Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act--Continued--

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, at some point soon, I presume, the Senate is going to adjourn for the Memorial Day week break, and I want to say a few words on some of the important issues we are now confronting.

I suspect later today there will be a vote on the TPP. I suspect that those who are for the TPP have the 60 votes necessary to pass it. I know there are a number of amendments that will be offered, and I will support the strongest of those amendments. But the bottom line is, in my view, that the TPP is a continuation of failed trade policy which has resulted in the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs in this country, which has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities as corporations have shut down in America and moved to China, Mexico, and to other low-wage countries.

In my view, it is wrong to ask American workers to compete against people in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is 56 cents an hour, to compete against people in Malaysia where, in some cases, you literally have indentured servitude, people who have lost their ability to leave the country and are working for incredibly low wages in horrendous working conditions. That is not what a trade policy should be.

I hope our colleagues in the House have more resolve than we have had in the Senate, and I hope they stand up and say enough is enough. Current trade policies have failed. We need trade policies that work for the average American and not just for the multinational corporations.

FREE COLLEGE FOR ALL ACT

Mr. President, I also want to say a word on another issue that I know is of deep concern in the State of Vermont and I am quite confident is of concern in 49 other States as well. We are in a competitive global economy right now, and we have hundreds of thousands of bright, young people who want to go to college, get a higher education but today are unable to afford that higher education.

Here we are desperately needing to have the best educated workforce in the world so we can compete effectively, and what we are saying to our bright, young people is, sorry, you are not going to be able to get the education you need in order to get the high-quality jobs that are available in this country.

What we are saying to hundreds of thousands of those young people is, no, you are not going to be doctors, you are not going to be nurses, you are not going to be scientists, you are not going to become teachers, you are not going to be able to become employees in high-tech companies because you just don't have the education.

Frankly, I think that is absolutely absurd not only for the dreams of low- and moderate-income young people who want to make it into the middle class, but also it is absurd if we are talking about the future of this country having a strong economy.

Thirty years ago, the United States led the world in terms of the percentage of our young people who had a college degree. Today, we are in 12th place. We are in 12th place, and we are competing against countries all over the world that understand the importance of their young people getting the education that is needed in this day and age.

We are also facing a related problem in that we have millions of people--many of whom are no longer young--who are dealing with incredibly oppressive and large student debt. The average graduate now of a 4-year college is approximately $29,000 in debt. That is the average. So there are many more who are graduating $30,000 or $40,000 in debt. If a person goes to graduate school, that number goes much higher.

I recall speaking some months ago to a young woman in Burlington, VT, whose crime was that she went to medical school and is now practicing primary health care among low-income people, which is exactly what we need to see happening in this country. Yet she is saddled with a $300,000 debt. I talked to dentists who are also practicing in community health centers, where we need them. We have a major dental crisis in this country. They are saddled with a $250,000 debt.

Now, what is absurd about the current student debt situation is that at a time when a person can go out and get an auto loan for 1 percent or 2 percent, millions of our young and middle-aged people are paying interest rates on their student debt of 4, 5, 6, 7 percent, and even higher than that. So how does it happen that a person can go out and get an auto loan for 1 or 2 percent, how does it happen that a person can refinance their home mortgage to take advantage of low interest rates, yet people are stuck with 5, 6, 7 percent in interest rates on their student loans? It makes no sense to me at all.

The other part of that is that over a 10-year period, the Federal Government now makes over $80 billion in profits from student loans. Frankly, I would rather see the Federal Government make that money than the private banks. But, in fact, the Federal Government should not be profiting off of the loans that were needed by low- and moderate-income students and their families. That is not a way to make money.

So I have introduced legislation called the Free College For All Act, and it is a very simple piece of legislation. What it says is that, No. 1, we are going to make in this country tuition-free college for all public colleges and public universities in America--tuition-free. We are going to do that by establishing a matching grant program of 2 to 1 from the Federal Government--$1 for the State. When we do that, it will mean that every qualified young person in this country who wants to get a higher education will be able to go to their State colleges, their State University and do it tuition-free.

Now, is that an expensive proposition? It is an expensive proposition. But I think long term, by having a well-educated society, by allowing young people today who cannot afford to go to college to get that education, from an economic point of view, we will gain significantly by this legislation.

This legislation is also paid for in a fair and progressive way. It says to the people on Wall Street who have made huge, huge sums of money by speculating in a whole lot of arcane and dangerous financial tools that we are going to establish in this country a tax on stock transfer--a transfer-stock fee--of one-half of 1 percent. That will raise more than enough money to provide a tuition-free education in our public colleges and universities.

So this is an issue that I am going to pursue. I think it is important, if we want to deal with income inequality and if we want to make sure that everybody in this country gets the education they need, regardless of the income of their families.

USA PATRIOT ACT

Mr. President, there is another issue I wish to very briefly touch on as well today. That issue deals with the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA and civil liberties in this country. Let me make a few basic points.

There is nobody in the Senate, there is nobody in the House who does not understand that there are terrorist groups out there that want to attack the United States of America and our allies and that want to do us harm. There is nobody in the Senate or in the House or, I think, in the United States of America who does not believe that as a nation we have to do everything we can to protect the people of our country from terrorist attacks. There is no debate on that. What the debate is about is how we protect the American people without undermining the Constitution of the United States of America or undermining the privacy rights of the American people.

I think everybody does understand and should understand that modern technology in all of its forms--from iPhones to a dozen or 100 different ways--has greatly outstripped public policy in terms of protecting privacy rights. By and large, the privacy rights we have on the books now were written years and years before the development of the technologies we see right now.

It is absolutely imperative that as a nation we begin a serious conversation, which includes some of the most knowledgeable people in this country--people who know about what technology can do today and what it can do tomorrow, people who are concerned about civil liberties and privacy rights, our law enforcement officials, our national security people, and Members of Congress. What that discussion should be about is pretty simple: How do we protect our country against terrorism at the same time that we protect our privacy rights and our constitutional freedoms.

As we consider whether to reauthorize parts of the PATRIOT Act, we must take stock of where we are today. It is no secret that NSA collects vast sums of information and at one point or another has collected information on virtually every person in this country who uses a telephone. That is no great secret. Since June 2013, we have learned that the NSA collects phone call metadata, including the numbers of both parties, location, time, and duration. They collect text messages, email chat, and Internet browsing history; smart phone app data, including Google Maps, which can pinpoint a person's location to within a few yards. They collect maps of people's social networks, bank and credit card transactions. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is undoubtedly much more being done that we simply don't know anything about.

Further, local governments and other agencies are also collecting information about the movements and the habits of law-abiding Americans. When we drive down the street, there are cameras that can take pictures of license plates. There are cameras on street corners, cameras in private buildings. The government knows where we are traveling and how long we are gone. Let's be clear. While today we are focusing appropriately on the role of the Federal Government in issues of civil liberties, we must also understand that it is not just the government that is collecting information on law-abiding Americans. In fact, the private sector's collection of information is just as intrusive and equally dangerous. Private companies, private corporations know a whole lot about what we do. Our every move can be tracked by a smart phone. Almost two-thirds of the American people, by the way, have smart phones.

Private companies can know what we read, what we are emailing about, what Web sites we visit. They know when we have purchased a ticket, and they know where that trip is taking us. They know whether we are going on a plane or a train or a bus. When we go to a grocery store, our discount card gets scanned and the grocery store knows exactly what we are eating. It is the same situation at the pharmacy. They know what kind of medicine we are buying, enabling people to make judgments about one's health. They know when a woman is pregnant based on her purchases. In the name of fitness, people are wearing watches and Fitbits that record our heart rate and exercise pattern and how much we sleep.

In the wrong hands, this information could prevent us from getting health insurance through our jobs. It could even prevent us from getting hired in the first place. In other words, enormous, enormous, undreamed of amounts of information are out there and, in the wrong hands, that could be a real danger to our country and to the lives of millions of innocent people.

This is what the attack on privacy looks like. Someone can access our phone calls. They can access our credit card records. They can comb through our purchases. They can analyze our spending habits. They can access our emails and our contacts. They can track our movements. Pretty much anything and everything we do these days can be tracked and recorded.

Now, many of my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and talk about America being a free country. Well, if somebody knows everything we are doing, maybe it is time to recognize that we are not quite as free as we think we are. I know that in response to the argument I am raising, people will say: Well, trust these large corporations; trust the government. They are honest people. By and large, many of them are. I am not suggesting otherwise.

In terms of government policy, however, let us not forget that 45 years ago we had a President of the United States named Richard Nixon. And what Richard Nixon believed was that anything the President of the United States did, by definition, was legal. The President can break into his or her opponent's political headquarters--not a problem. He is the President. He can spy on people--not a problem. He is the President.

So I ask my colleagues and the American people--and I do not suggest for one second that this is true of the Obama administration. But I ask the American people to think about what happens in the future if we have a President who really does believe that he or she is the law, that he or she can or should have access to the kinds of information that are out there.

Think about the incredible power the administration has, the potential for blackmail, the political advantages that administration has.

People say: Well, it is a pretty crazy idea. It is never going to happen.

Well, a lot of things have happened that we never thought could happen.

It seems to me that now is the time for us as a nation, for us as elected officials to have a very important conversation about how we balance our need--of which there is no debate--to protect the American people against terrorist attacks while at the same time we respect the privacy rights and the constitutional rights of our people and how we maintain America as a free and open society.

I got involved in this issue a number of years ago when I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act. I remember some librarians in the State of Vermont came to me and they said: You know, as a result of section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, law enforcement officials--the FBI can come to a librarian and demand that the librarian provide information about the books people are borrowing from the library.

Of course, section 215 goes a lot further than that.

Do we want to be a nation in which we are looking over our shoulders and worrying about the books we are reading because somebody may say: Oh, well, you are reading a book about Osama bin Laden; clearly, you must be a terrorist. Is that really the kind of fear we want to see established in this country?

So I say to my colleagues, it is great to come to the floor and talk about freedom, but what freedom is about ultimately is the right of people to do what they want to do in a law-abiding way without harming other people. That is called freedom. In my view, people have a right to make a telephone call today without that information being collected by the government. People have a right to go on the Internet and send an email with the absolute assurance that as law-abiding citizens their visits to a Web site or the emails they send will not be tracked by the government. People have a right to go to a grocery store and make purchases without somebody knowing what they are buying.

I intend to introduce legislation shortly which will call for a comprehensive review of data collection by public and private entities and the impact that data is having on the American people. I don't know if this is a progressive piece of legislation or a conservative piece of legislation, but I would hope this concept would have broad support across the political spectrum from people who actually do believe in a free society, that our young people should not be worried about the kinds of books they read or the Web sites they visit.

We must bring together leaders in the technology world, people who not only know what technology today is doing as far as invading our privacy rights but what the future holds, because I am quite certain that every single day, this technology is growing more and more sophisticated and more and more intrusive, and sitting down with people who are experts on technology--we have to have civil libertarians, people who understand what the First Amendment is, what the Fourth Amendment is, what our Bill of Rights is about, what our Constitution is about, and, of course, involved in that discussion must be law enforcement and our security experts. The goal of all of this must be to create legislation which does everything we can to protect the safety of the American people but also protects our privacy rights and our constitutional rights.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on that legislation.

With that, I yield the floor.

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