CPSC Reform Act

Floor Speech

CPSC REFORM ACT -- (Senate - March 05, 2008)

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me begin by thanking my friend the Senator from Arkansas and my friend the Senator from Maine for their fine work on this very important issue in trying to protect the needs of our kids. I thank them very much.

What I wish to talk about for a short period of time is the budget situation. I am a member of the Budget Committee. The Budget Committee, I believe, will be marking up the budget in committee tomorrow. I believe it will be on the floor sometime next week. This entire process of determining a budget is enormously important, because it reflects the priorities of the American people and it reflects our values. It is no different than any family budget. It has everything to do with where we choose to spend our resources and how we raise our resources. So it is an issue of enormous importance.

As a member of the Budget Committee, I am going to be looking at this budget within a context of four major concerns. No. 1, as I go around my State of Vermont and, in fact, America and talk to a whole lot of people, I think the American people understand, even as Congress and the White House may not, that the middle class in this country today is in the midst of a collapse, and I use that word advisedly. Despite a huge increase in worker productivity, great strides forward in technology, there are tens of millions of American workers today who are working longer hours for lower wages. Poverty in America is increasing. I think of most concern is that moms and dads all over this country are worried that for the first time in the modern history of our country, their kids are going to have a lower standard of living than they do. That is the first sense of reality I look at as we prepare the budget.

The second reality I look at is that while the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing, the people on top have not had it so good since the 1920s. I understand we are not supposed to talk about those things. Not too many people talk about the fact that we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. The rich are getting much richer, while everybody else virtually is seeing the decline in their standard of living. It is not something we are supposed to talk about. I talk about it. I think it should be talked about. I think it is an issue that must be addressed as we look at the budget, because we are going to have to ask a question about how we raise more revenue in order to address many of the unmet needs in our country.

The third issue is just that. The reality is that there are enormous unmet needs in this country. When people say Government shouldn't be involved, I don't know to whom they are talking. Our infrastructure is collapsing. The civil engineers tell us that we have over $1 trillion in unmet needs in terms of our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our wastewater systems. We need to fund those. It isn't going to get any better if we don't improve them, and we will create jobs as we do that.

But it is not only our physical infrastructure. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major Nation on Earth. This is a national disgrace. Eighteen percent of our kids are in poverty. We have other seriously unmet needs. So looking at the budget, we have to look at not only the general collapse of the middle class, the fact that the rich are getting richer and everybody else is getting poorer; we have to understand with regard to our children, our infrastructure, there are huge unmet needs.

The fourth issue we have to deal with is that in the midst of all that, our national debt is soaring. It is now over $9 trillion.

So I look at those four areas as issues that must be dealt with as we move into this new budget.

Since President Bush has been in office, median household income for working-age Americans has declined by almost $2,500. That is part of the collapse of the middle class. The reality is we have lost some 3 million good-paying manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, and in the State of Vermont. We are losing good-paying jobs, in my view, because of a disastrous trade policy which simply encourages corporate America to throw American workers out on the street, move to China, and then bring their products back into this country. So we are losing good-paying jobs.

Since President Bush has been in office, over 8.5 million Americans have lost their health insurance. We are now up to 47 million Americans without any health insurance. Meanwhile, health care premiums have increased by 78 percent.

Under George W. Bush's watch, for the first time since the Great Depression, the personal savings rate has fallen below zero. This simply means that because of dire economic conditions, we are actually as a people spending more money than we are earning. There are millions of people right now who, when they go to the grocery store, don't buy their Wheaties and don't buy their rice and don't buy their milk with cash. They buy it with a credit card. By the way, they are often charged 25, 28 percent for that credit card. We are looking at a foreclosure crisis which is certainly the highest on record, turning the American dream of home ownership into an American nightmare for millions of our people.

So that is No. 1: The middle class is collapsing. There is tremendous economic pressure. People go to the gas station to fill up their gas tank and pay $3.20 for a gallon of gas, while ExxonMobil makes $40 million last year.

People can't afford home heating oil. The price of food is going up. Everywhere you turn there is enormous pressure on working families and on the middle class. That is a reality we must address as we look at this budget.

But as I mentioned earlier, not everybody is in that boat. Let's be honest about it. The wealthiest people in this country have not had it so good since the 1920s. According to the latest figures from the IRS, the top 1 percent--1 percent--earned significantly more income in 2005 than the bottom 50 percent. That means the 300,000 Americans on the top earn more income than do the bottom 150 million Americans. It is the most unequal distribution of income and of wealth in our country of any major country on Earth. That is a reality that must be addressed as we look at the budget.

According to Forbes Magazine, the collective net worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans--400--increased by $290 billion last year, to $1.54 trillion. Incredibly, the top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. That is an issue we have to deal with.

In terms of our national debt, our national debt is now at $9.2 trillion. I think the history books will be pretty clear in that among many other negative characteristics,

President Bush will go down in history as being the most financially and fiscally irresponsible President in the history of this country. The national debt is soaring, and clearly, one of the reasons for that is we spend $12 billion every single month on the war in Iraq which, according to some people, is going to go on forever, I guess--$12 billion a month. And who is paying for it? Our kids and our grandchildren are paying for it, because it is easier to pass the cost of that war on to them than tell the American people today there is a cost of war, and you have to make some choices. Twelve billion dollars a month.

There are people here in the Senate, and the President of the United States, who think we should repeal the estate tax. One trillion dollars worth of benefits go to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent. And how do they propose to make up the difference? They don't. Just pass it on to the kids and our grandchildren and let the millionaires and billionaires of this country have a huge tax break. No problem at all, just: That is what we will do.

I wish to talk about something else that also is not talked about very much, and that is the terrible situation of unmet social needs that exists in this country, and the President's budget. At a time when we have a major health care crisis, the President wants to make major cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. As a member of the Budget Committee, I am going to do everything I can to make sure we do not make the health care crisis in this country even worse. We have, as any mother or father knows--it is true in Vermont and it is true virtually all over this country--a horrendous crisis in terms of affordable childcare. The President has said in his budget that he wants to reduce the number of children receiving childcare assistance by 200,000. We have a major crisis, and the President's response is let's make it even worse.

Embarrassingly, in this great country, many of our citizens are going hungry.

I know in Vermont, our emergency food shelters are running out of food. This is true all over the country. We need to address that issue. The President's response is to deny food stamps to 300,000 families and children, and so forth and so on. It is a crisis among low-income working people. The President's response is to cut those programs so we can give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country.

It seems to me that at a time when our country has so many serious problems, at a time when the American people know in their souls that we are moving in the wrong direction in so many areas, with fundamental problems in this country, we have to have the courage to have a serious debate about moving this country in a new direction.

There was an article in the papers recently--last week--and it brought forth a fact that many of us had known, but it is important to repeat: In the United States of America, we have the largest number of people behind bars of any country on Earth. People say, well, China is much larger than America and is an authoritarian, Communist country, so surely they have more people--I am not talking per capita, I am talking collectively, in total--behind bars than we do. Wrong.

Is there a correlation between the fact that we have more people in jail than any other country and the fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth? I think there is a direct correlation. I think you either pay now or you pay later. Either you give kids the opportunity for decent childcare, nutrition, and education, and keep an eye on them so that in fourth grade they don't mentally drop out, and in the tenth grade they don't really drop out of school and get involved in destructive activity--you either do it--and it costs money--or you ignore that reality.

When these kids go to jail and commit crimes, we spend $50,000 a year keeping them behind bars. That is our choice. If people want to ignore the crisis and the reality we have, which is the highest rate of childhood poverty, that we are underfunding Head Start, and so on, you can ignore it, but you are going to pay the price at the other end by locking up many people in jail.

I also want to mention to my colleagues that I will be bringing amendments to the floor during the budget process. They are simple. What they say is that at a time when the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good, when the President has given these same people huge tax breaks, the time is now that we rescind the tax breaks that go to millionaires and billionaires and use some of that money to reduce our national debt, and use others of those sums to start protecting the middle-class working families and the kids in this country.

A budget is about priorities, about choices. I intend to provide some choices to the Members of the Senate. I hope they will support me and those amendments in moving this country in a fundamentally different direction.

I yield the floor.

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