Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I rise to discuss the budget blueprint we are debating here in this Chamber and that we will be voting on here on the floor of the Senate shortly. In evaluating this budget, this budget produced by my Republican colleagues, I am asking the question: Is this a budget designed to work for working Americans? That is just a simple core question.

If your vision of America is that you want families to thrive, then you are going to design a budget for those working families to thrive. So that is a key question as we discuss this blueprint. It is certainly clear that a budget designed to work for working Americans means jobs. It means quality, affordable education. It means retirement security. It means financial fairness for consumers. It means fixing a Tax Code that is stuffed full of favors for the wealthy and well-connected and instead directing resources to establish a foundation for working families to do well and provide us all the foundation for raising their children so they can get a good start in life.

I thought we should go through and evaluate how this budget performs on basic items related to the success of working families. We have here a little scorecard so we can keep track. The middle-class budget report card, Senate GOP budget. How does it do?

Well, let's start at looking at investment in infrastructure. Europe is spending 5 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure. China is spending 10 percent. In America, only 2 percent. We are vastly underbuilding our infrastructure, which means we are failing to create good-paying jobs now, which is a foundation for the success of working families, and we are imperiling the success of our future economy by failing to make this investment.

Indeed, we have a huge infrastructure deficit. There is no effort to address this deficit in this budget. Oh, the budget does have symbolic language that recognizes theoretically the need to invest in infrastructure but does not direct resources to that effect.

So in committee and on the floor, we have offered amendments to say: Let's make a real investment in this effort, not just happy words.

Well, in committee, it was rejected on a party-line vote, 10 to 12. Then yesterday on the floor Senator Sanders offered an amendment that would take and direct a substantial investment to taking--closing egregious tax loopholes--and directing those resources to building the infrastructure in America. It would create 9 million jobs across this country. And what happened? The Republicans resoundingly rejected it.

Why is that the case? Why do they not see the need to invest in infrastructure in America--voting, as we have, 45 Democrats saying yes, let's invest in infrastructure, let's create jobs, and 52 of my colleagues across the aisle saying, No way, no how, we are not going to do the important work to address the deficit in infrastructure?

So, unfortunately, this budget gets an F when it comes to infrastructure.

Surely, as we turn to education, we will find this budget does a somewhat better job. We all understand that early childhood education has an incredible return, so surely this budget invests in Head Start to give our children of challenged families the ability to start on a path to success. We know we have a world knowledge economy in which education is essential. So, surely, this budget provides for more eligible children to participate in the Head Start Program.

But if that was your assumption, you will be sorely disappointed, because this budget makes cuts to Head Start that would kick 110,000 children off the program over a 10-year period. It is direct damage to the success of 110,000 children, and that is before you combine it with sequestration cuts. At that point the estimate is it would cut 620,000 American children out of Head Start over this coming decade. That is just wrong.

Let's turn to higher education. One of the biggest stresses for American families is the galloping inflation in tuition and the declining ability of Pell grants to cover a small portion of that tuition for our most financially challenged families. So, surely, this budget invests in Pell grants. I certainly would have expected it to. But, indeed, we find it cuts $101 billion over 10 years out of Pell grants. In other words, this budget is designed to continue to close the doors of opportunity for our students from financially challenged families across this country.

I believe in opportunity. I believe in the American dream. But this budget, the Republican budget, believes in closing the doors on opportunity in this Nation. That is just wrong.

Well, Pell grants aren't the only component of higher education that helps make college affordable. Another piece is low-interest loans. Most families are going to have to borrow to help finance higher education. In fact, of those students who have college debt, the average debt today, coming out of college, is about $26,000. That is the average. Many of our children have debts at $50,000 or $75,000 or $100,000 coming out of a 4-year college. That kind of feels like the size of a home mortgage as a millstone around their neck. So surely this budget lowers interest rates on our students' loans so they can refinance their loans to take advantage of the current low interest rates. Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to do, to create opportunity?

We had a vote on this floor for an amendment to do just that, to enable our students to refinance, to take advantage of the current lower interest rates--and my Republican colleagues defeated that amendment 53 to 46.

Not only that, but their budget has a provision that gets rid of the no-interest period when a student on a Stafford loan is in college and gets rid of the 6-month grace period--no-interest rate period--when a student graduates from college. This is estimated, for a student who is starting college in 2015, to increase the cost of their interest payments by about $5,000 to $7,000 as they repay their loan.

So, Head Start, savaged in this budget--just simply wrong. Pell grants, savaged in this budget--just simply wrong. Interest accruing increased--and that is just wrong.

It is clear there is no commitment to education in this budget, the foundation for opportunity. This budget, no question about it, that is an F on education.

Let's turn to another area. Hopefully we can get a better grade. Food security. Food security for American families. A lot of families are having a very tough time putting food on the table. But what do we find? We find this budget has a $660 billion reduction over 10 years in programs that support low-income Americans, explicitly including the SNAP program--the SNAP program, the name we now use for food stamps.

There is a quote attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette, who was the wife of Louis XVI. During the French Revolution, she was reported to have said, when told that the citizens were protesting the high price of bread because they were spending 50 percent of their income just on bread: ``Let them eat cake.''

That has become a symbol of a ruler completely out of touch with the challenges faced by ordinary citizens.

So what do we have in this budget? We have in this budget provisions that say to hungry children across America, to children of challenged families across America: Let them go hungry.

So here, too, only one grade is earned by this budget in food security, and that is an F for failing our children on food.

Let's turn from our children to our seniors on Medicare, for example. This budget recreates the Medicare doughnut hole. This is the doughnut hole seniors fall into when they get no coverage to help them buy drugs after an initial period in which they got some subsidies, and then they fall off a cliff into the doughnut hole.

Well, 53,000 seniors would pay more for their drugs in just my State next year. That is about 5 million seniors across the course of this country who are now going to be ensnared in this doughnut hole.

Moreover, this budget cuts $430 billion out of Medicare. So whether it is getting rid of key provisions designed to help our seniors, such as eliminating the doughnut hole or simply solid investment in our health care program for seniors, this budget too gets a failing grade. That is an F for failing our seniors on Medicare.

How about consumer protection? We have made a lot of progress in consumer protection. We used to have consumer protection split between a whole series of agencies. Of course, the key agency in all of it was the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has monetary personnel in the penthouse--that was really what they were paying most attention to--and folks kept coming to the Federal Reserve and saying: Hey, there are these new predatory home mortgages that are going to do enormous damage to families across the country, and the Federal Reserve had no response to this. They did not act. In fact, they had consumer protection locked in the basement of the Federal Reserve, and they threw away the key. They were simply totally uninterested.

So back in 2009 and 2010, we said: Let's consolidate these programs that have responsibility for consumer protection to one agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and let's make sure this agency has the funding, like every other financial regulator, so that it can't be essentially starved to death by those legislators who, on behalf of powerful special interests, don't believe in consumer protection. The CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has returned $5 billion back to consumers who were cheated, and it has prevented billions more from being stripped away through other predatory practices.

So you would think that all 100 Members of this Senate would stand and say: We want a budget that strengthens the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because it does so much that is right in America in ending cheating, ending predatory practices against working Americans.

But, no, what we have in this budget is an effort to eliminate the financial independence of the CFPB. If you can think about it as oxygen to a scuba diver--folks want to be able to step on that air hose or constrict that air hose, starve that agency to death. So this budget gets an F on consumer protection.

Well, certainly, since this budget does so much to cut food, cut Head Start, cut Pell grants, increase interest rates, fails to invest in infrastructure, and it does so much damage to our seniors on Medicare, certainly it is asking for some sacrifice from our richest Americans, some bit of sacrifice from the corporate fat cats who are getting egregious tax loophole benefits.

In particular, one loophole that I think drives every American citizen nuts is a loophole that subsidizes the shipment of our jobs overseas. Can't we all agree to shut down that loophole?

Well, you would think so. But we had a vote on shutting down this loophole in committee, and a party-line vote said: No, we are going to leave this loophole in place.

So in terms of protecting American jobs by shutting down a loophole that funds our adversaries overseas or our competitors overseas, this budget gets an F.

How about tax fairness for the middle class? I have heard a lot of happy words about fighting for the middle class. Is there something in this budget that proceeds to say the best off are going to pay their fair share so that middle-class Americans get a better break?

In 1995, the richest Americans paid about 30 percent of their adjusted gross income in taxes. But by 2012, that rate had dropped to 17 percent.

So does this budget rectify that? Does this budget say folks at the top end should pay their fair share? No, it doesn't, not one slim dime extracted on behalf of fairness from the best off in our society.

So what we have here, attack the middle class, no tax fairness, so there is an F grade on tax fairness.

Attack the middle class in every possible way. Attack the children, attack food security, fail on infrastructure, fail on consumer protection, and proceed to protect all the egregious provisions for the very best off in our society.

It is unfortunate to see such a dramatically terrible budget put before

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this body. I think the American citizens can only be deeply disappointed to see a budget put forward intended to accelerate and increase inequality in our Nation, destroy our jobs, ship them overseas, underfund food security, failure on investment for our infrastructure, a failing grade all around.
We can do much better.

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