage of 
our people who graduated college, and that in a global economy is an 
enormously important issue. We can't create jobs unless we have a well-
educated workforce. We were once in first place in terms of percentage 
of our people who graduated college. Today we are in 12th place.
  I think, as most Americans understand, we once were the envy of the 
world in terms of the quality of our infrastructure--our roads, 
bridges, waste water plants, water system, rail--but today, as all 
Americans know, our physical infrastructure is literally collapsing 
before our eyes.
  Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent. That is official 
unemployment. When we include those people who have given up looking 
for work and those people who are working part time when they want to 
work full time, real unemployment is 11.5 percent, youth unemployment 
is 18.6 percent, and African-American youth unemployment is over 30 
percent.
  Today millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. 
When we try to understand why the American people are angry, it is 
important to understand that, in inflation adjusted for dollars, the 
median male worker--that male worker right in the middle of the 
economy--earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago, despite 
all of the increases in productivity. The median woman worker made 
$1,300 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median 
middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after 
adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago.
  Why are the American people angry? That is why: a huge increase in 
productivity, all of the global economy, and yet the median family 
income in America is $5,000 less than it was in 1999.
  It seems clear to me that the American people must demand that 
Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working 
families and not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need Federal 
legislation to put millions of our unemployed workers back to work, to 
raise wages, and make certain that all Americans have the health care 
and education they need for healthy and productive lives.
  In other words, we must have a vision for the future, which talks 
about what this Nation can become in terms of jobs, in terms of income, 
in terms of education, and in terms of health care.
  Let me very briefly describe some of the major initiatives that I 
intend to fight for in the new Congress. There are 12 major initiatives 
which, if enacted, will transform the middle class of this country.
  No. 1, we need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling 
infrastructure--our roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, 
airports, railroads, schools, et cetera.
  It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq, a 
war we should never have gotten into in the first place, will end up 
costing us some $3 trillion. If we invested $1 trillion in rebuilding 
our crumbling infrastructure, we could create 13 million decent-paying 
jobs and make this country more efficient and more productive. We need 
to invest in infrastructure, not in war.
  No. 2, the United States must lead the world in reversing climate 
change and making certain this planet is habitable for our children and 
grandchildren.
  We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into 
energy efficiency and sustainable energies. When we do that--make our 
transportation system energy efficient, make our homes more energy 
efficient, move to wind, solar, geothermal biomass--we can also create 
a significant number of good-paying jobs.
  No. 3, we need to develop new economic models to increase job 
creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to 
corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, 
we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own 
businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives.
  Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in 
the businesses in which they work, productivity goes up, absenteeism 
goes down, and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs.
  No. 4, union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher 
wages and benefits earn substantially more than nonunion workers.
  Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely 
difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes 
it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a 
union, they can form that union.
  No. 5, the current Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a 
starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No 
one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty.
  No. 6, women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male 
counterparts earn. We need pay equity in this country--equal pay for 
equal work.
  No. 7, since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this 
country and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We 
once led the world in terms of our manufacturing capability. Yet in 
State after State, we have seen significant losses in manufacturing 
jobs. When people walk into a store, it is harder and harder for them 
to purchase products made in the United States of America.
  The time is now for us to end our disastrous trade policies--NAFTA, 
CAFTA, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China--because these 
policies simply enable corporate America to shut down plants in this 
country and move to China and other low-wage countries.
  We need to end the race to the bottom and to develop trade policies 
which protect the interests of American workers and not just 
multinational corporations. American companies should start investing 
in this country and not simply in China and other low-wage countries.
  No. 8, in today's highly competitive global economy, millions of 
Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order 
to get good-paying jobs. About 40 or 50 years ago we had a situation in 
this country where some of the great public universities of our 
Nation--the University of California, City University of New York, and 
State colleges all over America were virtually tuition free, and 
anybody could go to those schools regardless of the income of their 
families.

[[Page 16398]]

  Today, for many, many families and young people the cost of higher 
education is simply unaffordable. Either students choose not to go to 
college because they can't afford it or they come out of school deeply 
in debt--a debt fastened on their shoulders for decades.
  Quality education in America--from child care to higher education--
must be affordable for all. Without a high-quality and affordable 
educational system, we will be unable to compete globally in the 
international economy and our standard of living will continue to 
decline. We have to invest in education. The idea that we are laying 
off teachers is completely absurd.
  No. 9, the function of banking--the banking system--is to facilitate 
the flow of capital into a productive and job-creating economy. That is 
what banking is supposed to be. People save, people put money in banks, 
and that money goes out into the economy so that people can buy homes 
and create businesses.
  Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing 
as huge profit centers outside of the real productive economy. In other 
words, banking must be a means to an end by improving society, creating 
jobs, providing people with decent housing, and not simply a means by 
which financial institutions make more and more profit.
  Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets 
equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product. There is close 
to $10 trillion in 6 financial institutions. These institutions 
underwrite more than one-half of the mortgages in this country and more 
than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness, and 
illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into 
the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, and every day when we open 
up our newspapers, we see another major banking scandal.
  The truth of the matter is that these financial institutions on Wall 
Street are too powerful to be reformed. They have too much money, too 
much wealth, too many lobbyists, and make too much in campaign 
contributions. Our goal must be to break them up. They have too much 
power and too much wealth. They must be broken up so that our financial 
institutions begin to serve the needs of the American people and not 
simply the CEOs and the stockholders of Wall Street firms.
  No. 10, the United States must join the rest of the industrialized 
world and recognize that health care is a right of all and not a 
privilege. I think many Americans don't know that we are the only major 
country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a 
right. Yet, within this dysfunctional health care system, we have 40 
million people who have no health insurance, more people who are 
underinsured, millions of people with high premiums and high 
deductibles, and at the end of all of that, we end up spending almost 
twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other 
major country on Earth.
  The time is now for us to declare that health care is a right of all 
people and not a privilege. We need to pass a Medicare-for-all, single-
payer system.
  No. 11, millions of senior citizens in this country live in poverty, 
and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country 
on Earth.
  I hear a lot of discussion on the part of my Republican colleagues--
and some Democrats--that we should be cutting Social Security. Well, I 
strongly disagree. In my view, we must strengthen and expand Social 
Security--not cut it. That is terribly important, especially at a time 
when more and more seniors are slipping into poverty. We have millions 
of seniors who are trying to survive on $12,000, $13,000 and $14,000 a 
year. They have to decide every single day whether they should buy the 
medicine they need, heat their homes adequately or buy the food they 
need. We should not be cutting these programs; we should be expanding 
these programs.
  No. 12--and the last point I will make as part of an agenda that 
rebuilds America and rebuilds our middle class--at a time of massive 
wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this 
country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that 
every single year we have major, profitable corporations which pay 
nothing in Federal income taxes. It is not acceptable that we have 
corporate CEOs in this country who make millions of dollars every year 
and enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than that of their 
secretaries. That is grotesquely unfair, and it must be changed.
  Further, we have to address the disgrace that every single year our 
country loses over $100 billion in revenue because corporations and the 
wealthy stash their money in offshore tax havens all over the world. 
The time is long overdue for real tax reform which says to the wealthy 
and large, profitable corporations that they have to begin paying their 
fair share of taxes.
  I will conclude by getting back to the point I made in the beginning 
of my remarks, and that is that we are in a pivotal moment in American 
history. The very, very rich are becoming richer, the middle class is 
disappearing, and today we have more people living in poverty than at 
almost any other time in American history. With the wealth of the 
billionaire class, they are exercising their power politically because 
Citizens United--a disastrous Supreme Court decision--has given them 
the power to buy elections and control, to a significant degree, our 
political process.
  We, as a nation, have to ultimately make a decision about whether we 
are going to continue the process where the middle class continues to 
decline and the very, very richest people become richer or whether we 
are prepared--and this is not easy stuff--to stand together to take on 
the billionaire class and their greed and to say: Enough is enough. 
This country does not just belong to the top 1 percent or the top one-
tenth of 1 percent. It belongs to all of us.
  I hope very much that the American people make the right choice, 
because if they do, we can bring about a transformation of this country 
so the government begins to work for all of the people and not just the 
billionaires who are on top.
  With that, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________