Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this country faces many problems. But I think if we go out on Main Street, if we go out to rural America, if we go to my State of Vermont, what people will tell us is, the major crisis we face is we have a massive problem with unemployment.

Some people will suggest that unemployment is 9 percent in this country. That is not quite accurate. If we look at the numbers for those people who have given up looking for work, if we look at the numbers for those people who are working part time when they want to work full time, we are looking at a situation where 16 percent of the American people are unemployed or underemployed. That is 25 million Americans.

The job of the Congress now is to start putting those people back to work. That is what we have to do. There is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done. Virtually every American who gets into his or her car understands that our infrastructure is crumbling; that is, roads and bridges. Talk to mayors all over Vermont and in the United States of America, and they will say they are having major problems with their water systems. If we look at our rail system in this country, it is way behind Europe, Japan, and China. We need to rebuild public transportation and have a 21st-century rail system.

So if you put people to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, rebuilding our transportation system, you are going to make the United States of America more productive, you are going to make us more competitive internationally, and you are going to create the millions of jobs we desperately need. It is stunning to me that we have not moved aggressively in terms of job creation. That is exactly what we have to do.

If we put $400 billion into infrastructure, we can create millions and millions of good-paying jobs, we can make our country more productive and more internationally competitive. Every single year we are importing and spending about $350 billion on foreign oil, bringing that oil in from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries. As we move to energy independence, as we break our dependence on fossil fuels, moving to energy efficiency and sustainable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, we can create millions more jobs.

It seems to me at a time when the middle class is disappearing, at a time when poverty is increasing to a record-breaking level, at a time when people in every section of the country are saying we need to put our people back to work, now is the time to do that.

Last year I introduced the concept which said, let's have a surtax on millionaires. The reason I said that is the wealthiest people in this country are becoming wealthier. Their real effective tax rate is the lowest in decades. I am very pleased to see that the Democratic leadership is moving forward in that direction.

As we create the jobs we need by rebuilding our infrastructure, by transforming our energy system, it is absolutely appropriate that at a time when the gap between the very wealthy and everybody else is getting wider that we ask the wealthiest people in this country to help us fund job creation so we can pull the middle class out of the terrible recession they are suffering.

I think the job is a major jobs program now for our country, rebuild our infrastructure, transform our energy system, ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. Let's end many of these tax loopholes and breaks that large corporations have. We can fund a serious jobs program and put millions of our people back to work, which is something we absolutely have to do.

I yield the floor.

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