Stimulus Package

Floor Speech

STIMULUS PACKAGE -- (Senate - January 31, 2008)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me congratulate the Senator from Arkansas on her fine and important work on the Finance Committee. Let me also congratulate Majority Leader Reid for his leadership, and Senator Baucus, Senator Grassley, and the other members for taking the ball a significantly strong step forward as we deal with the economic problems facing our country.

I think it is clear to the vast majority of the American people, if not to the President of the United States, that our country has some very serious economic problems. The middle class is shrinking. Tens of millions of Americans are working longer hours for low wages. Poverty is increasing. And there is a level of economic desperation among the lowest income people in our country that many of us have not seen for a very long time.

As we speak, senior citizens in the State of Vermont are finding it extremely difficult to pay for their home heating fuel bills, which are soaring, as they are seeing record-breaking levels of the cost for home heating oil.

Emergency food banks in the State of Vermont and throughout this country are literally running out of food because many low-income working people are simply, today, not being able to earn enough money to purchase the food they need for their families.

Homeless shelters are running out of beds. We have some major economic problems, and the time is long overdue for this Congress to begin to address them.

As we discuss an economic stimulus package, there are Members of the Senate--and there are many Americans--who have appropriately raised questions about the amount of money we intend to spend in an economic stimulus package. There are people who point out, quite correctly, that in this country today we continue to have record-breaking deficits, and we have a huge national debt.

All of that is a very legitimate concern I share. That is why we should not heed the advice of the President who, in his State of the Union Address, urged us to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent of our population. No, I do not think the wealthiest people in this country need more tax breaks. I think we have to start focusing our attention on the needs of the middle class, on working families, on those Americans most in need.

At this point, let me give thanks to our friends in the House who passed an economic stimulus package which has started the ball rolling. Now, with the legislation we are debating in the Senate, it is our job to improve upon what the House did, and I hope we will be doing exactly that.

While the House bill has a number of important attributes, the stimulus package passed yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee is, in fact, a much better and a far more significant piece of legislation. The Senate bill, among other things, understands low-income senior citizens across this country are facing very serious economic problems. Like low- and middle-income working people, they need help.

Senior citizens, every week I go back to Vermont, tell me they cannot survive on their Social Security checks, and that the cost-of-living COLAs are too small. They cannot find the money they need to heat their homes. They are having a hard time purchasing the food they need. That is why I very strongly support the provision in that legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee which will enable over 20 million senior citizens to get a one-time $500 tax rebate. This is money that will be part of an economic stimulus because these are some of the people most in need who will certainly spend that money quite quickly, helping to create jobs in the process.

So I urge all of my colleagues, in a nonpartisan way, to stand with the hard-pressed, low-income senior citizens of our country and support the provision in the Senate Finance Committee bill which says we are going to provide a tax rebate to senior citizens. They cannot and must not be excluded from the economic stimulus package.

Further, the Senate bill does another very important thing in reaching out to our disabled American veterans, many of whom are also struggling economically. By definition, these are people who have been disabled defending the United States of America. They must not be forgotten as we discuss an economic stimulus package. At the very least, what the Senate Finance Committee did will provide a rebate for some 250,000 of those veterans, and perhaps even more. That is the right thing to do from a moral perspective. Those people deserve that help. In fact, helping them will also provide an economic stimulus.

The Senate Finance bill also extends unemployment benefits by 13 weeks in all States and 26 weeks in States experiencing high rates of unemployment. That is a good and proper thing to do as well. As unemployment rises--and especially in those areas where there are consistently high levels of unemployment--many people are going to run out of unemployment benefits. Their unemployment benefits will expire. Those benefits need to be extended, and that is what the Senate bill does, and the House bill does not.

So in my view, the legislation coming out of the Senate Finance Committee is a more significant piece of legislation than that passed in the House in helping those people who are most in need. It is also more important in terms of providing the economic stimulus our economy needs.

But to be very frank with you, what came out of the Senate Finance Committee is an important step forward, an important improvement over what existed in the House, but we need on the floor of the Senate to do much more than what was done in the Senate Finance Committee.

For example, the Senate Finance Committee bill does not provide any funding for food stamps. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over 35 million Americans struggled to put food on the table last year, and the number of the hungriest Americans--those people who literally do not have enough food every day--that number goes up and up and up.

Economists from different political persuasions, both the left and the right, have told us food stamp benefits would be one of the best ways to stimulate the economy. So, once again, you are dealing with the moral issue: As the United States of America, in the year 2008, we should not tolerate a situation where any American goes hungry, where food banks are running out of food. That is not what America should be about.

Second of all, as we expand the Food Stamp Program, we create a very important economic stimulus by definition. If people do not have enough food to eat, they are going to spend that money. They are going to spend it on food, food which is, by and large, grown in the United States of America, and we are going to create jobs in that process. So my hope is, again, in a bipartisan or tripartisan manner, the Senate will add food stamps to the economic stimulus package.

The Baucus substitute--the Senate Finance Committee bill--just like the House bill, does not provide any money for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, usually known as LIHEAP. This is a program which is extraordinarily important to cold-weather States such as Vermont, New England, all across the northern tier. But, in fact, it is important to every State in this country because in Arizona, in the summer, when it gets to 120 degrees, people there need help as well.

Right now, in the State of Vermont, and all over this country, we have senior citizens and low-income people struggling--tearing out their hair--trying to figure out how they are going to pay to heat their homes when the cost of home heating oil is now well over $3 a gallon. The reality is that because we have not increased funding for LIHEAP to the degree that we should, either the amount of money each individual person is getting is going down or States are making the decision to provide LIHEAP funding to fewer of our people. Neither alternative is acceptable.

This is a cold winter in various parts of this country. It has been below zero in the State of Vermont recently. No American should go cold. No American should be forced to make a choice between food and heating his or her home. We have to expand LIHEAP funding. People who receive that will be spending that money, and that is also an economic stimulus.

So in my view, including food stamps, LIHEAP, and unemployment benefits in the economic stimulus package is not only the right thing to do in terms of stimulating the economy, it is the moral thing to do. It is what we as a nation should be doing.

For too long I think the White House and the Congress have been identified with programs that help the wealthiest people in this country--the people, in fact, who do not need any help at all. The richest 1 percent is doing fine without any tax breaks from Congress. Now is the time to start paying attention to the middle class, the working families, the vast majority of our people who are struggling economically. Now is their time, and we have to listen to their needs and respond to them.

In addition to addressing issues such as LIHEAP, food stamps, and unemployment compensation, there are other areas we should be moving forward on: rebuilding and repairing our schools, bridges, roads, culverts, sewer systems, rail, ports, and airports. Not only would we be addressing the tremendous problems we have in our crumbling infrastructure, but that is also a quick route to put people in the construction industry back to work. In the State of Vermont, it is estimated that we have over $1 billion in work that has to be done in our infrastructure. The estimate, according to the engineers, is that we have over $1 trillion of unmet infrastructure needs in America. We should be rebuilding our schools, making them more energy efficient, and in the process we put our working people in the construction industry back to work. We should address that issue as well.

Coming from a cold weather State, I am very conscious of the issue of weatherization. It makes zero sense that in Vermont and all across this country we have millions of lower income people who are living in homes which are poorly insulated, which do not have storm windows, their roofs leak energy, so these people are spending money for heating fuel that is literally going out the window and through the roof. Weatherization projects are already in existence in all of the States. Putting money into weatherization puts people to work. It saves on the fuel costs for many seniors, lower income people, and it also, not unimportantly, helps us reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So funding weatherization is a win-win-win. We should do that as well.

I also believe we should be increasing renewable energy investments in wind and solar. That is, as I understand it, in the Finance Committee bill, which is very important. We are losing out to the rest of the world in creating the kinds of industries we need through solar, energy, and wind. In the process, we would create many good-paying jobs. The idea that we have not yet passed an extended tax credit for wind and solar makes zero sense. We have to move in that area as well.

I personally also wish to see included in a stimulus package increased funding for community health centers, because when people lose their jobs, they are losing their health care. Federally qualified health centers have been a wonderful tool to bring people into primary health care access, regardless of their incomes.

Back in 2001, I was an early backer of tax rebates--one of those who actually came up with that concept. I support tax rebates for the middle class, for low-income families with children, and for persons with disabilities. I also believe that senior citizens should be receiving help in this bill as well through a bonus in their Social Security checks.

So I think we are making some progress. I think the Senate bill is far better than the House bill. I think we have the responsibility on the floor of the Senate to improve upon what was done in the Finance Committee. I hope that in a nonpartisan way, this Senate will reach out to the American people and let them know we are aware of the pain they are experiencing; we know what is happening in the low-income community; we know what is happening to our veterans; we know what is happening to our senior citizens; and we finally are going to start focusing on their needs, rather than the needs of the wealthiest 1 percent who have occupied so much of the attention of the Senate for so many years.

We have an opportunity to do something very important for the American people. I hope we do it, and I hope we do it as quickly as we possibly can.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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