Concurrent Resolution On The Budget, Fiscal Year 2016 -- Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I rise in very strong support of Senator Mikulski's amendment on equal pay for equal work for the women of our country. Senator Mikulski has been a tireless advocate for policies that bolster the American middle class and has been a champion for many years for pay equity for women, and I thank the Senator from Maryland for all she has done. I also concur with the strong remarks made by Senator Murray, who has also been a champion for pay equity.
To my mind, it is very hard to defend the current reality in which women continue to earn 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. We want to end that discrimination against women workers. This is not only an issue of justice, it is also an issue of economics because when we establish pay equity in this country--equal pay for equal work--millions of women will receive higher pay and many of them and their families will leave the ranks of the poor. This is an extraordinarily important amendment for justice, and it is an important amendment for economic rights.
The pay gap we see in this country is found at every level of education and at every stage of a career. No matter how hard women work, it is next to impossible to overcome it because they move up the ranks, but there is still pay inequity.
The pay equity gap has a significant bearing on the economic status of female-led households. Only 18 percent of families headed by single moms have economic security. Female-headed households are twice as likely to live in poverty as male-headed households, and more than half of poor children live in female-headed households. It is no surprise that a lifetime of lower earnings results in less retirement savings and fewer Social Security benefits for women.
Senior women are twice as likely as senior men to live in poverty, and the average senior woman receives approximately $4,000 less a year than a senior man.
Senior women are more likely than senior men to rely on Social Security as their sole source of income, especially if they are unmarried.
My State of Vermont has done better than most in terms of pay equity and, in fact, is first in the Nation in making sure women get equal pay for equal work. But even in the State of Vermont, which leads the Nation in this area, women are still only earning 91 cents for every dollar men make. We have done better than the rest of the country, and we still have more to do, but the rest of the country has a whole lot more to do if we are going to fulfill the promise of equal pay for equal work.
I hope very much that we will all be supporting Senator Mikulski's very important amendment.
In terms of the overall Republican budget--and I say this with all due respect--one of the reasons I suspect that the media is not particularly interested in this budget is because when they look at it, they find it to be so preposterous, so unbelievable, and so unrealistic that nobody really takes it seriously, and certainly many of the major provisions in it are not going to be turned into law.
I will go out on a limb, but I think I am fairly safe in saying that President Obama is not going to sign legislation that abolishes ObamaCare. Maybe I am wrong, but I think it is fairly safe to say that. The Republican budget wastes a whole lot of time and energy by proposing the repeal of ObamaCare.
I will tell everyone what the repeal of the Affordable Care Act would mean in this country, and I know people will think I am exaggerating. I am not exaggerating, and if I am not telling the truth, I want my Republican friends to come down here--or when they get the floor--and say: Senator Sanders was inaccurate. Please tell me that. We have read the legislation, and I am not inaccurate.
If they repeal the Affordable Care Act, it will eliminate health insurance coverage for 16 million people.
Sixteen million people would lose the health insurance they currently have.
Today, we are the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people. Today, despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, 35 million Americans have no health insurance. So the Republicans say, 35 million without health insurance--that is not enough. Let's raise that number to 51 million by eliminating the Affordable Care Act.
They go further than that. The Republicans say we should cut Medicaid by $400 billion over the next decade. Medicaid is the program that provides health insurance for lower-income Americans as well as--very significantly, older people who are in nursing homes. So if people think this is just a low-income issue--if people think it is not a middle class issue--think again, because it just might be your mom who is 90 years of age who is in a nursing home which is being paid by Medicaid. It could be your dad who is dealing with Alzheimer's in a nursing home being paid for by Medicaid.
What the Republicans propose is a $400 billion cut over the next decade which would deny health insurance to an additional 11 million Americans, including millions of children.
My arithmetic might not be too good, but I think if we add 16 million who lose health insurance through the ending of the Affordable Care Act to 11 million who lose health insurance by a $400 billion cut in Medicaid, that means--16 plus 11 is 27--27 million Americans would lose health insurance, almost doubling the number of people who don't have health insurance.
Does anybody in their right mind take this proposal seriously? It is beyond comprehension. It would cause massive chaos and disruption in the United States of America.
This means that low-income, pregnant women who need to make sure--as Senator Durbin mentioned a moment ago--that they get the health care they need when they are pregnant would lose their health insurance. A kid who is in a car who has an automobile accident would lose his or her health insurance. A worker who feels a pain in his chest and needs to go to the doctor--he doesn't have any health insurance, doesn't go to the doctor, dies. Well, that is a result of cutting 27 million people off of health insurance.
So in a certain sense we needn't discuss the issue terribly much because it is such an absurd proposal that I don't think there are too many people who would take it seriously.
We should also understand that when my Republican colleagues talk about ending the Affordable Care Act, what they are also doing is denying over 2 million young adults the right to stay on their parents' health insurance plan until the age of 26. As a result of the Affordable Care Act--previously children would be dropped from their parents' health insurance when they reached 21. The Affordable Care Act keeps them covered until they are 26. So suddenly, if one is 24 years of age and they have health insurance through their parents' health program, they are gone, they are out.
The Affordable Care Act would bring us back to a very dark age in America's medical history. That was the time not so many years ago, before the ACA, when if a person had a preexisting condition--can we imagine that? Now we think it is so crazy. It is hard to believe this existed 7 or 8 years ago. A woman walks into an insurance company looking for health insurance and she says: Yes, I had breast cancer 10 years ago, and I had an operation dealing with breast cancer.
The insurance company says: Oh, you had breast cancer? We can't cover you. That might recur.
Somebody else walks in and says: Well, I had a heart attract or I had a stroke 8 years ago.
Oh, that is a preexisting condition. You are discriminated against. We don't want you. You might get sick again.
Incredibly enough, then, the people who needed insurance the most are the people to whom insurance companies said: Sorry, we are not going to provide insurance to you. The Republican budget brings back those dark days.
The Republican budget will say to insurance companies again that being a woman is an illness, being pregnant is an illness. Insurance companies would be able to discriminate against women and charge them extra for the crime of being a woman. Does that make sense to anybody? I don't think so. But that is, in fact, what is in the Republican budget.
We have worked long and hard. This is an issue that has been dear to my heart for a very long time, and that is the knowledge that many of our seniors cannot afford the prescription drugs they need. Because of the power of the pharmaceutical companies in this country, our people are forced into paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. That is just the simple reality.
Another very serious problem is that generic drug prices are soaring. We have many seniors and many Americans who have a variety of illnesses. They go to the doctor, the doctor writes a prescription, and do we know what happens? I remember talking to a doctor in the northern part of Vermont who said her guess was that one out of four of her patients did not fill the prescriptions they wrote because they simply can't afford them. And when one is older, by definition, one is often sicker and one needs medicine.
The Republican budget resolution we are debating now would increase prescription drug prices for some 4 million seniors and persons with disabilities who are on the Medicare Part D Program by reopening the doughnut hole. For years we have tried to close that hole and make sure the elderly do not have to pay for prescription drug costs out of their own pockets. The Republican budget would undo the progress we have made.
The bottom line of the Republican budget suggests the huge philosophical divide that exists in this Chamber. But, interestingly enough, I don't think it exists within the American people. I think the more the American people understand about the Republican budget, the more they will understand that something is fundamentally wrong with that budget.
Where many of us come from is we look at an America in which the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well. I had a chart up yesterday which was, to me, really extraordinary. It pointed out that in the last 2 years, the 14 wealthiest people in this country--all multibillionaires--combined, saw an increase in their wealth in a 2-year period--14 people--of $157 billion. Fourteen people in a 2-year period saw a $157 billion increase in their wealth. That is literally beyond comprehension. That increase in wealth in a 2-year period is more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people own in their entirety.
Some of us believe that when multibillionaires see a huge increase in their wealth such that the top one-tenth of 1 percent now own almost more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, maybe they should be asked to pay more in taxes. That is what we believe. Our Republican colleagues disagree. They have nothing of significance to say about income and wealth inequality, and their view is that if we want to deal with the deficit and we want to deal with the national debt, the only way to go forward is to make horrendous catastrophic cuts in programs that middle-income and working-class people desperately need--programs they desperately need.
So I have spoken a little bit about the Republican cuts in health care, but I also should mention that there are major cuts in education. I can tell my colleagues, because I have had a number of town meetings on this issue in my State of Vermont, almost all of the young people I talk to are extremely worried about the high cost of college and about the debts that are wrapped around their shoulders when they graduate from college.
What does the Republican budget do to address the crisis of the affordability of college and the deep debts millions of our young people face when they leave school? Well, instead of addressing the problem, they make it even worse. It is hard to believe, but it is true. The Republican budget would eliminate mandatory Pell grants. Pell grants are the Federal program that helps low-income and working-class students get help in going to college. So at a time when it is harder to afford college, the Republican proposal eliminates mandatory programs, cutting this program by nearly $90 billion over the next 10 years, which would increase the cost of a college education for more than 8 million Americans.
Now, what can we say about that? People today can't afford to go to college. Students are leaving school deeply in debt. And what the Republicans say is let's cut $90 billion in mandatory Pell grant funding and increase the cost of a college education for more than 8 million Americans.
I can tell my colleagues that in Vermont--and throughout this country, I know--working-class families have a very difficult time finding quality, affordable child care. The Republican budget addresses this problem by making a bad situation worse and by coming forward with a budget which would mean that 110,000 fewer young children would be able to enroll in Head Start over the next 10 years.
We need to expand Head Start. We need to expand preschool education. We need to expand child care. The most important years of a human being's life are 0 to 4 years old. Those little kids need the intellectual and emotional nourishment that good preschool education and child care provides them. What is the Republican proposal? Knock 110,000 kids off of Head Start.
Under the Republican budget, 1.9 million fewer students would receive the academic help they need to succeed in school by cutting about $12 billion in the title I education program which is focused on the needs of lower income kids. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would be cut by $10 billion.
So here is the point. At the end of the day, what politics is about is which side are people on. Are people on the side of millionaires and billionaires and large campaign contributors or are people on the side of working families who are struggling to keep their heads above water economically, who are trying to figure out how they are going to send their kids to college. They are trying to figure out how they are going to help take care of their parents. They are trying to figure out how they are going to pay their rent or, in some cases, even pay for their groceries. That is what this debate is about.
What the Republicans are saying loudly and clearly is the rich are getting phenomenally richer; we are not going to ask them to pay a nickel more in taxes. Corporations are enjoying record-breaking profits, and we have major corporation after major corporation paying zero in Federal income tax because they stash their money in tax havens so they can avoid paying taxes to the U.S. Government, but we are not going to ask them to pay a nickel more in taxes.
That is what this debate is about. Which side are you on? I think the vast majority of the people in this country want the Senate to stand up for the middle class, for the working families of this country, and ask the billionaires and the large, multinational corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes.
With that, I yield the floor.
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island not only for his important remarks but for the work he has been doing for years to protect and defend Social Security.
Let's be clear about a number of facts. When people jump up and say Social Security is going broke--not quite true. As Senator Whitehouse indicated, Social Security can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 18 years.
When people jump up and say Social Security is contributing to the deficit--also not quite accurate. As everybody knows, Social Security is funded by the payroll tax, an independent source of revenue for Social Security.
The fact is that for many, many years, in a variety of ways, my Republican colleagues have been attempting to either cut Social Security or, in the extreme case, privatize Social Security and allow--force--Americans to go to Wall Street for their retirement benefits.
While this budget does not include a provision to cut Social Security, what I will say is, if my memory is correct, in three out of the four hearings held by the Budget Committee, there were Republican representatives--people who were asked to testify--who did talk about various ways to cut Social Security.
So what this amendment does is it establishes a deficit-neutral reserve fund--it establishes a budget point of order which prevents benefit cuts, a raise in the retirement age, or the privatization of Social Security benefits. That is what it does.
Now we are going to have a lot of people coming up here and saying: Well, we want to preserve Social Security.
What they really mean is that in order to preserve Social Security, they want to cut Social Security benefits--maybe not for the people on Social Security today but for future beneficiaries.
They say: Well, that is the only way we can protect Social Security.
Well, that is not accurate. I introduced legislation which, in fact, makes Social Security not only solvent until the year 2065--50 years from today--but also expands benefits. We do that by saying that it is currently very absurd that a multimillionaire is paying the same amount of money into the Social Security trust fund as somebody making $118,000. There are some very wealthy people who are paying all of their Social Security taxes in the first day or two of the year.
Right now, we have a situation where millions of people in this country depend upon Social Security, people who are getting benefits of $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 a year. That is how they are living. Those benefits should not be cut.
When we talk about a so-called chained CPI, which cuts COLAs for seniors and disabled vets, what we are talking about is cutting Social Security benefits for an average 65-year-old by more than $658 a year by the time that person reaches age 75 and a cut of more than $1,100 a year by the time that person reaches age 85. Those are very significant cuts for people who are trying to live on $13,000 or $14,000 a year.
So here is the argument. Is Social Security important? Obviously, it is. As the middle class continues to decline, Social Security is enormously important for the elderly and the disabled people of this country.
Point No. 2: Do we have to cut benefits in order to save Social Security? The answer is, obviously, yes. But we are back to the same old question we debate all day here. Our Republican friends seem absolutely determined not to ask the wealthiest people in this country who are doing phenomenally well to contribute to the well-being of the American people.
That is this overall budget. But on the issue of Social Security, what we have to do is raise the cap, which is now at $118,000, and start it at $250,000. Just doing that will enable us to expand Social Security to the year 2065 and expand benefits for lower income seniors.
This point of order is enormously important. It says there will be a need for 60 votes for any effort to cut Social Security, to raise the retirement--I don't know what world some people are living in. There are some who have come forward and said we should raise the Social Security retirement age to 70. Let's have people out there working at 68, 69, 70 years of age. Let's force them to keep working before they get their benefits. My God, that is a horrendous idea. They also say we should cut COLAs--cost-of-living adjustments--for disabled vets. What a terrible idea.
There is a way to extend Social Security for many decades and to expand benefits. This amendment says: Do not cut Social Security.
I think a number of my Republican friends will say: Well, we are not going to cut Social Security for anybody on Social Security today. That is not good enough. There are people out there who are 50, 55, 60, 63, 64, and they want to know that the benefits they will get are the benefits they will be able to live on. Don't cut benefits for working people, and that is what this very important amendment is about.
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is a very important amendment, and I hope the American people are listening.
Social Security is probably the most important Federal program ever developed in the modern history of this country. It is an enormously popular program, and it has been an enormously effective program. The truth is that it has significantly reduced poverty among seniors. Before Social Security, about 50 percent of seniors lived in poverty. Today, while the number is too high, it is somewhere around 10 percent.
The extraordinary beauty of Social Security is that in good times and in bad times--in an economic boom, depression, or recession--Social Security has paid out every check owed to every eligible American without fail. No one has ever received a letter that said: You know, we are in the middle of a recession, so we have to cut your benefits in half. That has never been the case. We take it for granted, but that is an extraordinary record.
Because we have a number of Republicans who simply do not like government programs, there has been for many years an effort to either cut or privatize Social Security and give it over to Wall Street. What we hear are a lot of misleading arguments. The argument is, well, Social Security is unsustainable, and it is not going to be there. And they throw out all of these reasons. But the answer is that Social Security is absolutely sustainable, but, as Senator Whitehouse just indicated, we have to deal with issues such as income and wealth inequality, which has resulted in a significant reduction in the solvency of Social Security because people's incomes have not risen, and therefore they contribute less to the Social Security trust fund, or many other people have gone way above the cap and are still paying less than they should.
The Republicans' solution seems to be--and I think there will be a side-by-side amendment that will say: Well, we are not going to cut Social Security benefits for those who are in the program right now. But essentially their language says that they will cut benefits for future retirees, people who are 55, 60, and 63 years of age. When we have so many seniors and elderly people who are struggling right now to make ends meet, I think the last thing in the world we should do is cut Social Security.
Over half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings, and these people, when they reach Social Security age, do not want to see their benefits cut. Two-thirds of seniors depend on Social Security for more than half of their income, and one-third depend on Social Security for almost all of their income. These people do not want to see their benefits cut.
Just 2 weeks ago, Senator Whitehouse and I accepted petitions from 2 million people which said loudly and clearly: Do not cut Social Security. And in the polling I have seen in these tough economic times, Republicans say do not cut Social Security, Democrats say do not cut Social Security, and Independents say do not cut Social Security. Yet what our Republican friends are saying is that if you are 55, 60, or 63 and are not yet on Social Security, beware because we are prepared to cut your Social Security. Maybe we will raise the retirement age or maybe we will cut your COLAs through a so-called chained CPI.
I will say as the former chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee that virtually every veterans organization has been loud and clear in opposition to the chained CPI because they understand that chained CPI does not just cut benefits for seniors, it cuts benefits for disabled veterans. Do we really want to be cutting benefits for disabled veterans? I hope we will not.
This is a very important amendment. It is an amendment that says: If you stand with the overwhelming majority of the American people who say we should not cut Social Security--yes, let's move forward to make it solvent beyond the 18 years that it is solvent, but do not cut benefits, do not cut COLAs, and do not raise the retirement age.
With that, I yield the floor.
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Mr. SANDERS. This side-by-side is a simple and noncontroversial amendment. It creates a deficit-neutral reserve fund so the VA can have the health care professionals--the doctors and nurses--it needs to make sure the VA is providing quality care to all of our veterans in a timely manner. That is about it.
From what I heard--I will speak with Senator Ayotte a little bit later--her amendment is simply making sure the VA implements the law we passed. I don't have any objection to that and I don't know that anyone should.
Our amendment simply says we want the VA to have the medical personnel--doctors, nurses, and staff--it needs to provide quality and timely health care to our veterans. I hope it will receive unanimous agreement.
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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, this is a pretty simple and straightforward amendment. Senator Ayotte mentioned a moment ago we have had problems at the VA. No question about it; veterans have waited too long to get the timely and quality care they need. What this amendment does is establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to protect and strengthen the Department of Veterans Affairs, to hire more health care professionals for the Department, and ensure quality and timely access to health care for all veterans.
If we talk to veterans organizations, they think the care within the VA is good once people get in there. I want to make sure we have the doctors and nurses to provide the quality and timely care our veterans deserve.
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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I appreciate Senator Fischer offering her side-by-side on equal pay. I am glad to see that this is, in fact, a stronger amendment than what my Republican colleagues have offered in the past. However, this amendment still does not go far enough.
In my view, Senator Mikulski's amendment is a far better alternative. It is not enough to ban retaliation about discussing salary information. This amendment would not allow women to act on any information they discovered. It would not give women their day in court and the opportunity to get money owed to them after sometimes months--sometimes years--of discrimination.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, this is a very important amendment, and I hope the American people listen carefully to what is in it. As Senator Hatch indicated, it protects current beneficiaries. In other words, they are not going to cut benefits for those currently on Social Security. But if you are 63 years of age, 64 years of age, 65 years of age, watch out. They are going after you.
I would suggest there is a way to extend the solvency of Social Security, and it deals with raising the cap and asking wealthy people to contribute more. We can make Social Security solvent for the next 50 years without cutting benefits for anybody. I urge a ``no'' vote on the Hatch amendment.
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this amendment is very clear, unlike the Hatch amendment. This amendment says we do not support cuts to Social Security--not for current beneficiaries, not for future beneficiaries. That is what this amendment is about.
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I don't know whose budget Senator Cornyn is presenting, but it is certainly not the President's budget. The President's budget recommends raising the minimum wage, and that is not in Senator Cornyn's proposal.
The President's budget includes 2 years of free community college. That is what the American people want, and it is not in Senator Cornyn's proposal.
The President's budget talks about a fair tax proposal, not more tax breaks for billionaires, and that is not in Senator Cornyn's proposal.
I will vote no because I am not quite sure what is in Senator Cornyn's proposal, but it is certainly not what President Obama presented to the American people.
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