The Budget

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by saying that I get a little bit tired of being lectured to about deficit reduction and how significant a problem our deficit is by many folks who voted for legislation time after time over the last 10 years that, in fact, has caused the deficit crisis we are in right now.

Some of us voted against the war in Iraq, which will end up costing $2 trillion to $3 trillion, unpaid for. Some of us voted against the Wall Street bailout. Some of us voted against tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Some of us voted against the Medicare Part D prescription drug program written by the insurance companies. Those four programs have resulted in trillions of dollars in debt. To those people who voted for that, please don't lecture us about the deficit crisis. We didn't help to cause it.

The debate over deficit reduction comes at a very unusual moment in American economic history. While the middle class is in rapid decline, while real median family income is going down, while wages for millions of workers are going down, while poverty is increasing, we also are at a moment when the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good. Over a recent 25-year period, 80 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent.

Today, as a nation with the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country, we have the 400 wealthiest people in America--just 400 people--owning more wealth than the bottom 125 million. When we deal with deficit reduction, we have to take into consideration the decline of the middle class, the increase in poverty, and the growing disparity in income and wealth between the people on top and everybody else.

Given the reality of record-breaking corporate profits and the increasing wealth of the people on top, it should surprise no one that poll after poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans want our deficit crisis to be addressed through shared sacrifice--not just coming down heavily on working families and the middle class, the children, the sick, and the elderly. The American people, in poll after poll, have said they want everybody to contribute and help toward deficit reduction, not just the most vulnerable people in this society.

Unfortunately, the House-passed budget moves us in exactly the wrong direction. It would end Medicare as we know it by giving senior citizens inadequate vouchers to buy health insurance from private companies. Seniors would, on average, see their out-of-pocket expenses double by about $6,000 a year. Seniors at the age of 65 would be given an $8,000 voucher to go to a private insurance company.

Now, you tell me--if you are 65 and you are suffering with cancer or another illness--what an $8,000 plan will do for you. It would be a disaster.

Furthermore, the Republican plan would cut, over 10 years, $770 billion from Medicaid, vastly increasing the number of uninsured and threatening the long-term care of the elderly who live in nursing homes.

The Republican budget would also make savage cuts in education, nutrition, affordable housing, infrastructure, environmental protection, and virtually every program on which low- and moderate-income Americans depend. With all of the focus on spending cuts, however, the Republican budget does nothing to reduce unnecessary military spending at a time when our military budget is triple what it was in 1997.

What people in Vermont tell me is what people in Oregon are telling the Presiding Officer--that the time is now to begin accelerating our troops out of Afghanistan. It is the right thing to do public policy-wise, and it is certainly the right thing to do for our budget.

Here is the kicker of this whole thing: The House Republican budget does not ask the wealthiest people in this country, whose tax rates are now the lowest on record, to contribute one dime more for deficit reduction--not one dime more. Yet we can voucherize Medicare, slash Medicaid, education, infrastructure, and environmental protection, but to ask the wealthiest people in this country to pay one penny more in taxes after they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks, my goodness, we can't do that.

I have another issue--and not just with the Republicans. It has to do, frankly, with the Democrats and with President Obama. Will the President demand that any deficit reduction agreement end the Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy? Will he stand up and be tall and fight for that important principle? Will the President fight to eliminate corporate tax loopholes? Will he end the absurd policies that allow the wealthy and large corporations to avoid taxes by establishing phony addresses in offshore tax havens? We are losing about $100 billion a year from the corporations and the wealthy who stash their money in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

My hope is--and I think the American people are hoping--that the President will stand firm in fighting to end those absurd loopholes. As a Vermont Senator and a member of the Budget Committee, I will not support a plan to reduce the deficit that does not call for shared sacrifice. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction plan must come from increased revenue from the wealthy and large corporations. We must have the top 2 percent of income earners, who currently pay the lowest upper income tax rates on record, start paying their fair share. Instead of making it harder for working families to send their kids to college, we must end the foreign tax shelters that enable the wealthy and large corporations to avoid U.S. taxes.

With that, I yield the floor.

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