Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010--Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, just yesterday the Republican minority leader indicated that every Republican in the Senate would join him in filibustering legislation that would provide middle-class tax relief to over 97 percent of American workers and their families unless the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent were extended as well.
In my view, what we have to do is stand up to that filibuster no matter how long it takes. If it means being in here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that is what we have to do. Senate Republicans should not be allowed to hold middle-class tax cuts hostage in order to give even bigger tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires at a time when this Nation has a $13 trillion national debt and a widening gap between the very rich and everyone else.
In fact, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. The dumbest thing we could probably do at this moment is to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to some of the wealthiest people in this country. That would be totally absurd.
Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. We have the dubious distinction--not a good distinction--of having, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth.
In 2007, the wealthiest 1 percent took in 23 1/2 percent of all income earned in the United States. That is not an issue we talk about in the Senate. Apparently, in polite organizations, polite groups, we are not allowed to talk about that. But let me repeat it. The top 1 percent in 2007 earned 23 1/2 percent of all the income earned in the United States.
That is the latest data available. There is no reason to believe that income is not even greater right now. It is not a coincidence that the last time that income was this concentrated was in the year 1928. 1928. Those of us who remember history know what happened in 1929. The stock market crashed, and we plunged into the Great Depression.
Louis Brandeis, one of the great Supreme Court Justices in the history of this country who served on the Supreme Court during both the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression once said: ``We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.''
Mr. Brandeis was right then and his words ring true today. Today, the wealthiest 400 Americans make an average of $345 million a year--$345 million a year, on average, for the top 400 American earners.
Under the Bush administration, these 400 individuals saw their incomes double--double--while their Federal tax rate was cut almost in half over the last 15 years, before Bush, through Bush. So during the Bush years their incomes doubled while their tax rates went way down.
Now our Republican friends, and maybe some Democrats, are saying: We should give these people huge tax breaks at this moment. We have a Federal Tax Code that is so absurd, that is so unfair that Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest Americans and certainly one of the wealthiest people in the entire world, who is worth tens of billions of dollars, himself, what he has often stated is that he, one of the richest people in the world, pays a lower effective tax rate than does his secretary.
Hedge fund managers who made $1 billion last year now pay a lower effective--by ``effective'' I mean real because of all the loopholes--a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers, and our Republican friends want to make that absurd situation even worse by maintaining huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
During the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion. Let me repeat that. Four hundred families--not a whole lot of people--saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion, and all the while, while the people on top have seen an explosion in their incomes and in their wealth, the middle class is rapidly disappearing, poverty is increasing, and we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, where so few have so much, so many have so little.
Our Republican friends have argued that these massive tax breaks, some $700 billion in a 10-year period for the top 2 percent, would trickle down, trickle down to all Americans. Give tax breaks to billionaires and it is going to trickle down and improve our economy and do well by everybody.
We have been told over and over by Republican colleagues that millionaires and billionaires would use the massive tax breaks they received under President Bush to create jobs in the private sector. Well, guess what. The results are in. During the 8 years of the Bush administration, a time in which the wealthiest Americans received one of the largest tax cuts in this Nation's history, the United States of America lost over 600,000 private sector jobs and only gained, over that 8-year period, a net total of 1 million new jobs, all of them, by the way, government jobs.
So we saw the experiment in action. We gave huge tax breaks to the rich, and we ended up having one of the worst job creation records in the history of the United States--losing over 600,000 jobs. It is an interesting theory. We have seen it in practice. It does not work.
In addition, under President Bush, median family incomes went down by over $2,000. Let me repeat that. Do you know why people are angry in North Carolina, Vermont or all over this country? They are angry because during an 8-year period, their median family income went down by $2,000 a family, and we lost 600,000 private sector jobs.
During those same 8 years, more than 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty, over 7 million lost their health insurance, more than 4 million manufacturing jobs were lost, and over 3 million Americans lost their pensions. In other words, we went through that exercise. It failed. How could anybody want to go back to those policies?
Our Republican friends do. That is what they want. That is what they want to see us move toward--more tax breaks for the wealthy, more inequality, more power concentrated in the hands of a few, and more middle-class Americans slipping into poverty. Do we provide tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires or do we invest in the middle class? That is what this debate is all about.
My Republican friends have told us the worst thing you can do in a recession is to increase taxes on the wealthy. Well, the Republicans told us the same thing when Bill Clinton was President.
When Bill Clinton's economic plans were signed into law in 1993--as a Member of the House I voted for it, it won by one vote--a plan which increases taxes by a few percentage points, guess what happened. We raised taxes on the wealthy. We lowered the deficit. Guess what happened. Unlike the Bush years, where we lost 600,000 private sector jobs, during the Clinton years, over 22 million jobs were created. We had the longest peacetime expansion in our economy in our Nation's history, and budget deficits turned into budget surpluses. Those are the facts. No one can deny them.
Further, what conservative and progressive economists of all stripes have told us is that providing tax breaks for the rich is the least effective way--the least effective way--to stimulate or improve the economy.
That is not Senator Bernie Sanders talking. That is what both the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Senator John McCain's top economic adviser during the Presidential campaign, Mark Zandi, have told us. According to Mr. Zandi, again, an economic adviser to Presidential Candidate McCain, every $1 provider in tax breaks to the wealthy pumps only 32 cents into the economy.
On the other hand, we know that one of the best ways to grow the economy and to create decent-paying jobs is to invest in our Nation's crumbling infrastructure so we build the roads, the bridges, the railways, the culverts, the tunnels we desperately need.
According to Mr. Zandi, for every $1 invested in infrastructure, it generates $1.57 in economic activity. Without a strong and vibrant transportation system, businesses fail, the Nation fails. Increasingly, as people travel around the world, go to airports, ride on trains, use roads, they tell us the United States has an infrastructure which is falling way behind much of the rest of the world.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gave us a D several years ago and has told us we need to invest trillions of dollars in our crumbling infrastructure in order to bring us to the level we have to be.
Not only is rebuilding our infrastructure good for our future, it is also good for the moment in dealing with the need to create jobs in this terrible recession. Every $1 billion invested in infrastructure creates or saves over 45,000 American jobs. Not only is investing in infrastructure good for the economy, it is something we have to do sooner or later.
I am a former mayor. What I can tell you is, you can ignore your roads and bridges this year or the next year, but at some point you are going to have to deal with them. They do not get better by not rebuilding them.
In fact, it is often more expensive to have to rebuild them than it is to maintain them.
As I mentioned a moment ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers tells us that over the next 5 years we need to invest $2.2 trillion in our Nation's infrastructure. Why not do this work now when we have millions of Americans who desperately want to go back to work? We are going to have to do it sometime. Let's do it now.
Allowing the Bush tax breaks to expire for the wealthiest 2 percent will bring in $700 billion in revenue over the next 10 years--$700 billion. In my view, what we should do with that $700 billion is pretty simple. I would take half of that--$350 billion--and use it for deficit reduction so that we begin to cut back on our national debt and our deficit. The other thing I would do is invest the other half--$350 billion--in our infrastructure so we create the desperately needed jobs that our economy calls for.
Our Republican friends are dead wrong, are irresponsible, are not keeping faith with our kids and grandchildren when they want to maintain these tax breaks for the top 2 percent, for many millionaires and billionaires, which would result in increasing the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over a 10-year period counting interest and that would provide an average break of over $100,000 a year to some of the wealthiest people in this country.
So that is what the choice is: Do we put money into deficit reduction, lowering our interest costs, helping our kids and grandchildren a little bit in terms of the kind of debt they are going to have to assume--$350 billion over a 10-year period for deficit reduction is significant--do we use another $350 billion to invest in our infrastructure so we can create millions of jobs rebuilding America or do we make the richest people in this country even richer?
I think the answer is pretty clear. I think the American people have spoken out with their views on this issue. They do not believe, when the middle class is collapsing, the wealthiest people are becoming richer, and when we have a $13 trillion national debt, it makes any sense at all to give huge tax breaks to the rich.
With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.
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