Budget Priorities

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we are at an extraordinary crossroads in American history, both from a moral perspective as well as an economic perspective.

The reality today, as I think most Americans understand, is that the middle class of our country is collapsing. Over the last 10 years, median family income has gone down by $2,500. Millions of Americans who have lost their jobs secured new jobs at substantially lower pay. Younger workers are finding it very hard to get a job at a livable wage.

Furthermore, what we don't talk about terribly often here on the floor of the Senate or certainly in the corporate media is the rather unfortunate reality that in the United States, we have the most unequal distribution of income and of wealth of any major country on Earth. Today, the top 1 percent of earners make 23 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earn 23 percent of every dollar, and that is more than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent make more money than the bottom 50 percent. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled--nearly tripled--since the 1970s. Between 1980 and 2005, 80 percent--80 percent--of all new income in America went to the top 1 percent.

Today, when we talk about distribution of wealth--not income--the numbers are, frankly, beyond belief. Today in America, if my colleagues can believe it, the wealthiest 400 Americans--400 Americans, a very small number out of a nation of over 300 million people--own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. So 400 on one side, 150 million on the other, and that gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider.

I don't have to describe economically what is going on in this country because almost everybody understands it. Real unemployment today is not 8.9 percent; it is closer to 16 percent. Today in America, 50 million people have no health insurance. Today in America, seniors and disabled vets understand they have not received a Social Security COLA in 3 years.

So what we start with when we look at America today is a middle class which is disappearing, poverty which is increasing, and the people on top doing phenomenally well. Given that reality, one might think the Congress would be actively involved in trying to protect the middle class and working families and lower income people, but if one believed that, one would be sorely mistaken.

Just last December, 4 months ago, Congress passed legislation to provide huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires by extending the Bush tax cuts to the top 2 percent and by even more by lowering the estate tax for the top three-tenths of 1 percent. So at a time when the people on top are already doing phenomenally well, what Congress did against my vote in December was make the wealthiest people even wealthier.

Four months ago, after giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and growing the deficit, our Republican friends and some Democrats come back and they say: Well, now we have a real deficit problem. We made the problem worse in December, so now we really have to deal with the deficit, and we are going to do it by making devastating cuts to programs that low- and moderate-income Americans desperately depend upon.

What we are looking at is the Robin Hood principle in reverse: We are taking from working families who are struggling to survive--taking hundreds of billions of dollars and giving it to millionaires and billionaires. In my view, this is grossly immoral, and it is also very bad economics.

Let me touch on some of the cuts that are coming down the pike in this, the 2011 budget. At a time of soaring fuel prices--in the State of Vermont and I am sure in Minnesota, a lot of people heat with oil--the cost is going up. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, would be cut by $390 million. In Vermont, many of the people who use the LIHEAP program are low-income senior citizens. So we give tax breaks to billionaires, and we go after low-income senior citizens and say: Sorry, you may have to go cold.

At a time when the cost of college education is getting unaffordable for many low- and moderate-income families in this country--hundreds of thousands of young people have given up their college dream because of the high cost of college--Pell grants would be reduced by an estimated $35 billion over 10 years, including a nearly $500 million cut this year, and Pell grants are the major source of Federal funding to help low- and moderate-income college students go to school.

At a time when 50 million Americans have no health insurance, community health centers would be cut by $600 million. This is an issue on which I have worked very, very hard. Community health centers provide access to primary health care, dental care, low-cost prescription drugs, and mental health counseling for some 20 million Americans right now. Our hope was to expand that to 40 million Americans. When we do that, we save money because people do not end up in the emergency room; they do not end up in the hospital sicker than they should have been. So $600 million for community health centers was cut. The Children's Health Insurance Program was cut by $3.5 billion.

At a time when poverty is increasing, the WIC Program--women, infants, and children--a nutrition program for pregnant women and children, will be cut by $500 million.

At a time when we have such high unemployment rates and we want to put Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, including our rail system, which is now far behind Europe, Japan, and even China, Federal funding for high-speed rail will be eliminated in the budget we are going to be voting on very soon, representing a cut of $2.9 billion. Public
transportation would be cut by nearly $1 billion--a 20-percent reduction.

I know in Vermont, and I expect all over this country, local communities are struggling with their budgets. Police departments are not getting the budgets and the manpower they need. Yet, in this budget we will be voting on, local law enforcement funding would be cut by $296 million.

At a time when homelessness is increasing, when we need more low-income housing, public housing would be cut by $605 million.

That is the 2011 budget agreement that was just reached a few days ago. What is absolutely incredible about that budget is that deficit reduction falls totally on the backs of low-and moderate-income families, on people who will not be able to get health care at community health centers, young people who will not be able to go to college, and senior citizens who will not be able to heat their homes in the wintertime. That is where this budget is balanced--on the backs of the weak, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly, and the poor. Yet, at the same time as the wealthiest people are becoming wealthier, this budget does not ask for one penny--not one penny--from millionaires and billionaires.

At a time when major corporation after major corporation enjoys huge tax loopholes--so not only do they avoid paying any Federal income taxes, but in many cases, such as General Electric, they actually get a rebate from the IRS--this budget does not ask corporate America to pay one penny more in corporate income taxes.

That is where we are with the 2011 budget, and now we are looking in a short period of time at the 2012 budget. If my colleagues think this 2011 budget is a moral and economic disgrace, wait until we hear what this 2012 budget, the so-called Paul Ryan tea party budget, which, as I understand it, will be voted upon in the House, likely passing later this week--that budget will slash trillions of dollars from Medicare, converting Medicare into a voucher program, meaning that seniors will have to pay substantially more for their health care than they currently do. The interesting question that has not yet been answered about this is, if you will be--when this Ryan budget would go into effect--a senior citizen living on $14,000 or $15,000 a year, which millions of seniors currently live on, how are you going to be able to come up with thousands and thousands of dollars to pay for your cancer treatment or the other problems senior citizens have? There is no money available for you to do it.

What Ryan's budget does is demand that low-income seniors pay with money they don't have. I am not sure I have heard the answer to the question: If you are a low-income citizen and you are asked to come up with thousands of dollars, and you don't have that money, what do you do? The Ryan budget would savage Medicaid, education, the environment, infrastructure, and other programs that tens of millions of Americans depend upon.

Here is the kicker. We savage Medicare, Medicaid, education, and many other programs that moderate and middle-class families depend upon in order to give even more tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations. After savaging health care in America for middle and low-income families, the Ryan budget would reduce the tax rates for the wealthiest people in this country from 35 to 25 percent, and it would cut corporate income taxes to the same level, from 35 to 25 percent.

I suspect there are people listening to me who don't believe that: Come on, you are not serious; at a time when the middle class is collapsing and the rich are getting richer, you are not telling me that the House is about to vote on a budget that will give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and throw millions more off of health care--you are not serious. Check it out. I am serious. This is what the Ryan tea party budget, which will likely pass the House, will do.

As I began saying, we are at a pivotal moment in the modern history of this country. That question is whether we move, in a sense, into an oligarchic form of society, where a few people on top have incredible amounts of wealth and incredible amounts of political power, while the middle class disappears and poverty increases. That is where we are right now.

I hope very much the American people engage in this debate and tell Members of the Senate and the House that it is morally wrong and very poor economics to cut back on programs that are desperately needed by working families, while giving huge tax breaks to people who absolutely don't need them.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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