Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. Sanders. Mr. President, what this debate is about is whether we continue to take money from the middle class and working families of this country who are struggling in a way they have not struggled since the Great Depression and force their kids to borrow huge sums of money in order to provide $700 billion over a 10-year period to the wealthiest people in this country.

I hear my Republican friends, time and time again, coming down to the floor of the Senate, say we have a huge deficit, we have a huge national debt. Yet today what they want to do is to drive that national debt up by $700 billion over the next 10 years in order to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. So please, my friends, say what you want, but stop talking about the deficit and the national debt when what you are doing today is driving that debt up by $700 billion over the next 10 years.

Secondly, everybody in America knows what is going on in our country today is that the middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing, but the people on top are doing phenomenally well. In the last 25 years, 80 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent. You don't have to worry about the top 1 percent. The millionaires and the billionaires in this country are doing fine. They do not need a huge tax increase. Today,

in America, we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth that we have had in this country since before the Great Depression.

Isn't it enough for you that the top 1 percent now earns 23 1/2 percent of all income? Isn't it enough for you that the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent? Isn't it enough for you that in the last 25 years, almost all new income has gone to the top 1 percent? Do you think the CEOs on Wall Street who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year need a tax break? Do you think so? I don't think most of the American people think our kids and grandchildren have to see their taxes go up in order to provide tax breaks for the richest people in this country.

Thirdly, I would say, without the slightest doubt, if these guys are successful in giving $700 billion more in tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, the next thing they will do is run down to the floor and say: Oh my word, the deficit and the debt are going up. We have to cut Social Security because we have such a large debt. Yes, we have raised the debt by $700 billion, now we have to cut Social Security. We can't afford to extend unemployment compensation. We can't do it.

Millions of workers out there today, as we get to the holiday season, are worried about how they are going to take care of their families, how they are going to maintain a minimum level of economic security. We can't afford to extend unemployment security, but we can afford to give billions and billions of dollars in tax relief to the top 1 percent.

So I think this is a very easy vote, and the vote is to say: OK. Let's give tax relief, let's extend the tax cuts to 98 percent--many of whom are struggling--but let's not give tax breaks today to the millionaires and billionaires of this country who, in many ways, have never had it so good.

I yield the floor.

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