Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. I thank the Senator for all she is doing for the unemployed in this country.

I wish to briefly quote from an e-newsletter we sent out from our office which is sanders.senate.gov, and this is what the newsletter said recently in discussing the unemployment situation in Vermont:

Adrian Keyser is one of more than 200 people who applied for eight licensed nursing assistant positions at Burlington's Fletcher Allen Health Care earlier this month. She has been unemployed since November.

Eight jobs, 200 people applying for those jobs. This is what she says:

I have been desperately seeking work. Just so many people are looking for jobs. It's very frustrating. It kind of gets on your self-esteem because you are trying so hard and nothing comes through. I know a lot of people that are out of jobs right now.

As Congress debates whether to extend benefits for the seriously and long-term unemployed, an estimated 23,000 Vermonters were jobless in April. Of those, 6,600, or 29 percent, were unemployed for 6 months or longer, according to preliminary data from the Vermont Labor Department.

Thousands of Vermonters who are looking for full-time jobs are only working part-time. The Labor Department estimates 24,100 are working part time, largely because jobs aren't available.

By the way, the recession has not hit Vermont as badly as it has hit many other States, but we have just heard of a situation where eight jobs were being offered, and 200 people were lining up for those jobs.

I wish to make a point about the priorities of many of my Republican friends, which I don't quite understand. When Senator Stabenow, a moment ago, asked for unanimous consent so that we can provide the desperately needed unemployment compensation for almost 1 million workers out there, there was an objection. The objection was, well, we have to pay for that. We have a large deficit.

I understand we have a large deficit and that we have a large national debt, but what I don't understand is that when it comes to tax breaks for billionaires, my word, we don't have to pay for that.

My understanding is that every member of the Republican caucus without exception voted to repeal completely the estate tax. That would cost the government over $1 trillion over a 10-year period--$1 trillion over a 10-year period--and how was that going to be paid for? Oh, it wasn't going to be paid for--but not to worry.

What Senator Stabenow is talking about now is 1 million workers who are in desperate need of help in order to put food on the table, in order to put gas in the car so they can look for work. On the other hand, when you repeal the estate tax, you are not talking about 1 million unemployed workers, you are talking about the top three-tenths of 1 percent of our population, people who are millionaires and billionaires.

Our Republican friends say: Oh, it is OK. We can give them $1 trillion in tax breaks. We don't have to worry about how we pay for that.

Actually, within a couple of weeks there is going to be another version of providing huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country as another form of repealing the estate tax coming before the Congress. I wonder how much concern our Republican friends will have when that bill comes to the floor about how we are going to pay for that.

Right now, interestingly enough, there is no estate tax. For the first time since 1916, you could be a multibillionaire and your family will not have to pay any taxes when you die. Last month, it turned out that the wealthiest person in Houston, TX, a gentleman named Dan Duncan, became the first multibillionaire to pass along his entire estate, estimated to be worth $9 billion, to his family without paying any Federal estate taxes.

Now, I don't know, I may have missed it, but what that family would have been paying in Federal taxes is probably between $3 billion or $4 billion. That is a lot of money. That can provide a lot of unemployment compensation to workers who have lost their jobs and are living in desperation. Maybe my friend from Michigan, Senator Stabenow, can correct me, but I don't recall hearing any of my Republican friends coming to the floor and saying: Oh, my word.

We have a huge deficit problem. Yet right now billionaire families are not paying any taxes at all for the estate tax--the first time since 1916. I don't know. Did my friend from Michigan hear any great laments about that crisis? No. But when it comes to unemployed workers: Oh, my word, we have to pay for that.

The last point I wish to make is I get a little bit tired of being lectured by our Republican friends for the deficit we are in. Let's go over how we got to the deficit--or a good part of the deficit--right now. I voted against going to the war in Iraq. Most, or all, of my Republican friends voted for it. That war will cost approximately $3 trillion by the time the last veteran gets the benefits he or she is entitled to. They voted for it, but they forgot to tell us how they would pay for it.

During the Bush era, our Republican friends pushed for hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They voted for it; I didn't. The point is, please don't lecture us on the deficit that you largely caused.

With that, I yield the remainder of my time.

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