Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010

Floor Speech

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I would appreciate it if at the end of 9 1/2 minutes you could alert me, please.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will do so.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by adding Senators WHITEHOUSE and BEGICH as cosponsors of this amendment No. 4809.

As I think many people know, I have been extremely critical of the agreement struck between the President and the Republican leadership. I have spoken out against it and I voted against cloture just yesterday. It is one thing to be critical of a proposal; it is another thing to come up with a better alternative, and I think I have done that today.

I believe the amendment I am offering is a significant improvement over the agreement struck between the President and the Republican leadership, and I hope very much we can get strong bipartisan support for it. Let me very briefly tell my colleagues what it does.

First, as I think most Americans appreciate, at a time of a recordbreaking deficit and a $13.7 trillion national debt, it makes very little sense to be providing huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in our country. It drives up the national debt and forces our kids to pay higher taxes in the future to pay off that national debt. This amendment ends--it ends--all the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans beginning on January 1 of this year.

What does it do with the savings? That is perhaps the most important point I wish to make. Over the long term, this amendment would devote half the revenue raised by this provision--by eliminating the tax breaks for the top 2 percent--to reduce the deficit. Half that money goes to deficit reduction, which I hope appeals to many of my Republican friends who have consistently and appropriately talked about high deficits and the danger of those high deficits to this country. Half the savings by eliminating tax breaks for the wealthy goes to deficit reduction. What does the other half go to? It seems to me that while we should be and must be concerned about the deficit, we must also understand we continue to be in a major recession. Millions of our fellow Americans are unemployed. We have to do everything we can to create decent-paying jobs and put those people back to work.

What the other half of the savings does is invests in our infrastructure. I don't have to tell anybody here our infrastructure is crumbling. So it will go to repairing our roads, our bridges, schools, dams, culverts, housing, and transforming our Nation's energy sector. We need to put billions of dollars into building a 21st century rail system. When we do that, we not only create jobs now--and this is the fastest way I know to create jobs--we make our country more productive and internationally competitive in the future. If we do not build our infrastructure, if it continues to crumble--and the engineers out there tell us we need trillions of dollars of investment--we are going to lose our place in the global economy. So we have to invest in infrastructure. Half the savings does just that.

In addition, this amendment replaces the payroll tax holiday with a 1-year extension of the Making Work Pay credit. In other words, we are giving targeted tax breaks to the middle class, not reducing payroll taxes for millionaires and Members of Congress. This proposal would not endanger Social Security and, in fact, it would go to the people who most need it. It would be a lot fairer because lower income people would do better. Upper income people would not get it.

It also addresses a concern I think many Americans have; that is, diverting money away from the payroll tax endangers the long-term solvency of Social Security. As Eric Kingson, the cochair of the Strengthen Social Security campaign, an organization representing tens of millions of senior citizens and workers, recently said:

Extending and expanding the Making Work Pay tax credit is far superior to the payroll tax cut for most Americans. The Making Work Pay tax credit is more stimulative, fairer in distribution, imposes no new administrative costs to employers and includes over 6 million public sector employees who will receive nothing from the payroll tax cut. And it doesn't run the risk of undermining Social Security's financing and the economic security of working Americans .....

So it addresses that issue as well.

Third, this amendment addresses another issue I know a lot of people in this country have concern about; that is, the estate tax giveaway in the underlying bill, by inserting in its place the 2009 estate tax rate for 2 years. Let's be clear. The estate tax only applies to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. What we are doing now is not lowering estate tax and raising exemptions which only benefit the very wealthiest people in this country; what we are doing now is bringing us back to the 2009 estate tax rates for 2 years.

Further, this amendment addresses an issue that, to me, is very important, and I know to many Members here, because we had a lot of support for it when I brought up this amendment last week. As the Presiding Officer well knows, our seniors who are on Social Security and disabled vets have not received a COLA in the last 2 years. A lot of those folks are trying to get by on $14,000, $15,000, $16,000 a year. What this amendment also includes is a $250 COLA for over 57 million American senior citizens, veterans, and persons with disabilities. Without this provision, seniors, as I mentioned, would be going through their second year without a COLA, and I think that is unfair.

Further, of course, this amendment would keep all of what I consider to be the positive aspects of the President's agreement with the Republicans. Obviously, it would extend middle-class tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. It would extend unemployment insurance for 13 months. It would extend the child tax credit, earned-income tax credit, college tax credit expansions included in the Recovery Act.

So I think what we are doing is bringing forth a far better proposal than the agreement struck between the Republicans and the President.

Let me summarize. It ends tax breaks for the rich, uses half that money for deficit reduction and half that money to create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. It would replace the payroll tax holiday, which many people have concerns about; diverting money away from Social Security with a 1-year extension of the Making Work Pay credit--much more targeted to low- and moderate-income people, not to Members of Congress and the richest people in this country and not threatening Social Security.

This amendment would strike the estate tax proposal in the underlying bill, and insert the 2009 estate tax rates for 2 years. That is a much fairer proposal than giving even more tax breaks for the very wealthiest people in this country.

Lastly, this amendment would provide a $250 COLA for over 57 million American senior citizens and disabled veterans and people with disabilities. It also includes an extension of the middle-class tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans, an extension of unemployment insurance for 13 months, an extension of the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, and the college tax credit expansion.

This is the alternative many Americans wish to see. It creates jobs, cuts the deficit, and it is much fairer than the underlying bill we will vote on.

MOTION TO SUSPEND

With that, I move to suspend rule XXII for the purposes of proposing and considering amendment No. 4809 to the House message to accompany H.R. 4853, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is pending.

Is there a sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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