Budget Negotiations

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the issue that is under discussion in Washington on deficit reduction is of enormous consequence. It will impact not only our generation but the decisions reached will impact our children and our grandchildren and the future of our country. It is terribly important the American people become engaged in this debate. I fear if they do not, if we leave the discussions totally to folks inside the beltway, the results will be a disaster for tens of millions of working families, for the elderly, for the sick, for the children, for the environment, and for the future of our Nation.

So my plea today is for the American people to get heavily involved, to get on the phone and call their Senators and their Members of Congress to demand not that the budget deal that is reached is a big deal or a small deal or a medium-sized deal but that the budget agreement that is reached is a fair deal--one that reflects the values of our country, one that understands what is going on in the economy today, and one that addresses the issue of how we got into this horrendous deficit situation in the first place.

When we talk about a fair deal, one has to understand what the American economy is today, and that is that we have a middle class that is collapsing; we have poverty increasing; and we have a growing gap between the very wealthiest people in our country and everybody else. To my mind, at a time when the rich are doing phenomenally well, when corporate profits are extremely high, when the effective tax rate for the wealthy is the lowest in modern history, and when we have many corporations making billions of dollars in profits and paying nothing in taxes, it would be immoral and bad economic policy to move toward a deficit-reduction approach which balances the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the sick, and the poor, and that does not ask the wealthiest people or the largest corporations to contribute one nickel to deficit reduction. That would be absolutely wrong.

Mr. President, one of the areas that concerns me very much is that in the midst of all of this deficit-reduction talk, seemingly out of nowhere comes the idea we must make major cuts in Social Security benefits. That is absolutely wrong for a number of reasons.

No. 1, Social Security has not contributed one nickel toward our deficit. The Social Security trust fund has a $2.6 trillion surplus. Social Security can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. So it is wrong, wrong, wrong to make significant cuts in Social Security a part of deficit reduction. It is wrong because Social Security hasn't contributed to the deficit; it is wrong because President Obama specifically campaigned against any cuts toward Social Security; and it is wrong because cutting Social Security would hurt in a very significant way millions of the most vulnerable people in our country.

There is a discussion going on about moving toward a so-called Chained CPI, which would be used to determine Social Security's annual COLA--a new formulation on the COLA. Let me be very clear. When I was in the House, I introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen the Social Security COLA because I believed then, and I believe now, the current COLA is inadequate and unfair to seniors because it does not take into account the high cost of health care and prescription drugs.

In my view, the current COLA formulation understates what seniors and disabled vets should be getting. What some are proposing in terms of moving toward a Chained CPI would be to move us in exactly the wrong direction. It would not adequately reflect the purchasing needs of seniors but, in fact, would underestimate those needs.

The Social Security Administration's Chief Actuary estimates the effects of the so-called Chained CPI would be that beneficiaries who retire at age 65 and receive average benefits would get $560 less a year at age 75 than they would under current law. Around here $560 may not seem like a lot of money. But if you are 75 years of age and are bringing in $14,000 or $16,000 a year, and you are trying to pay for prescription drugs or health care, $560 is, in fact, a lot of money. Worse, if we moved toward that Chained CPI, Social Security benefits, by the time a senior reached 85, he or she would receive $1,000 less a year, which would be a 6.5-percent cut in their benefits.

So we are in an unusual moment in that the people who helped cause this recession--the greedy people on Wall Street whose recklessness, whose greed, whose illegal behavior drove us into this recession--are not being asked to contribute one nickel toward deficit reduction. They were bailed out by the American people, and in many respects they are now doing better than they did before the Wall Street crash.

Many here are saying, my Republicans friends especially: No, Wall Street CEOs making tens of millions a year, who helped cause this recession, do not have to contribute one penny toward deficit reduction. But if you are an 85-year-old senior citizen who is struggling to take care of basic necessities, well, my goodness, we are going to have to do deficit reduction on your back.

That is not what America is supposed to be about, and that is not what the American people want. Poll after poll suggests the American people believe we should move toward deficit reduction based on the concept of shared sacrifice; that we are all in this together.

Even if you are a millionaire and you make a whole lot of campaign contributions, and, yes, if you are a billionaire and you have lobbyists running all over Capitol Hill, you know what. You are going to have to help us with deficit reduction. And, yes, given the fact that we have major corporation after major corporation--oil companies and Wall Street--making billions of dollars in profits and in some cases paying nothing in taxes, guess what. We are going to do away with those loopholes so they start contributing toward deficit reduction. Given the fact we have tripled military funding since 1997, yes, we are going to have to make some cuts in military spending.

Let me conclude by simply saying: Yes, we have to reduce our deficit and deal with our national debt. But the issue is not a big deal or a small deal, the issue must be a fair deal--one which protects Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the needs of working families, and a deficit-reduction approach which asks the wealthiest people and the largest corporations to also participate in deficit reduction.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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