Our ``We the People'' Democracy

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise today to kick off a series of speeches where I will come to the floor on a regular basis to address issues affecting Americans and propose ways to solve the challenges we face. These speeches will cover a variety of topics, but they will all link back to the fundamental theme of our ``we the people'' democracy.

In the summer of 1787, a group came together of patriots, farmers, and scholars. They gathered in Philadelphia, and after 4 months of fierce debate and enduring compromise, they agreed to a set of ideas and a system of governance. They signed their names to a document, our Constitution, which has guided our Nation's progress for over two centuries. They began that Constitution, that key document, with three simple words on parchment--``we the people''--and with that they launched our experience in democratic governance.

The Founders wrote this phrase in beautiful script, 10 times the size of the rest of the document, as if to say this is what it is all about, this is what America will be about--governance for ``we the people.''

They did not say at the start of this document ``we the titans of industry.'' They did not say ``we the titans of commerce.'' They did not say ``we the rich and powerful.'' They said ``we the people.'' As President Lincoln summarized, the genius of our governance is that it is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

With this guiding light America has been a great nation. Because of our ``we the people'' principle, we insisted on a better, fairer, and freer nation for all citizens--because we the people demanded that all Americans deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness, because we the people never stopped reaching for greater prosperity and growth to the benefit of all.

In order to address the challenges of our times, we must recapture this ``we the people'' spirit. We must set aside politics in favor of progress. We must reform a broken system that favors the interests of the wealthy and well-connected over the interests of the American people. That is the framework, the theme that my regular floor speeches will be about.

In this Senate Chamber our priority should be to build an economy and a government that works for working people, and, as Hubert Humphrey argued, a government that delivers for those ``in the dawn of life . . . in the twilight of life . . . and those in the shadows of life.''

We all know that our success is not measured by a soaring stock market. America is succeeding when a mom can earn enough not to worry about where her kids' next meal is coming from; when schools nurture the mind, the character, and the creative spirit of every child; when college is affordable to every family; when each individual in our Nation has peace of mind through access to quality and affordable health care; when no American who works full time lives in poverty; and when our economy creates good-paying jobs for American workers here in America rather than shipping those jobs overseas. To achieve these ends we have a lot of work to do.

We had after World War II three golden decades from 1945 to 1975. The middle class gained enormously in size and prosperity. During that period the bottom 90 percent received approximately 70 percent of all income growth. From 1975 until now, 2015, we have had four decades in which working Americans' experience has been flat or declining. What a difference that is from the three golden decades where workers fully shared in the prosperity they helped to create--the last four decades when they have not shared and gained over those decades. They received close to zero percent of all income growth. To put it differently, 100 percent of the growth went to the top 10 percent of Americans. We know that our families and our economy will never reach their full potential if growth benefits only those at the very top, if the growth is at best trickled down, coming from the top down, and not from the middle out.

So let's commit to changing the direction we are on, to recreating an economy more similar to those three golden decades after 1945, after the end of World War II, putting people back to work rebuilding America's roads and crumbling bridges, raising the minimum wage so that anyone who works hard can make ends meet, and keeping a cop on the beat to block predatory schemes preying on the middle class.

We have a lot to do to tackle the greatest challenge facing human civilization: saving our planet from the ravages of climate change. Today it was announced, as anticipated, that the final results are in and 2015 is the warmest year on record. This warmth and the changing weather is having profound consequences on our forestry, on our farming, and on our fishing. All of these are manifested in my home State of Oregon and virtually every State represented in this Chamber.

We have to have a ``we the people'' movement to take on the oil and the coal billionaires, cut carbon pollution, and pivot rapidly to a clean energy economy. We certainly have a lot of work to do to make sure that folks who work hard all their lives can achieve a dignified and secure retirement as we watch the pensions in the private workplace melt away, slipping through our hands. We must set our children up for success and expand the promise of education, ensuring that our schools meet the demands of a new age and that all students can attend college without the fear of crushing debt.

To achieve these things through legislation is certainly possible. We can envision the pathway for each and every one of these objectives, but we cannot do it if this Chamber is essentially owned by the titans of commerce and industry. That, unfortunately, is what happened in 1976 when the Supreme Court under Buckley v. Valeo said that individuals can spend unlimited sums in the public marketplace and can do so even if they are drowning out the voices of the rest of America. Certainly a situation in which the 1 percent can drown out the voices of the 99 percent is not a ``we the people'' democracy; it is the opposite. It is a ``we the titans'' democracy. It is decisions made by and for the very best off, not decisions by and for the people of the United States of America.

This misguided 1976 decision sits right at that pivot point between the three golden decades from 1945 to 1975 and the last four decades of failed economic policy with workers' outcomes being flat or declining. This decision was doubled down on the Supreme Court just a few years ago in the Citizens United decision, which said that not only individuals but corporations would be treated the same. They could use their combined assets even if they had never disclosed to the owners of the corporation, the stockholders, how they intended to spend funds, putting billions of dollars in play with a few people sitting in a boardroom, completely shielded from any public witness.

That is why we have to change campaign finance as a way to reclaim our ``we the people'' democracy, to reclaim our Constitution, to fend off the titans who are insisting on grabbing everything for the few and not for the benefit of the public, the 90 percent.

We have to continue to look for ways to restore hope for our working families and ensure opportunity for each, to protect the middle class, to empower the middle class against forces that are threatening to overwhelm them, and to build an economy where everyone is sharing in the economic prosperity they are helping to create.

The bottom line is that we have to make a choice about the kind of country we want to live in. I don't choose a country in which the rules are made by and for the very few at the top. I choose a country embedded in the first three words of our Constitution, where decisions are made by and for the people of our Nation. I choose a country that honors these Founding principles, that comes together to tackle the big challenges, that works not for the 1 percent or the 10 percent but for 100 percent of Americans. Let us reclaim our ``we the people'' democracy, our ``we the people'' vision, and set our Nation back on track.

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