Recovery Rebates and Economic Stimulus for the American People Act of 2008 -- Motion to Proceed -- Continued

Floor Speech

RECOVERY REBATES AND ECONOMIC STIMULUS FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued -- (Senate - February 05, 2008)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me concur with Senator Reid. The American people want us to begin to get work done for them. It is high time we did that.

I also congratulate the Senator from North Dakota and share his concerns about many of the points he made, not the least of which, if we are going to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on this war in Iraq, that bill should not be left to our children and our grandchildren. We should at least have the decency to pay for that ourselves.

Mr. President, I wish to say a few words this afternoon about the budget President Bush brought before us yesterday and tell you I was extremely dismayed by what was in that budget and what was not in that budget. Frankly, in my view, this budget is unconscionable, and it reflects priorities that are hard to imagine and are way out of step with what ordinary Americans feel and believe.

While providing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country--the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent--over the next decade, the President, at the same time, has proposed major cuts in health care, in low-income heating assistance, in weatherization, in nutrition, in housing programs, and in other basic needs of low- and moderate-income Americans. That is a set of values which I think reflect badly on the White House and does not reflect the values of the American people.

In my view, this is a Robin Hood-in-reverse budget. This is a budget which takes from the poor to give to the rich. This is a budget which cuts programming for those most in need and gives billions of dollars in tax breaks for those least in need. This proposed budget simply tells us--again, if we didn't need this reminder--just how out of touch this administration is with the needs of working Americans.

Let me be very clear. I am a member of the Budget Committee, and I intend to do everything I can to make sure that President Bush's budget is rejected and that we bring forth in the Senate a new budget that reflects the priorities of the vast majority of the people in our country and not just the wealthy few.

Most Americans understand that our health care system is disintegrating. Everybody knows that. Since President Bush has been in office, 8.5 million Americans have lost their health insurance, 47 million Americans are now uninsured, and the cost of health care is soaring. How does President Bush respond to the growing crisis in health care? Well, it is an unusual response: He slashes funding for Medicare. He slashes funds for Medicaid. He cuts rural health care programs. In other words, he is making a bad situation even worse.

As I have said, Mr. President, we are living in a period where our health care system is disintegrating. More and more people lack health insurance. The costs are soaring, premiums are going up, copayments are going up, and deductibles are going up. The President's response to this crisis is to savagely cut Medicare, Medicaid, rural health care programs, and other health care programs. What logic is there in making a bad situation even worse? But it is not just health care.

I understand that it would be asking too much for this President to take on the insurance companies and take on the drug companies and move us toward a national health care program, which every other major country on Earth has. We are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn't guarantee health care to all people. I understand the President is not going to do that, but at the very least, he should not be adding more people to the rolls of the uninsured. At the very least, at a time when we have some 17,000 Americans who are dying every year because they lack health insurance, he need not make a terrible situation even worse.

In the State of Vermont and throughout many parts of our country, we have experienced extremely cold weather this winter. There are parts of America where we have seen 20-below-zero weather. At the same time, the price of home heating oil is soaring. In fact, it has more than doubled since President Bush has been in office. The result is that the LIHEAP program, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which keeps millions of seniors and lower income households warm in the winter, is stretched to the breaking point. The simple truth is that when home heating costs soar, either States will cut back per person or they will deny large numbers of people any heating oil at all. That is the reality the States face.

I understand President Bush has no problem with the fact that his friends at ExxonMobil have just announced the largest profits in the history of the world for the third consecutive year--over $40 billion in profits in 2007. I know he has no problem with that. I know he has no great problem with the fact that home heating oil prices are now at over $3.30 a gallon. I know he is not worried about the fact that a few years ago, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, Mr. Raymond, received a $400 million retirement package from that company. From President Bush's perspective and ideology, I suppose those are good things.

Despite the President's lack of concern about rising fuel costs, it really is beyond comprehension that he would slash the LIHEAP program by $570 million in his budget--a 22-percent reduction from last year. Imagine that. The cost of home heating oil is soaring, LIHEAP is under great strain and it cannot do what it did last year for lack of funding, and President Bush's response is: Let's cut another half-billion dollars from LIHEAP.

What are people supposed to do next year under Bush's budget when the weather gets cold? What do old people who are living on Social Security and cannot afford the outrageously high prices for home heating oil do? Do they freeze to death? Do they move in with their kids? How many blankets do they have to throw on themselves? How do you treat old people when it gets cold? You don't slash LIHEAP by $570 million. That is pretty cruel.

At a time when millions of low-income seniors are struggling to survive on inadequate Social Security benefits, this President, in his budget, wants to cut back on nutrition programs for low-income seniors, in addition to cutting back on senior housing.

There is a program which, in Vermont, works very well--the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. It provides a free package of groceries every month to low-income seniors. People all over the country utilize this program. They need this program. The President may not know this, but hunger is on the upsurge in America. In this great country, more and more fellow citizens are going hungry. What we are seeing is emergency food shelves not having enough food to feed desperate people all over America. And the President's response to this crisis is to cut back or eliminate the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. What is the moral justification for doing that? I don't know.

I am a member of the Veterans' Committee, and I am proud that last year, against opposition from the White House, we substantially increased funding for the VA and are providing billions more so that veterans can gain access to quality care in VA hospitals and clinics. Despite all of his rhetoric about how much he loves and respects the troops, this President, in his budget, has proposed a very large increase in health care fees for veterans who access VA facilities. The increases would range from $250 to $750. What is the goal there? It is very clear. The goal is to drive veterans--low-income veterans--out of the VA system so the VA can save money. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

A week ago, the President, in his State of the Union Address, was telling us how much he loved and respected the veterans. Now he is raising fees for VA health care with the explicit goal of driving veterans out of the VA health care system. That is wrong but, frankly, it is consistent with what President Bush did some years ago when he completely eliminated access to the VA for so-called category 8 veterans, who were too wealthy. These were veterans who didn't have service-connected disabilities, were not wounded, but had incomes of over $27,000 a year. They were too wealthy to access VA health care.

Well, I say to President Bush, at a time when tens of thousands of our soldiers have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, please do not balance your budget on the backs of our veterans.

Since George W. Bush has been in office, we have seen recordbreaking deficits, and our national debt is now $9.2 trillion--$3 trillion more than when he came into office.

All of us in Congress want to move this country toward a balanced budget and to make sure our kids and grandchildren are not left with this enormous debt Bush has accumulated. But there are right ways to move us toward a balanced budget and there are wrong ways to do it and George W. Bush's budget moves us exactly in the wrong direction.

As many Americans know, since President Bush has been in office, the middle class has been decimated, poverty has increased, and the gap between the very wealthiest people in our society and everyone else has grown wider. In fact--and we do not talk about this terribly much, although we should be talking about it--the United States today has by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. In fact, our distribution of wealth and income is increasingly looking like Mexico, it is looking like Brazil, it is looking like those poor developing countries and certainly not looking like Europe, Scandinavia, Canada or other industrialized nations.

Mr. President, as you are more than aware, there are a lot of facts and figures that are thrown out on the floor of the Senate, but let me mention one statistic that I hope all Americans will pay attention to and to which I hope my colleagues in the Senate will pay attention. And that is, according to the latest available statistics, the wealthiest 300,000 Americans--men, women, and children--300,000 take in more income than the bottom 150 million. In other words, the upper one-tenth of 1 percent, 300,000, people earn more income than do the bottom 50 percent. One-tenth of 1 percent, 50 percent, more income for the top one-tenth of 1 percent. In my view, that is not what America is supposed to be about, but that is the direction in which we are moving. That gap between the people on top, a handful of people, and everybody else is getting wider and wider.

For those people who live in the bottom 90 percent of the population, the overwhelming majority of our people, their average income was $33,000 way back in 1973 before globalization, before computers, before a huge increase in worker productivity. Thirty-five years have come and gone, and today, inflation accounted for dollars, that average income has declined from $33,000 to $29,000. That is a $75-a-week pay cut. That is called the collapse of the middle class: people working longer hours, they are making lower wages. That is the reality facing tens of millions of our fellow citizens.

That explains to my mind why in yesterday's Washington Post a front page story was headlined: ``U.S. Concern Over Economy is Highest in Years.'' It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. People go to the gas pump and pay $3.15 for a gallon of gas. They go to work and the boss says: Sorry, you no longer have health insurance. Oh, I can't afford to pay my mortgage; I am losing my house. Oh, too bad, 3 million Americans lost their pensions last year.

In area after area, in almost every aspect of middle-class life, people are getting hit. Then when they go to the grocery store and have to use their credit card to buy their groceries because they don't have the cash available, they find they are paying 28 percent in interest rates so Wall Street can become wealthier. That is what is going on, and that is why the American people are outraged about what is going on in terms of the middle class.

I have to tell you I find it literally beyond belief that with poverty in America increasing, with the middle class shrinking and with the wealthiest people in our country having it better than at any time since the late 1920s--incomes are soaring for millionaires and billionaires, a huge growth in the number of millionaires and billionaires--in the middle of all that, what President Bush is saying is he wants to repeal the estate tax which would provide $1 trillion in tax relief to whom? To the top three-tenths of 1 percent; $1 trillion going to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. That is what this budget, this Robin-Hood-in-reverse budget is all about.

If you are old and you are having a difficult time heating your home, President Bush is going to cut the program that keeps you warm. If you are low income or a working person in need of health care, President Bush wants to cut the programs that help you. If you are a veteran who has put your life on the line defending this country, the President wants to make it harder for you to access VA health care by substantially increasing your fees. If you are a low-income person in a home which lacks insulation and you are spending all kinds of money trying to keep your house warm, the President wants to completely cut back and eliminate the weatherization program. That is the bad news. But if you are a billionaire, if you are one of the wealthiest families in America, in this very same budget, the President wants to give you huge tax breaks. Cutbacks for those in need; tax breaks for billionaires.

Let me give one example. If the estate tax is completely repealed, as President Bush wants that to take place, one family, the Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, which is worth about $82 billion, that one family will receive over $30 billion in tax relief.

We hear on this Senate floor a lot about morality, right? We hear a lot about values. I want to know what kind of moral values there are when there are some people, including the President, who would give one family, an enormously wealthy family, a multibillion-dollar family, $30 billion in tax breaks and then cut back on the needs of millions and millions of low-income and working families? What kind of moral values does that speak to?

We have a lot of work in front of us. We have to completely rewrite President Bush's budget. We need to work hard so the people of our country once again begin to have faith in their Government, that they know those of us who are elected are prepared to stand with them rather than the millionaires and the billionaires and their lobbyists who have so much power over this institution.

We need, for a start, to reject the President's budget, rewrite that budget so it works for ordinary people. We need to pass a stimulus package which represents the needs of our seniors, our veterans, the middle class, working people. We need to do that now, and we need to build on that. Not only do we need to reject the President's disastrous budget, but more importantly, we need to reclaim the faith of the American people. Mr. President, I look forward to working with you to do that.

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