Justice For Victims Of Trafficking Act Of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as the ranking member of the Budget Committee, I wish to take a few minutes to discuss the budget situation.

My understanding is that Senator Enzi, the chairman of the committee, intends to have a Budget Committee markup on Wednesday, March 18, and Thursday, March 19. My understanding is the resolution will come to the floor the following week of March 23. Unless I am mistaken, we will engage in what is called within the Beltway a vote-arama, where there will be a very significant number of amendments that will be allowed to be offered.

Before we discuss a budget, whether it is at the Federal level, the State level, or one's family, I think it is imperative to understand the conditions that exist as one prepares a budget. A budget reflects what our country is about. It reflects our national priorities. It reflects how we attempt to address the problems we face. It attempts to address how we go forward as a people into the future.

So the first issue at hand when we discuss a budget is to, in fact, determine what is going on in America today. What are our problems? What should we be doing and what should we not be doing?

I start off with the premise that I think is shared by the vast majority of the American people, which is that the middle class of this country over the last 40 years has been disappearing; that people today, by the millions, in Vermont and throughout this Nation, are working longer hours for low wages, despite a huge increase in productivity. That is the reality that faces most people in this country. But there is another reality, and that is that the people on top and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well.

Today, real median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999 in inflation accounted-for dollars. Why is that? How does that happen? The typical male worker--that man right in the middle of the American economy--made $783 less last year than he did 42 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. How does that happen? We have an explosion of technology, a huge increase in productivity; we have the so-called great global economy, $3 trillion all over the world; and the typical male worker--the guy in the middle of the economy--makes $783 less last year than he did 42 years ago.

The typical female worker is making $1,337 less than she did in 2007. Today, despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act--legislation I supported--40 million Americans continue to have no health insurance and we remain the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right.

Then we have today, because many people were driven from the middle class into poverty, more people today living in poverty than almost any time in the modern history of America. How does that happen?

Despite a very significant improvement in the economy since President Bush left office, real unemployment is not 5.5 percent, it is 11 percent. Youth unemployment, which we never talk about, is 17 percent, and African-American youth unemployment is much higher than that.

Throughout this country, a significant number of young people have given up on the dream of college. Here we are in a competitive global economy and we have bright young people from working-class families and they are looking at the cost of college and they are saying, Sorry, ain't for me. I am not going to come out of school $50,000, $60,000 in debt. What sense does that make when we are engaged in enormous economic competition with countries all over the world?

Then we have another group of young people graduating college or graduate school in debt to the tune of $50,000, $100,000. I talked to a young doctor in Burlington, VT, some months ago. She graduated medical school $300,000 in debt for the crime of wanting to be a primary care physician. Does that make any sense?

While the middle class continues to disappear, the people on top and the largest corporations have never had it so good. That is the other reality of America today. The middle class shrinks--a whole lot of people living in poverty, people have no health insurance, kids can't afford to go to college--but people on top are doing phenomenally well.

Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. And since the Wall Street crash of 2008, over 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Over 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent.

Corporate profits are soaring. The stock market is up. CEOs now earn 270 times what their average employee makes. Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. And the wealthiest family in this country alone--one family--owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the American family. Does that sound like the America we want to see, that we believe in, where so few have so much and so many have so little?

It is an extraordinary fact that between 1985 and 2013, the bottom 90 percent of our people lost $10.7 trillion in wealth that it otherwise would have had if the distribution of wealth had remained at the same level as it was in 1985. If we had the same distribution of wealth, the bottom 90 percent would have had close to $11 trillion more wealth. Meanwhile, the top one-tenth of 1 percent experienced an $8 trillion increase in wealth as the distribution of wealth became increasingly unequal.

What a phenomenon, this huge transfer of wealth from working people to the millionaires and billionaires.

Now let me get to the budget, because when we deal with a budget, we can't ignore that reality. If the rich get much richer and the middle class declines, it makes no sense at all to say we are going to give more tax breaks to the rich and we are going to cut programs for the middle class and working families. This is the Robin Hood principle in reverse. It is taking from the middle class and working families and giving to the very rich.

I worry very much that this is exactly what will be in the Republican budget that we debate next week in committee. I expect--and I may be mistaken and I hope I am but I don't think I am--I expect the Republican budget in the Senate this year will be very close to what the so-called Ryan budget did last year which was passed by the Republican House. There may be nuances of differences, I don't know, but I think it will be very close.

Let me tell my colleagues what the Republican budget will be about. The Republican budget will oppose ending tax loopholes for the wealthy and large corporations--loopholes that allow billionaire hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than electricians and schoolteachers. I expect that the Republican budget will continue to allow major profitable corporations such as General Electric, Verizon, and many others to go through a given year paying absolutely nothing in Federal income tax. I expect that the Republican budget will attempt to voucherize Medicare--end it as we know it to be--and I expect there will be massive cuts in Medicaid, education, nutrition programs, Pell grants, and the kinds of programs that working families absolutely depend upon.

We need a very different budget than what I believe the Republicans are going to propose. We need a budget that stands for the working families of this country and not just the millionaires and billionaires.

Let me tell my colleagues what that budget should include, although I don't think the Republican budget will include these ideas. When real unemployment is 11 percent, we need a budget that creates millions of decent-paying jobs. In my view, and in the view of many economists, the fastest way to create those jobs and address a real national crisis is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure--our roads, our bridges, water systems, wastewater plants, airports, dams, levees, and expand broadband to rural America. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to invest over $3 trillion to rebuild our infrastructure. We are not going to do that, but we need to make a major investment. When we do that, we make America more productive and safer, and we also create millions of jobs.

A serious budget needs to make our Tax Code fairer and to bring substantial new revenue into Federal coffers. We need a budget that ends unfair tax loopholes and asks the wealthiest people and largest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

Today at the hearing we had in the Committee on the Budget, a Republican witness testified that he thought that corporate taxes should be zero--zero. Well, that does not make a lot of sense to me.

We need a budget that understands when the Federal minimum wage is a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour, we need to substantially raise the minimum wage. We need to deal with the overtime scandal we currently see. We need to raise wages for low- and moderate-income families.

At a time when large numbers of our young people have given up on the dream of higher education and college is increasingly unaffordable, we need a budget that says to every kid in America that if you have the ability and you have the desire, you are going to get a higher education regardless of the income of your family. At a time when corporations have shipped millions of decent-paying jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need a budget that rewards companies for investing in America and for creating jobs here, not abroad.

At a time when millions of people still lack health insurance, we need a budget that ensures quality, affordable health care for all Americans by supporting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, strengthening Medicare and Medicaid, and extending funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, community health centers, and the National Health Service Corporation.

Let me conclude by making this simple and obvious point: A budget is about priorities. A budget is about choices. And what we have to determine is whether our budget coming out of the Senate is a budget that represents the needs of the rich and large corporations and their wealthy campaign donors, or whether we produce a budget which represents the needs of working families and the middle class and the millions and millions of families who are struggling economically to keep their heads above water.

I hope we make the right choice. I hope we stand with the working families of this country.

I yield the floor.

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