Court Security Improvement Act of 2007
COURT SECURITY IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - April 19, 2007)
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THE ECONOMY
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we hear much from the Bush administration and our Republican friends, almost on a daily basis, about how wonderfully our economy is doing. I recall not so long ago being at a Budget Committee hearing when we heard the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Paulson, indicating in fact that the economy is doing ``just marvelous.''
Yet, for obvious reasons, the American people do not seem to agree with the Bush administration or with our Republican friends as to how well the economy is doing. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record segments of two polls that were recently released, one by CBS News and one by Gallup.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
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Mr. SANDERS. When the American people were asked by CBS News the question, ``Do you think the economy is getting better, getting worse or staying about the same?'' 11 percent of the American people said the economy is getting better, 44 percent thought it was getting worse, and 44 percent thought it was about the same.
Then, interestingly, in that same poll, when the American people were asked by CBS the question, ``Over the past 10 years, do you think life for middle class Americans has gotten better or worse?'' 30 percent said life has gotten better, 59 percent, almost a 2-to-1 margin, said life is getting worse, and 7 percent said the same.
Technology has exploded in recent years. Our workers are far more productive than used to be the case. Yet by a 2-to-1 margin the American people have said that life for the middle class is getting worse, not better.
In terms of the Gallup Poll, the Gallup people, from April 2 to April 5, asked some very interesting questions that we very often do not speak about here on the floor of the Senate. In my view, what we have seen since President Bush has been in office, in a general sense, is the shrinking of the middle class, an increase in poverty, and a growing gap between the rich and the poor--not something we talk about terribly often on the floor of the Senate, not something that is talked about terribly often in the corporate media. But here is the question, very interestingly, that Gallup asked the American people, between April 2 and April 5: ``Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?'' Answer: Distribution is fair, 29 percent; should be more evenly distributed, 66 percent.
Then the next question they asked, which was rather a clumsy question, I thought, and I was surprised by the answer, but this was the question. Question: ``People feel differently about how far a government should go. Here is a phrase which some people believe in and some don't. Do you think our Government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?''
That is a pretty clumsy question. Do you know what the answer was to that rather clumsy question? Yes, should redistribute wealth, 49 percent; no, should not, 47 percent.
I mention this poll because it is important to understand that despite a lot of the rhetoric we hear from the White House and on the floor of the Senate, the American people understand that in terms of our economy, something is fundamentally wrong. They understand it because they are living the experience of working longer hours for lower wages; of working day after day, trying to pay the bills for their family, trying to send their kids to college, trying to take care of health care, trying to provide childcare for their kids. They know the reality of the economy because they are the economy.
Every single day the people of our country are seeing an economy which is forcing them in many instances to work longer hours for lower wages, an economy in which they wonder how their kids are going to be able to go to college, able to afford college; an economy in which they worry that for the first time in the modern history of our country, their children will see a lower standard of living than they do. That is the reality of the economy, in the eyes, I believe, of millions of American workers.
That perception that the American worker has of the economy is, in my view, the correct perception of what is going on. Since George W. Bush has been President, more than 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty, including 1 million children. This country now has the very dubious distinction of having by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major industrialized country on Earth. How do you have a great economy, a booming economy, when 5 million more Americans have slipped into poverty? Median income has declined in our country for 5 years in a row. Americans understand that the economy is not doing well when the personal savings rate is below zero, which has not happened since the Great Depression. How do we talk about a strong economy when 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance since President Bush has been in office, and when we now have, unbelievably, 47 million Americans who have no health insurance at all?
How can anybody come to the floor of the Senate, or anybody in the Bush administration talk about a strong economy, when we have 47 million Americans who have no health insurance at all; when 35 million Americans in our country, the richest country in the history of the world, struggled to put food on the table last year; and the number of the poorest, most hungry Americans keeps getting larger? The American people understand this is not an economy that is working for ordinary people. In this economy today, more and more of our brothers and sisters, our fellow Americans, are going hungry. Let's not talk about a booming economy when we have children in America who are hungry.
Mr. President, you and I have heard, over and over again, people talking about the importance of education for this country. Yet millions of working families do not know how they are going to be able to send their kids to college when the cost of college education is soaring, when the average person graduating a 4-year college leaves that school $20,000 in debt, when hundreds of thousands of young people are now giving up the dream of going to college because they don't want to come out deeply in debt? How do we talk about a booming economy when so many of our young people, some of the brightest, most able of our young people, are giving up the dream of going to college? How do you compete on the international and global economy if so many of our young people are not able to get the kind of education they need?
When we talk about a booming economy, how does that correlate with the fact that our manufacturing infrastructure is falling apart, that since President Bush has been in office we have lost over 3 million good manufacturing jobs, and when people go out to the store to shop, when they look at the product, they know where that product is manufactured today? It is not manufactured in the United States. Over and over again they see it is manufactured in China.
We have a trade deficit now of over $700 billion. In my small State of Vermont, not a manufacturing center, we lost 20 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the last 5 years and that phenomenon is going on all over this country. How do you have a booming economy when we are losing huge numbers of good-paying manufacturing jobs and we are on the cusp of losing millions of good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs?
Three million fewer American workers today have pension coverage than when President Bush took office. Half of private sector American workers have no pension coverage whatsoever. How does that speak to a strong economy? It was not so many years ago that workers understood that when they left their job, there would be a defined pension available to them. They knew what they were getting. Today, those days seem like ancient history. Fewer and fewer workers have solid pensions on which to depend.
What is important to understand is, while poverty is increasing, while the middle class is shrinking, while more and more people are losing their health insurance, while hunger is growing in America, while good-paying jobs are going to China, the truth is not all is bad in the American economy. We have to acknowledge that. Are there some people who in fact are doing well? The answer is yes. Today, the simple truth is the top 1 percent of the families in our country have not had it so good since the 1920s. When that poll I mentioned from Gallup talks about the American people wanting to seek an understanding of the unfair distribution of wealth, this is precisely what they are referring to.
Today in the United States we have by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth. Let me highlight very briefly a recent study done by Professor Emmanuel Saez from the University of California-Berkeley and Professor Thomas Piketty from the Paris School of Economics. This is what they found. In 2005, while average incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans declined by $172, the wealthiest one one-hundredth of 1 percent reported an average income of $25.7 million, a 1-year increase of $4.4 million.
In other words, for the people at the very top, a huge increase in their income, while 90 percent of the American people saw a decline. The gap between the rich and the poor, the rich and the middle class, continues to grow wider.
The top 1 percent of Americans received, in 2005, the largest share of national income since 1928. And some people may remember what happened in 1929. The top 300,000 Americans now earn nearly as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
You and I have heard many of our friends here on the other side of the aisle talk about how much the wealthy are paying in taxes. My, my, my. Yet the reason for that is what we are seeing is, with the decline of the middle class, a huge increase in the percentage of the income being made by the people on top. Let me repeat it. The top 300,000 Americans now earn nearly as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Is that the kind of country we really want to become, with so few having so much and so many having so little? I do not think that is the America most people want to see us evolve into, an oligarchic form of society. That is wrong.
According to Forbes magazine, the collective net worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans increased by $120 billion last year to $1.25 trillion--$1.25 trillion for the wealthiest 400 Americans. That is an astounding number. The reality is that in America today, we have the people on the top who have more income, in some cases, than they are going to be able to spend in a thousand lifetimes, while people in Vermont, people in Ohio, people in Minnesota, people all over our country are struggling so hard to provide basic needs for their families.
One of the reasons the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider and why we now have by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country is due to the passage of massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires since President Bush has been in office.
Now, you stop and you take a look at the needs of the people of our country in the most basic sense.
Hunger is increasing. Well, what do we think? Should we eliminate hunger in America or do you give tax breaks to billionaires? I don't think too many people would disagree with what we should be doing.
We have a crisis in affordable childcare in America. We have single moms, working families, both parents going to work, trying to provide well for their 2-year-old, 3-year-old. They cannot provide affordable childcare. The Federal Government provides totally inadequate childcare. Do we increase funding for childcare or do we give tax breaks to millionaires?
We are all aware of the scandal at Walter Reed Hospital. We are all aware of the outrageously inadequate way we treat our veterans, men and women who put their lives on the line defending this country. Yet when they come home from Iraq, there is inadequate care at the hospital at Walter Reed and inadequate care and waiting lines at VA hospitals all over America. What is our priority? Do we take care of our veterans or do we give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires?
In America, millions of children do not have any health insurance. What are our priorities?
People are paying 50 percent of their limited income for housing because we are not building affordable housing. What are our priorities?
We have a major crisis in global warming. We should be investing in sustainable energy, energy efficiency, not giving tax breaks to billionaires. What are our priorities?
Let me conclude by saying that I think the American people, on issue after issue, are far ahead of where we are in Congress. So we are going to have to work very hard to catch up to where the American people are. I think we should begin the process of doing that.
We need to fundamentally change our national priorities. We have to have the courage now to stand up to the wealthiest people and the largest corporations and say to those people: The free ride is over.
Our job is to represent the middle class, working families, the lower income people who are not getting justice from the Congress. When we stand and do the right thing for the middle class and working families of this country, I believe we are going to see a significant increase in the respect this body receives.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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