Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013

Floor Speech

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, 5 years ago, as a result of the greed and the recklessness and the illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. As a result, millions of people lost their homes, lost their jobs, and lost their life savings. And about 5 years ago we were looking at a situation where some 700,000 Americans a month were losing their jobs--an unbelievable number. The stock market plummeted. There was panic in the financial sector.

The good news is that to a significant degree we have stabilized that situation. We are not losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. The stock market is, in fact, doing very well. But what is important to understand is that it is imperative we not accept the ``new normal'' for the economy as it is today because the reality is that today, while the situation is better than it was 5 years ago, for the middle class and for the working families of this country the economy is still in very bad shape. And I am not just talking about a 5-year period; I am talking about a generational situation.

Mr. President, you may have seen that just yesterday the Census Bureau came out with some new and extremely disturbing statistics, and it tells us why so many Americans are frustrated and angry with what is going on in Washington and why so many people respond to pollsters and say: Yes, we believe the country is going in the wrong direction.

What they are saying is true. They have every reason to be angry, every reason be frustrated. Of course, economically this country is moving, in a very significant way, in the wrong direction.

This is what the Census Bureau reported yesterday: They said the typical middle-class family, the family right in the middle of American society, that median family income today is less than it was 24 years ago. Median family income today for that typical American family is less than it was 24 years ago.

In 2002, typical middle-class families, that family right in the middle, made $51,017. Back in 1989, that family made $51,681. What does that mean? It means that 24 years later, after all of the effort and the hard work of people, today they are worse off than they were 24 years ago.

Let's think about what that means. It means that despite the explosion of technology and all of the robotics, all of the cell phones and everything else that has made this economy more productive, the median family income today is worse than it was 24 years ago.

I will give you an example of what that means. If during the period from 1989 through 2012 that typical American family had received just a 2-percent increase in their income--just 2 percent, a very modest increase--that family today, instead of making $51,000 a year, would be making $81,000 a year. That is a $30,000 gap.

If over that 24-year period people had seen a modest--I am not taking about a huge increase--a modest increase in their income of 2 percent, which people certainly deserve, that family would make $81,000 a year. Today that family is making $51,000 a year--less than that family was making 24 years ago.

This is what the Census Bureau also reported. They said the typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000 since 1999, after adjusting for inflation--$5,000.

They told us the average male worker made $283 less last year than that same worker made 44 years ago. Do you want to know why people are angry? They see an explosion of technology, they see an explosion of productivity, and yet a male worker today is making less than a male worker--the average male worker--made 44 years ago.

The average female worker earned $1,775 less than they did in 2007. A recordbreaking 46.5 million Americans lived in poverty last year. That is more people living in poverty than at any time in American history. Sixteen million children live in poverty. That is almost 22 percent of all kids in America. That is the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. That is the future of America. Over one out of five kids in the country is living in poverty.

A higher percentage of African Americans lived in poverty last year than was the case 15 years ago, and 9.1 percent of seniors lived in poverty last year, higher than in 2009. More American seniors were living in poverty last year than in 1972. Today, 48 million Americans are uninsured, no health insurance. That will change as a result of ObamaCare. But as of today, 48 million Americans are uninsured, 3 million more than in 2008.

So when people call the Presiding Officer's office in Delaware or my office in Vermont and they say: You know what: we are hurting, they are telling the truth. What they are saying is Congress seems to deal with everything except the reality facing the middle class and working families of this country.

People worry desperately not only for themselves, they worry more for their kids. What kind of education will their kids have? Will there be enough teachers in the classroom? Will their kids be able to afford to go to college or will young working families be able to find quality, affordable child care? What kind of job will their kids have when they get out of high school or they get out of college?

Those are the questions that tens of millions of Americans are asking all over this country. Here in Washington, we are not giving them clear and straightforward answers. What makes this moment in American history unique is that while the great American middle class is disappearing and while the number of Americans living in poverty is at an alltime high, something else is going on in this society; that is, that the people on top, the top 1 percent, have never, ever had it so good. Last week we learned an astounding fact I want everybody to hear clearly; that is, between 2009 and 2012, the last years we have information on, 95 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent--95 percent of all of the new income created in America went to the top 1 percent.

The bottom 99 percent shared in 4 percent of the new income. So what we are seeing as a nation is the disappearance of the middle class, millions of families leaving the middle class and descending into poverty, struggling desperately to feed their families, to put gas in their car, to get to work, to survive on an $8-an-hour wage.

You have that reality over here, and then you have another reality; that is, the people on top are doing better than at any time since before the Great Depression.

Today, the top 1 percent own 38 percent of the Nation's financial wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 60 percent, the majority of the American people together, own only 2.3 percent of the wealth in this country. When I was in school we used to--and I am sure all over this country--study what we called an oligarchy. An oligarchy is a nation in which a handful of very wealthy people control the economy, control the politics of the nation. It does not matter about political parties because they own those parties as well.

Guess what. What we used to look at in Latin America and laugh about or worry about has now come home to this country. In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider.

I do not believe the American people feel that is what this great country should be about; that the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns barely 2 percent of the wealth. That is not the dream of what this great country is about.

Earlier this week Forbes magazine reported that the wealthiest 400 Americans in this country--400 people--are now worth a recordbreaking $2 trillion--400 people worth $2 trillion; in other words, the concentration of wealth is getting greater and greater and greater. The wealthiest 400 Americans now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans, over 150 million Americans.

We could probably squeeze 400 people into this room. If we did and they were the wealthiest people in this country, 400 people in this room would own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the American people.

Just one family, one family in America, the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, are worth over $100 billion and own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. One family owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.

While the middle class disappears, while children in this country go hungry, while veterans sleep out on the streets, corporate profits are now at an alltime high, while wages, as a share of the economy, are at a record low.

Wall Street--the major financial institutions in this country whose greed and recklessness drove us into this economic downturn and the group of people the American middle class bailed out 5 years ago--is now doing phenomenally well. So Wall Street drives the country into a severe economic downturn. Wall Street is bailed out by the American middle class. Wall Street now is doing phenomenally well while the middle class is disappearing.

You want to know why the American people are angry and disgusted and frustrated? That is why. In fact, the CEOs on Wall Street, the executives there, are on track to make more money this year than they did in 2009. That is the time in which Wall Street greed destroyed our economy.

The American middle class is disappearing. Poverty is increasing. The gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider. That is the economic reality facing this country. The time is long overdue for this Congress and this President to start, in a very forceful, aggressive way, to address that issue.

But where are we today? Are we having a major debate on the floor of the Senate as to how we are going to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of jobs? I do not hear that debate. Are we having a debate on the floor of the Senate that says it is an outrage that working people throughout the country are trying to survive on a minimum wage of $7.25 and we need to raise that substantially so that when people work 40 hours a week they can actually take care of themselves and their families and not go deeper into debt? Are we having that debate? I do not hear that.

Are we having a debate which says that not only should we not cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but we should join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all of our people as a right of citizenship? I do not hear that debate; quite the contrary, this is the debate I hear. This is what I am hearing from my colleagues over in the House and the Republican leadership over there. What I am hearing them say is that while poverty is at an alltime high, while our childcare system, early childhood education is a disaster, what they want to do is continue sequestration and push for more across-the-board spending cuts to Head Start, while elderly people throughout the country who are fragile and hurting are dependent on the Meals On Wheels Program, they want to continue cuts in that program.

They want to continue cuts in that program. While millions of families are wondering how they are going to send kids to college, they want to continue sequestration, making it harder for families to send their kids to college. They want to continue cuts to unemployment insurance and a number of other vital programs; in other words, instead of addressing the very serious problems facing the middle class and the working class of this country, what I am hearing from my Republican colleagues is let's make a bad situation even worse.

Let me conclude by saying, instead of cutting the Head Start Program, we should be expanding the Head Start Program. Study after study makes it clear that the most important years of a human being's life are 0 to 3. Giving those little kids the intellectual and emotional nourishment they need so they will do well in school is perhaps the most important work we can do.

We have to increase funding for Head Start, not cut funding for Head Start.

It is a moral outrage in this country that anybody here talks about cutting back on the Meals On Wheels Program, which provides at least one nutritious meal per day to fragile and vulnerable citizens. We should not be cutting back on that program; we should be significantly expanding that program.

I can tell you that in Vermont, if you talk to the people in my State, they will tell you we have significant problems with our bridges, significant problems with our roads, significant problems with rail, significant problems with wastewater and water plants. People want to invest in our crumbling infrastructure and make us a productive nation. When we do that, we can create jobs.

Right now on the floor--I don't know if we are going to get to vote on it--there is a very modest bill brought forth by Senators Shaheen and Portman which talks about energy efficiency. In Vermont and throughout this country, people are paying higher fuel bills than they should, wasting enormous amounts of energy, and contributing to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions because we are not aggressive on energy efficiency, making our homes more efficient. We should be investing in energy efficiency and creating jobs doing this.

The bottom line is we are in a pivotal moment in American history. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is disappearing, and poverty is at an alltime high. People are demanding that we create jobs and address the problems facing this country. Yet we have folks who want to make a bad situation worse by protecting the tax breaks that have been given to the wealthy and large corporations and then cut back on the needs of ordinary Americans.

I hope the American people will stand and say enough is enough and that they will demand that, finally, Congress stands with the middle class of this country.

I yield the floor.

Source