Executive Session
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we are clearly at a momentous moment in American history. We are getting tens of thousands of people visiting our Web site, sanders.senate.gov, every day. People want to know what is going on. As the longest serving Independent in history in Congress, let me give my view of where we are right now.
First, I do wish to say I get a little bit tired of hearing some of our pundits and some of the politicians around here blithely talking about trillions of dollars in cuts. I see some of these guys making huge salaries on TV saying: Why don't they just come to an agreement--$2 trillion in cuts, $3 trillion in cuts. That may be OK if one is making a whole lot of money on television doing a television show, but, clearly, those people have not been talking to real Americans.
Let me go over what the media and many of us in Congress have not been talking about, and that is what the impacts of these trillions of dollars of cuts are about. These are not just words on a piece of paper. These are cuts which are going to have devastating impacts on people who are already suffering as a result of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Some people come up with this great idea and they say: The cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security is too high today, seniors and disabled vets are getting too much, and ``noted economists''--I have not heard from these noted economists--think it is too extravagant.
Mr. President, go back to Baltimore and I will go to Vermont and we will ask seniors whether they think the COLAs they are getting now are too extravagant, given the fact they haven't gotten a COLA in the last 2 years. Studies I have seen say not only are the COLAs today not too extravagant for Social Security and disabled vets, they are, in fact, too low because they underestimate the real expenses of seniors, which largely have to do with health care and prescription drugs. The costs are soaring. Any of these pundits or any of these economists who go out and talk to real people and say Social Security COLAs are too high are going to get laughed right out of the room because it isn't true.
If we come forward with this so-called chained CPI, this new formulation for COLAs, this is what it will mean in the real world: If someone is 65 today, when they become 75 in 10 years, that will result in a $560 decline in what they otherwise would have gotten in Social Security benefits, and when they are 85, 20 years from today, that will be a $1,000-a-year decline. I know in DC, with the lobbyists making millions a year, when we talk about $1,000, that is what these guys spend on a fancy dinner. It is laughable. They don't know what goes on in the real world.
There are millions of seniors today hanging on, trying to pay their prescription drug costs, trying to pay their out-of-pocket costs for health care, and $1,000 a year in 20 years is a lot of money for those people. In my view, it would be immoral and unacceptable to do what a number of plans out here are talking about; that is, to cut Social Security benefits very significantly. Clearly, that is where the Republicans are coming from, but it distresses me that I hear the President and Democrats in Congress also talking about that. This Senator will do everything he can to protect this enormously important program which, by the way, just in passing, has not contributed one nickel to the deficit because it is funded by the payroll tax and has a $2.6 trillion surplus. From a moral perspective, we cannot and must not cut Social Security.
There are other geniuses out there who are saying: Well, the way Medicare health care costs are going up, maybe it is time we did something like make major cuts in Medicare, including raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67. What is the problem? What is 2 years? Clearly, those folks have not talked to anybody who has been struggling when they are 60 or 63 and looking forward to Medicare at 65. What happens if a person is a modest-income person and they are 66 years of age and they are dealing with a health care crisis? Maybe they were hospitalized, but the government has said, pundits have said, my Republican friends have said, we are going to raise the Medicare age to 67. Tell me what happens. Let the American people tell me what happens to those millions of people? What are they supposed to do? They get diagnosed with cancer, they have a serious heart problem, they are 66, have no money in the bank, what happens to them? How many of those people will not survive?
Then other people say: Well, Medicaid is an easy program to cut. I mean, let's be politically honest about Medicaid. Medicaid is for lower income people. They don't have lobbyists, they don't make large campaign contributions. Many low-income people don't vote. They are easy to go after. Let's cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid. Let's be clear. According to a recent study at Harvard University, some 45,000 Americans die each year unnecessarily because they don't get to a doctor on time. That is 45,000 Americans, 15 times what we lost in the disaster of 9/11. Every single year those people are dying.
What happens if we make savage cuts in Medicaid? How many children do we throw off the Children's Health Insurance Program? What happens to the older people who are now in nursing homes on Medicaid? What happens to all those people? I guess we don't have to worry about them. Their lobbyists are not here. What happens to people on disability? We turn our back on those people, that is what we do.
One of the very interesting aspects of this whole debate and why the American people are so angry, so frustrated, and so disillusioned is that Congress is moving in a direction of exactly the opposite way that the American people want us to handle deficit reduction. Every single poll I have seen and in my experience in talking to people in the State of Vermont, people want shared sacrifice. People understand that the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well. Over a recent 25-year period, 80 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent. The rich are getting richer, and you know what. Their effective tax rates today are one of the lowest in American history, about 18 percent. So the richest people in America who are doing phenomenally well are paying a lower tax rate than nurses, teachers, and police officers. The American people who see the middle class declining and the rich getting richer are saying: Hey, it is only fair that the wealthiest people help us contribute to deficit reduction. We can't place the whole burden on the backs of people who are getting poorer and poorer as a result of the recession.
The American people also understand we have large multinational corporations, such as General Electric, ExxonMobil, and many others that have been making billions of dollars in profits in recent years and don't pay a nickel in Federal taxes. Then, on top of that, we have the absurdity of a tax policy which allows the wealthy and large corporations to stash huge amounts of money in the Cayman Islands and in other tax havens so we are losing about $100 billion a year in revenue. The American people are looking around and saying: That is crazy. The wealthy and large corporations, which are doing phenomenally well, which are not paying their fair share of taxes, have to contribute to deficit reduction. It cannot simply be on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick, the poor. That is what the American people are saying in poll after poll.
There was a poll that just came out the other day--just one more of many polls. Washington Post: Should the wealthiest people in this country be asked to pay more? That is the question. They asked: In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose the following: raising taxes on Americans with incomes of over $250,000 a year. The response in that poll was 72 percent of the American people said yes, 27 percent said no. Overwhelmingly, every poll we see says the wealthy have to pay more in taxes, and then the same polls say: Protect Social Security, protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, protect education. Here is the irony: We are marching down a path which will do exactly the opposite of what the American people want. Our Republican friends have been absolutely fanatically determined that no matter what happens, billionaires and large corporations will not pay a nickel more in taxes. That has been their religious belief, not a nickel more from the wealthiest people in this country. I have to say Democrats have not been particularly strong in opposition to that nor has the President been strong, with retreat after retreat.
In recent months, we have heard more and more discussion from Democrats about cuts in Social Security, cuts in Medicare, cuts in Medicaid. Now there is apparently a willingness to come forward with a proposal that would include only cuts and no revenue at all--no revenue at all.
I think the American people are angry. I think they are frustrated. I think they are disillusioned because what they want to see happen is deficit reduction done through shared sacrifice, although with the wealthy and large corporations playing their role appears not to be happening.
And when they have said loudly and clearly that we must protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, they are also seeing that it is not happening.
So I just conclude by saying I think there is a path toward deficit reduction which is fair and responsible. It does ask the big-money interests to understand that they are Americans also and they have to play a role in deficit reduction. It does say that at a time when we have tripled military spending since 1997, we have to make significant cuts there as well.
I hope our Republican friends give up their fanatical opposition to asking billionaires and millionaires and large corporations to play a role in deficit reduction. I hope my Democratic friends will stand tall. And I hope that at the end of the day, we have the deficit-reduction program the American people will feel good about.
With that, I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source