Paycheck Fairness Act - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Madam President, I hear more and more from people in my own State of Vermont and from people, in fact, all over the country via email, through my Web site, who are wondering whether this great country is evolving into an oligarchic society.
Historically, as I think most people know, the United States was the envy of the world for so many reasons. But one of the reasons, economically, is that in our country there was always the belief that regardless of your income you have the opportunity to move up the economic ladder. There was the reality--not just the belief--that we had a great and expanding middle class; that if your dad and your mom didn't go to college--which, in fact, was the case in my family--you would have that opportunity to go to college and move up the educational ladder or the business ladder or professional field. There was the feeling that economically what America was about, and what we celebrated, was the great middle class. People today, both from an economic perspective and from a political perspective, are beginning in a very serious way to question that reality.
What they are looking at is that today in our country we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. I think a lot of young people say, well, how could that be? In England you have the Queen of England, all the lords, all the royalty all over Europe, and we don't have that in the United States.
Yet the truth is that over the years we have moved to a situation where in terms of wealth and income, we are now the most unequal society of any major industrialized nation on Earth.
I keep mentioning one statistic, because I don't hear too many other people talking about it, but we need to talk about it. That is, in terms of wealth. Wealth is what we own. Wealth is what we have accumulated over a lifetime of work. In terms of wealth, the top 1 percent in our Nation owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of America.
I would ask those people back home who might be listening, what does the bottom 60 percent own? The top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the wealth. What do you think the bottom 60 percent owns? They own 25 percent, 20 percent, 10 percent? What do they own? The answer is they own all of 2.3 percent--all of 2.3 percent is what the bottom 60 percent of Americans owns in terms of total wealth.
If you had a big pizza with 100 slices in it, 1 person would get 38 percent of those pieces of pizza if we looked at wealth, and the bottom 60 percent of the people would have to share 2.3 percent of the pizza. I don't think that is what America is supposed to be about and that situation is getting even worse.
In terms of income now--all right, everybody goes out and works--we have millions of people today who are working longer hours and their income is going down. Their wages are going down. Maybe they are paying more for health care. Their pensions are going down.
But in terms of all new income--new income generated in this country--from the last statistics we saw, which were from 2009 to 2012, in terms of all new income, 95 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent. So more and more income goes to the millionaires and billionaires while millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, and while we have the highest rate of childhood poverty, at 22 percent, of any major country on Earth.
Since 1999, the typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000. Do you want to know why people are angry, why people are concerned, and why people are worried what is going to happen to their kids? It is because the median family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999.
Let me break it down even further. The typical male worker, that guy right in the middle, made $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. Imagine that. In the last 44 years, with all of the increase in productivity, with all of the robotics, with all of the space technology, all of the iPhones, iPads, and everything else where people are now producing much more, the typical male worker made $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. The typical female worker earned $1,775 less last year than she did in 2007.
Today in America we have more people living in poverty than ever before, and that is 46.5 million people. Here is a fact that should frighten everybody; that is, half of Americans have less than $10,000 in their savings account right now. Can you imagine that? That means if your car breaks down and you need that car to get to work or you have a serious health problem and you don't have particularly good health insurance, there it goes. It goes.
Then you talk about people who are older who have to retire. How do you retire with dignity if you have less than $10,000 in the bank? Well, you are going to get Social Security. Thank God, you, I, and other Members have fought hard to make sure there were not cuts in Social Security that many people wanted. But is Social Security alone enough? No. The answer is it is not.
What is happening in this country is that while the middle class shrinks, there is another reality; that is, the people on top are doing phenomenally well. Today we see a situation in which some of the wealthiest families in America--the Koch brothers come to mind, and I will talk about them in another context. They are now worth $80 billion. In the last year alone their wealth went from $68 billion to $80 billion--in 1 year a $12 billion increase in their wealth.
Sheldon Adelson--another billionaire who has had his name in the paper a whole lot recently by bringing prospective Republican candidates for the Presidency to Las Vegas to talk to them and see what they have to offer him and how much money he will contribute to their campaign--also saw a huge increase in his wealth over the last year.
What is the face of oligarchy? The face of oligarchy is what we see in Russia. When many people refer to oligarchy, they think of Russia. In Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a small number of bureaucrats were able to steal a lot of public property, and they became multibillionaires. They controlled oil companies, banks, gold mines, aluminum companies, television stations, and other state-owned companies, and that is how they became oligarchs.
By 2001 5 oligarchs controlled 95 percent of Russia's aluminum production, 40 percent of its copper, and on and on it goes. People may say: Oligarchy has to do with Russia; what does it have to do with the United States of America? Well, it has everything to do with the United States of America because that is the direction in which we are moving.
Now, let me cite some examples of what oligarchs do. When we think of oligarchies we might want to think of a gentleman named Hank McKinnel, Jr., who was the CEO of Pfizer--a major drug company--from 2001 to 2006. When he retired, he received a $188 million golden parachute--$188 million--at the same time as the people in our country are paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. That is oligarchy.
When we think about oligarchy, we may want to think about a gentleman named Lee Raymond who served as the CEO of ExxonMobil from 1993 to 2005. When he retired--and remember, this is at a time when the vast majority of the American people did not have the resources to retire with a shred of dignity--Mr. Raymond received from ExxonMobil a golden parachute, retirement benefits, of more than $320 million--$320 million. That is at the same time as people in Vermont and all over this country are finding it harder and harder to pay for gas at the pump.
What oligarchy is also about is that in 2009 ExxonMobil, maybe the most profitable corporation in the history of America, did not pay any Federal income taxes, even though in that year it earned $19 billion in profits.
When we talk about oligarchy we might want to think about somebody like Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He recently received a 74-percent increase in pay--more than $20 million in total compensation. Interestingly enough, that is a pretty big salary--$20 million--but what did he do to earn it? During that same period, over the last year, the bank he runs, JPMorgan Chase, paid out over $20 billion in penalties to the Federal Government for financial fraud. So after paying out $20 billion to the Federal Government in penalties for financial fraud, he still got a $20 million compensation package. That is called oligarchy. No matter what you do, if you are at the head of a large financial institution, you are going to get rewarded for that.
Oligarchy has a lot to do with a gentleman named William Mcguire, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group from 1991 to 2006. Everybody knows of the crisis we are facing in health care. Everybody knows that tens of millions of Americans today, despite the Affordable Care Act, are still uninsured. Everybody knows we spend more per capita on health care than do the people of any other nation. Yet when this gentleman retired from UnitedHealth Group in 2006, he received a $285 million golden parachute. So here we have the most dysfunctional health care system in the world, the most expensive health care system, with tens of millions of people uninsured, yet the head of a major insurance company gets $285 million in retirement benefits. That is called oligarchy.
Let me take oligarchy away from the economic realm and turn it into an area that I am--and many Americans are--very concerned about. Recently, we saw an interesting spectacle relating to politics that took place in Las Vegas. A gentleman named Sheldon Adelson--who is worth some $38 billion, and who is maybe the world's largest casino magnate not only in Las Vegas but off the shores of China as well--held a meeting in Las Vegas in which he brought forth Republican candidates who are interested in running for President. Now, here is the point. In the last Presidential election, both President Obama and Mitt Romney spent a little over $1 billion in their campaigns. Sheldon Adelson, if he provided more money into a campaign than both Obama and Romney spent, would still have $9 billion more in wealth than he did in 2013.
What am I saying? What I am saying is that we are moving toward a situation where people such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have so much money it would hardly matter to them to write a check for more than both Obama and Romney spent in the last Presidential election. They could write out a check for $2 billion, and it would be insignificant, a fraction of their increase in wealth over a 1-year period.
As bad as that situation is, because of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, we may not have seen the worst yet. Judge Thomas, of the Supreme Court, the most conservative member of a very conservative Supreme Court, wrote an opinion which said: Maybe we should look at doing away with all limitations on campaign finance. Many Republicans think that is a great idea. Let us do away with all limitations.
In the real world, what does that mean? It means that billionaires--people who are worth $20 billion and, in the case of the Koch brothers, $80 billion--if we moved in that direction and ended all limitations on campaign spending, could sit in a room--and the Presiding Officer comes from the State of Wisconsin, a moderate-sized State--and they could write a check for $50 million or $100 million for a candidate for Senate or Congress or Governor of Wisconsin or of Vermont or anyplace else, and it would not matter at all.
So I want people to take a deep breath and think about whether that is what we believe American democracy is supposed to be. When I grew up, we believed what American democracy was about--and we still practice it to a large degree in the State of Vermont, where we have town meetings. On the first Tuesday in March people come out, and they argue about the school budget, and they argue about other budgetary items, and every person has a say and every person has a vote. In my career, I have done hundreds and hundreds of town meetings, where people from any walk of life can walk in the door and can ask any question they want. I think democracy is about elected officials talking and communicating with people, regardless of their income, and listening to their comments and answering their questions. That is what democracy is about.
I do not believe democracy is about a handful of billionaires, such as the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, being in a position in which they can spend as much money as they want on any political race in this country. It is very hard for me to imagine how anybody could defend that as being democracy. It is not. It is oligarchy. It is the power of a handful of billionaires to control the political process.
So both in terms of economics, where so few own so much and so many have so little, and in terms of politics, where a handful of billionaires increasingly are able to determine the nature of politics in America and who is elected and who is defeated, I think we as a nation have a lot of hard thinking in front of us. We have to ask ourselves: Are we going to fight for our democracy and an expanded middle class? Are we going to fight for a democracy where one person has one vote and billionaires cannot fight elections? To my mind, that is the most important issue we face as a nation.
I hope the American people become engaged in that struggle and are prepared to take on the billionaires, who, apparently, are not content to have $10 billion or $20 billion in wealth. They feel the need to have more and more and more and to take that money out of the hides of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. They want more tax breaks for billionaires, and then they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and every other program that is of importance to working families.
So we need a very serious debate about these issues. We need millions of Americans to stand and fight with us to defend American democracy and to stop this country from evolving into an oligarchic form of society.
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