American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, later today I will be offering an amendment with Senator Grassley, which I think is an extremely important amendment, which, in fact, deals very fundamentally with the unemployment and job crisis facing this country. There is no debate the American people are furious at what happened on Wall Street, where a small number of executives have acted in an incredibly greedy manner, with extreme recklessness, and perhaps illegal behavior, in plunging our country into a major and very deep recession.

As every American knows, we are losing huge numbers of jobs. What we are trying to do now on the floor of the Senate is do everything we can to prevent this country from falling into a deep depression. In the middle of all of this, in the middle of the greed and recklessness being shown by the major financial institutions of our country, at a time when the taxpayers of this country are spending $700 billion on a bailout, when the Fed is lending out trillions of dollars, what we see is many of those bankers are providing huge bonuses to themselves. They are furnishing their offices in lavish ways. They are buying jet planes. They are doing all of these things which suggest to me they do not know what world they are living in; they do not know what is going on in America.

I want to point out today, with Senator Grassley, another part of this terribly destructive behavior on the part of these financial institutions. During the last 3 months of 2008, the largest banks in this country--because of the economic downturn especially on Wall Street--have announced 100,000 job cuts within the financial industry itself. So 100,000 Americans are out on the street. What has been the response of Wall Street to the loss of 100,000 of their own workers? Do you know what they have done? What these banks have announced is they are requesting 21,000 foreign workers over the next 6 years through the H-1B program to fill those jobs.

So let me repeat, Wall Street causes a crisis, causing millions of people to lose their jobs, including 100,000 in financial institutions as well, 100,000 people who on average were making quite good wages with decent-paying jobs. So what they are now trying to do is bring in foreign workers through the H-1B program, and they have requested 21,000 H-1B visas over the next 6 years. Talk about adding insult to injury.

The amendment Senator Grassley and I are offering is pretty simple. It is essentially saying there will be a suspension of the H-1B program for any institution that is receiving TARP funds for just 1 year. I would have gone further, but we are just going to make it for 1 year.

Let me finish my remarks by quoting from a recent AP article just published on Monday. This is what the AP writes:

Even as the economy collapsed last year and many financial workers found themselves unemployed, the dozen U.S. banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages requested visas for tens of thousands of foreign workers to fill high-paying jobs. ..... The major banks, which have received $150 billion in bailout funds, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists.

Presumably Americans are unable to do these jobs.

The article continues:

The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households. During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs.

The amendment is pretty simple. I hope we will have bipartisan support.

Mr. President, I see Senator Grassley standing, and I would be happy to yield for him.

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