Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we are at a pivotal moment in American history, and I think many Americans are confused and perplexed and angry and frustrated as to where we are today and how we got to where we are and what the consequences of decisions made in the past and that are being made right now will mean to their families. Let me just take a minute and try to give my view as to how we got to where we are and what our options are.

As you have just stated, Mr. President, and Senator Harkin before you, anyone who talks blithely about defaults and saying it is not a big deal for this country clearly does not understand what he or she is talking about.

This is the greatest Nation in the history of the world. This is a nation whose faith and credit has been the gold standard of countries throughout the world. This is a nation, since George Washington, which has paid out every nickel it has borrowed, which is, in fact, why it is the great Nation it is and why we have the strongest economy in the world today, troubled though it may be.

The idea for some people to simply say: Oh, not a big deal; we are not going to pay our debt, nothing to worry about, those are people who are wishing our economy harm for political reasons, and those are people whose attitudes will have terrible consequences for virtually every working family in this country in terms of higher interest rates, in terms of significant job loss, in terms of making a very unstable global economy even more unstable.

This country, which has paid its debts from day one, must pay its debts. I can't say it any more clearly than that.

Our Republican friends, especially our rightwing friends who now control the House of Representatives, have given us an option and here is their option. What they have said is: We want to do deficit reduction, and this is how we are going to do it. We are going to end Medicare as we know it and force elderly people, many of whom don't have the money, to pay substantially more for their health care. So under their plan, when a person is 70 and they get sick and they don't have a whole lot of income, they don't know what happens to them. They forgot to tell us. But what they did tell us is Medicare is not going to be there for them. They told us that tomorrow, if their plan was passed, they are going to have to pay a heck of a lot more for the prescription drugs than they are paying today. Oh, you don't have the money? Hey, that is not our problem.

They told us we are going to make savage cuts in Medicaid, throw millions of kids off health insurance, when 50 million Americans have no health insurance today. They want millions more without any health insurance.

If your mom or dad is in a nursing home and that nursing home bill is paid significantly by Medicaid and Medicaid isn't paying anymore, they forgot to tell us what happens to your mom or dad in that nursing home. What happens? What happens today if one is unemployed and not able to get an unemployment extension? What happens to the middle-class family, desperately trying to send their kids to college and we make savage cuts in Pell grants and they can't go to college? What does it mean for the Nation if we are not bringing forth young people who have the education they need? They forgot to tell us that. If you are one of the growing numbers of senior citizens in this country who are going hungry, they want to cut nutrition programs.

On and on it goes. Every program that has any significance to working families, the sick, the elderly, children, the poor, they are going to cut, and they are going to cut in a savage way. They are going to do that in the midst of a recession, where real unemployment is already at 15 percent and the middle class is disappearing and poverty is increasing. That is their idea.

When we say to them: Well, hey, the very rich are doing phenomenally well; the top 1 percent now earns more income than the bottom 50 percent; the top 400 wealthiest families in this country have more wealth than the 150 million Americans--don't you think maybe it is appropriate that when the rich are getting richer and their tax rates have gone down, their effective tax rates are the lowest in modern history, when major corporations are making billions of profits and in some cases not paying a nickel in taxes, don't you think maybe it is fair that they contribute to deficit reduction rather than just the elderly and the sick and working families, they say: No. We have a line in the sand, and if it means this country will default on its debt for the first time in history, that is OK. But we are absolutely going to defend the richest people in this country, millionaires and billionaires, and make sure they don't pay a nickel more in taxes. We are going to make sure there is no tax reform so we can continue to lose $100 billion every single year because wealthy people and corporations stash their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, and that is just fine. We will protect those tax breaks while we savage programs for working families.

Those are the choices our rightwinged Republican friends are giving us: defaults with horrendous economic consequences for working families in this country and, in fact, for the entire global economy or massive cuts to programs working families desperately need.

Neither of those options is acceptable to me, and neither are those options acceptable to the vast majority of the people in this country. Every single poll I have seen says that the American people want shared sacrifice. They don't want or believe that deficit reduction can simply come down on the backs of the weak and the vulnerable, the elderly, the children, and the poor; that the wealthy and large corporations also have to participate.

I must, also, in all honesty, tell you I have been disappointed by the President's role in these discussions and some of his ideas. He has brought forth an idea which I categorically reject, that we should make significant cuts in Social Security; that when someone reaches the age of 85, they would lose $1,000 as opposed to what they would otherwise have gotten. This Senator is not going to balance our budget on the backs of an 85-year-old person who is earning $14,000 a year--not with my vote.

This Senator does not agree with the President that we raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 because I don't know what happens to millions of people who work their whole lives, finally reach 65 anticipating Medicare, but it is not going to be there for them. So I very strongly disagree with the President on those initiatives.

Let me tell you that elections have consequences, and I think many people now are beginning to catch on to that. It is no secret our rightwinged Republican colleagues did very well in November 2010. They captured the House of Representatives, and now, 1 year-plus later, for the first time in the history of this country, we are on the verge of a default.

I would close by saying to people all over this country, if you believe we have to start investing in America and creating the millions of jobs this country desperately needs, elections have consequences.

If you believe we have to address the deficit crisis in a way that is responsible, in a way that asks the wealthy and large corporations also to play a role, in a way, as Senator Harkin mentioned a moment ago, that calls for cuts in defense spending and bringing our troops home as soon as possible from Afghanistan and Iraq, you have to be involved in the political process, in my view.

A group of people in the House whose views represent a small minority of the American people are holding this Congress hostage, and it is time for the American people to stand and say enough is enough. The function of the Congress is to represent all our people and not just the wealthiest and most powerful.

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source