Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Yes. We yield back time. We support a voice vote.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be called up in the order listed: Wicker-Sinema No. 261, Tim Scott No. 53, Rubio-Scott No. 69, Blunt No. 48, Thune No. 52, Young No. 54; further, that there be 2 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form prior to each vote.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, there are no tax increases on small business in this. We support the Rubio amendment.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to call up the following amendments in the order listed and that the amendments be reported by number and that the amendments alternate with a Democratic amendment when one is available to be called up: Grassley No. 91, Cortez Masto No. 853, Inhofe No. 786, Paul No. 1, Ernst No. 767, Daines No. 678, Johnson No. 542, Lee No. 821.

Mr. SANDERS. I do not oppose this amendment. I don't think anybody here wants to see people making $300,000 or $400,000 get direct payments. But let me be very clear, speaking for myself. I absolutely want to make certain that people who are making $75,000 a year or less do get their payments and couples making $150,000 a year or less do get their payments. I yield the floor. Vote on Amendment No. 775

Mr. SANDERS. Let me thank my colleague from South Carolina. And I look forward to working with him. He is going to be the ranking member of the Budget Committee. We have a lot of work to do, and I look forward to working with him. As Senator Graham indicated, in a few moments, at the end of my remarks, we are going to begin the vote-arama process, where Senators can offer amendments, with debate limited to 2 minutes--1 minute for the proponents and 1 minute for the opponents. The last time I checked--I may be a little behind the times on this-- my Republican colleagues had filed over 550 amendments, which, theoretically, means that we will be here for days, but I think not. I have a feeling it will be a very long night, but I assume we will get out of here at some point. Unfortunately, many of the amendments being offered have absolutely nothing to do with COVID relief, which, after all, is what this budget resolution is all about. My Republican colleagues have filed amendments to make President Trump's tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country and the most profitable corporations permanent, which would provide a massive windfall for the top 1 percent and the billionaire class who have already seen their wealth go up by over $1 trillion during this pandemic. In my mind, it is not exactly the kind of policy that we need right now. Republicans have filed amendments to exacerbate the xenophobia, the xenophobia which exists in this country, despite the fact that many undocumented workers are doing some of the most essential and dangerous work in our country. They are working in meatpacking plants; they are preparing our food and working on the frontlines, often with very low pay. We should not be attacking them. We should not be dividing this country up. We should be bringing our people together. We have had 4 years of efforts to divide us up. Now is a time for unity. Members of the Democratic caucus have made my life easy in this process because they have filed zero amendments. Republicans, 550 amendments; Democrats, 0. I think that speaks to the strong desire of our entire caucus to pass President Biden's $1.9 trillion emergency COVID relief plan as soon as we possibly can. The reason we have got to pass that plan as quickly as possible is that the American people are suffering one crisis after another, and we have got to address those crises as quickly as we can. Let me briefly--I know there is a lot of media talk about $1.9 trillion, and this, that, and the other thing. Sometimes we forget to look at actually what is in the proposal. What are we trying to do? What are the problems that we are trying to address? So let me just, very briefly, touch on some of the provisions of this budget resolution. First, and perhaps most importantly, it will enable us to aggressively crush the pandemic, which has already taken over 450,000 American lives. That is our top priority: crush the pandemic and allow people to get back to work as we reopen and strengthen the economy, and we get our kids back to school. That is an essential part of what this resolution is about. This resolution will allow us to provide the funding to establish a national emergency program to produce the quantity of vaccines that we need. We don't have enough vaccines now. We need more. And then we need a process, which we don't have right now either, to get those vaccines into the arms of people as quickly as we possibly can. At a time when so many of our people are hurting, have gone through the worst year in their lives as a result of this pandemic, this budget resolution will allow us to keep the promises we made to the American people and increase the $600 in direct payments for working-class adults and their children to $2,000. That means $1,400 for every working-class adult and child in this country, an additional $5,600 on top of the 600 bucks that we sent out a few weeks ago. Do you know what that would mean t millions of families who are worried about whether they can pay the rent or put food on the table? They will understand that maybe, just maybe, we are one country, and the government and this Congress has heard their pain. Passing this budget resolution will give us the tools we need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour and provide substantial help to struggling small businesses to help them cover the cost of these wage increases. We do understand that restaurants and small businesses are hurting, and that is why we will provide billions of dollars to help them cover the cost of increasing the minimum wage. But let us be clear, the minimum wage in this country has not been raised since the year 2007. It now stands at $7.25 an hour. That is a starvation wage. That is an embarrassment, and that minimum wage must be increased so that we can give a pay raise to some 32 million workers. Moreover, this pandemic has caused tens of millions of Americans to lose their jobs through no fault of their own. For 45 consecutive weeks, unemployment claims have been higher during the worst week of the great recession in 2008. The budget resolution that we are considering this week will provide the funding to provide 18 million Americans with $400 a week in supplemental unemployment benefits until the end of September. So we are saying now to the millions and millions of unemployed workers in this country, who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs, we are there for you. We are going to extend unemployment benefits to September and add another $400 on top of the benefits that you normally would receive. One of the disgraces that we have allowed to go on for so many years, and not talk about it, is the fact that in this country--the richest country in the history of the world--we have one of the highest childhood poverty rates of any industrialized country. And they are all over America. You have got single moms and couples, people trying to take care of their kids, trying to pay for childcare, trying to do all of the things that good parents want to do, and they are unable to do it. This budget resolution will provide the resources necessary to provide childcare to 875,000 kids in America. This resolution will expand the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 and $3,600 for kids under the age of 6, which we believe will cut the child poverty rate in America in half--something we should have done 20 years ago. That is what is in this resolution. This budget resolution that we are debating today would provide $350 billion to prevent mass layoffs of public sector workers in State and local governments. We have lost well over 1 million jobs--talking about teachers, firemen, cops, municipal workers. This resolution will give States and local governments the resources to not lay off workers, to bring those workers back so they could provide the services that their communities and States require. We are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right. And, right now, over 90 million Americans are either uninsured or underinsured. Imagine being uninsured in the midst of a terrible pandemic. That is the case for 90 million people. This budget resolution will enable the Senate to substantially increase access to healthcare for many millions of Americans, including, very likely, a significant expansion of Medicaid. This budget resolution will allow more Americans to receive the primary healthcare they need through community health centers. It will address the serious shortage of doctors and nurses in rural areas and inner cities by expanding the National Health Service Corps. And it will make sure our veterans receive the healthcare they have earned and deserve by increasing funding at the VA by some $17 billion. In addition, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, I don't think it is saying too much that people should not go hungry. I get emotionally wrought when, in my own State--and this is true in every State in this country--in my own city of Burlington, VT, hundreds of people line up in their cars to get emergency food packages. Many of them never, in a million years, would have thought that they would be in that position. We are looking at the highest rate of hunger in America in decades. And if this country means anything, if this government means anything, we are not going to allow our fellow Americans to go hungry. This budget resolution will provide nutrition assistance to tens of millions of hungry families with children, the disabled, and the elderly by providing billions of dollars for SNAP, WIC, and the pandemic nutrition assistance program. One of the outstanding crises this country faces is the fear of many millions of our people of being evicted from their homes or their apartments. Today, over 14 million Americans owe an average of $5,800 in back rent. We have a moratorium on eviction right now. But the day that moratorium ends, I fear that many, many people all over this country will face eviction. That is why this budget resolution will provide the funding for rent relief, utility assistance, and mortgage relief to millions of tenants and homeowners who are in danger of eviction or foreclosure. In addition, this budget resolution allows us to address the terrible crisis of homelessness in America where, a few blocks away from here, in bitter cold weather, Americans are sleeping out in tents. Not only is this $1.9 trillion emergency COVID relief package the right thing to do from a moral perspective and a public policy perspective, it is exactly what the overwhelming majority of the American people want us to do. They understand that if we are one country and they are hurting, now is the time to come together and to address that pain. So many of our people have given up on democracy. They have given up on their belief that government can work to help them. Now is the time to try to reaffirm people's faith in government. People want us to go forward. According to a recent poll, over 70 percent of the American people support President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 plan, 83 percent support boosting direct payments from $600 to $2,000, 64 percent support raising the Federal minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour, and 62 percent support additional unemployment benefits. In other words, what we are doing is the right thing to do, and what we are doing is what the American people want us to do. So now is the time to reaffirm the faith of the American people that their government listens to them; that, in fact, we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Lincoln talked about in the midst of the terrible Civil War. So now we can show who we are, and that is, instead of listening to wealthy campaign contributors and all of the lobbyists who flood Capitol Hill, let us stand with working families today, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor who want us to stand with them. Let us pass this budget resolution, and let us then finish the job by passing a reconciliation bill so that we can get it to the President for his signature as soon as possible. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this amendment is opposed by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Center for American Progress, America's Voice, SCIU, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and many, many other civil rights and immigration organizations. The reason they oppose it and why I oppose it is this amendment applies to people charged, not convicted. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that in this country, we believe that people are innocent until proven guilty. What this amendment does is vilify immigrants. Many of them are working at essential and dangerous jobs right now, often for very low pay. Point of Order Mr. President, this amendment is not germane to the budget resolution as required by law; therefore, I raise a point of order that the pending amendment violates section 305(b)(2) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 30 seconds.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, we now come to the end of a debate that has gone on for over 14 hours, and we end this debate at a moment in which our country faces more crises, more pain, and more anxiety than at any time since the Great Depression. With the passage of this resolution, we have the opportunity not only to address the pandemic, to address the economic collapse, and to address the reality that millions of our kids have seen their educations disrupted, but we have the opportunity to give hope to the American people and restore faith in our government by telling them that, tonight, we understand the pain that they are experiencing, and we are going to do something very significant about it. In the strongest possible terms, I ask for a ``yes'' vote on this enormously important budget resolution. Vote on S. Con. Res. 5

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we accept the amendment and urge a voice vote. Vote on Amendment No. 806

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I regretfully oppose this amendment because I fear, at the end of the day, what will happen is that we will be cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and impacting some of the most vulnerable people in this country. Vote on Amendment No. 803

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, at a time when climate change poses an existential threat to the entire planet, I urge a ``no'' vote. Vote on Amendment No. 770

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as the new chairman of the Budget Committee, I wanted to take a few moments to talk about the $1.9 trillion budget resolution that I hope will be passed late tomorrow night. I think sometimes our friends in the media make the political process much more complicated than it is. Real politics in a democracy is not that complicated. What it is about is assessing the problems facing the Nation and coming up with solutions to those problems. One of the great tragedies that has occurred, in my view, in recent years is that for working-class people, middle-class people, lower- income people, these are folks who in a variety of ways are hurting and have hurt for many, many years. Wages in this country have been stagnant for decades. Young people are finding it increasingly difficult to go to college. Ninety million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. We have a political system which is significantly corrupt because big money can buy elections. And people look around them and they say: Who cares about me? Who is worried about me or my parents or my kids? When that happens--when that kind of political alienation happens-- people can become prone to conspiracy theories and all kinds of big lies and everything else. Here is the simple truth, not complicated. Right now in this year 2021, we face more crises than this country has faced certainly since the Great Depression and maybe going back to the Civil War, when the very existence of this country was at stake. As we speak right now, whether it is in the State of Georgia or my State of Vermont and all over this country, there are tens of millions of working families who have lost their jobs, lost their incomes, and they are worried tonight as to how they are going to be able to feed their families. They are worried about the back rent they owe. We have a moratorium on evictions, but that moratorium some day is going to end. People say: How am I going to pay thousands of dollars in back rent? I am going to be evicted. I am going to be out on the street. People are in the midst of this terrible, terrible pandemic, where we have lost over 400,000 lives--well over 400,000 lives. There are over 90 million people who are uninsured or underinsured and are having difficulty affording going to the doctor, and on and on it goes. Kids. I have seven grandchildren. Kids all over this country have had their education disrupted. As a result of the pandemic, people have become isolated from their friends and their families. Mental illness is soaring with increased numbers of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. This country faces just terrible, terrible problems. I think we can agree that the year 2020 was the worst year in so many ways in our lifetime, maybe in the history of this country. And now, right now, it is absolutely imperative that the Congress of the United States understands that reality and keeps faith with the American people. One of the reasons, by the way--and I say this to the Presiding Officer today, who is from Georgia and recently won his election--it is doubly important that we keep faith with the American people is because promises were made in this election in Georgia, which was not just a Senate race. It was more of a national race. President Biden was involved. Majority Leader Schumer was involved. I was involved. A lot of leading Democrats were involved. We said to the people in Georgia and we said to the people in America: If we gain the majority, we are going to significantly improve lives for working people all over this country. Those are promises made that must be kept. I want to just spend a few moments to talk about what is in this bill. We throw out numbers--$1.9 trillion. Who knows what $1.9 trillion is? It is such an unfathomable number. It is such a huge number. What does it mean? Who knows? Who understands that? I want you to understand what is in this bill. For a start, what I believe and I know you believe is that when people are hurting, when they owe back rent, when they can't afford to feed their kids, when they can't afford to go to the doctor, we need to get cash into the pockets of those people as soon as we possibly can. I was one of the people here a month ago when a whole lot of people were talking about it. I said we need direct payments. We need to get cash into the hands of people. I fought very hard. We ended up with just $600 in the last bill. It wasn't enough. It is a start, but not enough. We said our goal was $2,000. And in this bill, there will be an additional $1,400 for every working-class man, woman, and child. So if you are an individual, a single person making $75,000 or less, when we pass this legislation you are going to get a check for $1,400. If you are a couple earning less than $150,000, and let's just say you have two kids, each person in the family, the husband, the wife, and the two kids get $1,400 apiece. That is $5,600. Let me tell you something. For a struggling working-class family, that $5,600 is going to mean an enormous amount. It will allow people to pay the rent, allow people to pay off their debts, allow people to go to the doctor. That is what this legislation is about. We made a promise. Some of us made that promise--I did--that we would make sure that in working-class families, each individual gets $2,000 and we will keep that promise: $600 then, $1,400 now. As a result of this pandemic, we have seen a horrific increase in unemployment. Unemployment is soaring all over this country. Millions of workers have lost their jobs. They have no income coming in. The extended unemployment benefits that were previously passed are going to expire in mid-March. What this legislation does--very importantly--if you are unemployed right now and you are worried you are going to lose your employment, when we pass this legislation, your unemployment is going to be extended through the end of September. And on top of the normal unemployment benefits you get from your State--and they vary State to State--you are going to get an additional $400 a week. We will not turn our backs on the millions of unemployed workers in this country. Included in the legislation that we are fighting for is the need to raise the minimum wage in this country from the starvation wage that currently exists of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of $15 an hour. Now, we understand that restaurants and small businesses are hurting, and in this legislation, there will be a significant amount of money to make sure that small businesses will be able to afford that wage increase. You know, when we talk about the economy, the media very often focuses on the stock market. That is important. We can focus on unemployment--terribly important. Yet what we don't focus on enough is that half of our workers in this country are living paycheck to paycheck. They have nothing in the bank, and they have to live off the paychecks they make. If they have an automobile problem--the car breaks down--or somebody in the family gets sick, they are in deep financial trouble. It seems to me that, in the richest country in the history of the world, it is not too much to demand that, if you work 40 hours a week, you don't live in poverty. Fifteen bucks an hour is not going to make anybody rich, but I have seen workers and talked to workers all over this country who are trying to raise their kids on $10, $12 an hour, and you can't do it. So $15 an hour is an important start in making sure that all working people in this country can live with dignity. This legislation will expand the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 and to $3,600 for families with kids under the age of 6. Now, what is not talked about very much in America--not by politicians, not by the media--is the fact that we have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and that is a terrible, terrible thing. You know, politicians give speeches of ``the future of this country is with our children,'' so forth and so on, but they have millions of kids living in poverty. Millions of families can't afford to send their kids to decent quality childcare. So expanding the child tax credit will go a very long way to reducing child poverty in America, and that is something that we must do. It is no great secret that, as a result of the pandemic, our revenues going into State and local governments are in significant decline. The result of that is that, in the last year, well over a million State and local employees have been laid off. We are talking about teachers. We are talking about firemen. We are talking about police officers and other municipal and State employees. When you have those layoffs, not only is that a crisis unto itself for those workers, it means that State and local governments cannot provide the services that need to be provided in the midst of this terrible crisis. So this legislation would provide $350 billion to State and local governments, many of which are facing bankruptcy. Now, obviously, the crisis that we are facing today is not only an economic crisis, it is clearly a health crisis. The good news is that, in a relatively short period of time, at least two manufacturers in this country--and more, I think, are coming on board--have introduced and created vaccines, which are now being distributed. That is the good news. The bad news is that we need to significantly increase the production of those vaccines. We don't have enough. Even more importantly, we have to do a heck of a lot better job in distributing those vaccines and getting those vaccines into the arms of people, and this legislation will provide billions and billions of dollars to do just that. At a time when we are looking at the highest level of hunger in this country in decades, many billions of dollars are going to make sure that our children and our families do not go hungry. Clearly, one of the major crises facing this country is that schools in every State are either not open or they are open with irregular hours. Kids are trying to get an education online. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but our goal is to make sure that we can reopen schools and expand after-school and childcare programs for working families and do it in a way that is safe. We want parents to feel good and know that the facilities they are sending their children to are safe, and we have a whole lot of money in this bill to do just that. In this bill, in order to protect workers, there is a sizable sum of money to prevent the pensions of millions of workers and retirees from being slashed by 30, 40, or even 65 percent. A number of years ago, in the middle of night, in some big omnibus bill, language was put in that would destroy the promises made to millions of workers in terms of the pensions that they were guaranteed, and we rectify that in this bill. Right now, in America, as I mentioned earlier, some 90 million of our people are either uninsured or underinsured, which speaks to the need, in my view, of major healthcare reform. My own view is that we need to put in a Medicare for All, single-payer program so that we are no spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other country on Earth despite so many people being uninsured or underinsured. Well, Medicare for All is not in this bill, but what is in this bill is a significant amount of money to expand healthcare, and we are still looking at the best ways to do that. One of the ways will probably be by expanding Medicaid and also investing significantly in community health centers and the National Health Service Corps. We have a crisis in terms of the number of doctors and nurses that we need, and the National Health Service Corps is a program which will forgive debt for doctors and nurses if they practice in underserved areas. I know sometimes we get consumed by numbers. It is going to be $2.1 trillion, $1.9 trillion, $1.7 trillion. That is not the issue. The issue is whether we are prepared to address the crises facing the American people. Will this bill solve all of the problems that we face? No, it will not. Will it go a long way to addressing many of the crises and easing the anxiety of so many working families? Yes, it will, but this should not be the end of the process. As soon as we pass this, we are going to come back with another major piece of legislation, and that will deal with some of the long-term structural problems our country faces in terms of a crumbling infrastructure and in terms of the need to deal with the existential threat of climate change. We need to create millions of good-paying jobs. That is something that this Congress has got to address. Too many of our people are unemployed, and too many of our people are underemployed. This we will be dealing with in the next COVID reconciliation bill. Now, there has been some discussion on--and the media seems fixated on--the issue of partisanship. Oh, my God. We are being so partisan here. Let me remind everybody that, under the Trump administration, massive tax breaks were passed that went to the top 1 percent and large corporations. Eighty-three percent of the benefits in the Trump tax plan went to the 1 percent and large corporations. Do you know how bipartisan that bill was that passed in reconciliation? There was not one Democrat who voted for that bill. It was voted just with Republican votes. Then, outrageously, as part of the reconciliation, the Republicans came forward and said: Hey, we think it is a brilliant idea to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw up to 32 million people off the healthcare that they have. I don't know what people are thinking about when they propose to throw tens of millions of people off the healthcare that they have, but that was their idea to repeal the Affordable Care Act. By one vote by the late John McCain, that did not happen, but not one Democrat voted for that bill. My point is that it is one thing for my Republican friends here to be talking about the need for bipartisanship, which all of us support, but the reality is they used exactly the same process to pass or at least try to pass major, major pieces of legislation. So all that I want to say is that we are living in an unprecedented moment in American history. Again, it is quite likely that this Congress today and President Biden are facing more serious crises than any President--certainly, since FDR and maybe going back to Abraham Lincoln--has faced. We have a healthcare crisis. We have a pandemic. We have an economic meltdown. We have an education crisis. We have an infrastructure crisis. We have a criminal justice crisis. We have an immigration crisis. You name it, we got it. Either we are going to have the courage to address those problems or we are not, and I think now is the time to do it. We certainly look forward to the support from our Republican colleagues, but what is most important is that, at a time of massive pain and anxiety, this Congress acts boldly on behalf of working families. For too long, we have seen the Congress give tax breaks to billionaires. We have seen lobbyists work to get hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare for people who don't need it. We have seen a tax system in which major corporations like Amazon--maybe the most profitable corporation in America or one of the most profitable corporations and owned by the wealthiest guy in America--pay zero in Federal taxes, and, right now, the very rich have an effective tax rate which is lower than that of working families. So I know it may sound like a radical idea, but the time is now for the U.S. Congress to begin to represent the vast majority of the people--the working class of this country, the middle class of this country, and lower income people--who are struggling. Let us work together. Let us crush this terrible pandemic. Let us get our kids back to school. Let us reopen our economy. Let us create a government that works for all of us and not just the very few. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff members from my staff and from Senator Graham's staff be given all-access floor passes for consideration of the budget resolution, S. Con. Res. 5: the majority staff: Michael Jones, Joshua Smith, Michael Lawliss, Ethan Rosenkranz, and Ari Rabin-Havt; Republican staff: Nick Myers, Matthew Giroux, Matthew Joe Keeley, Doug Dziak, and Matthew Rimkunas.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the budget resolution that was introduced today. Mr. President, let us be clear and let us in the Senate understand what the American people know all too well, and that is that our country is currently experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the worst public health emergency in over 100 years. January marked the deadliest month of the pandemic, with over 90,000 Americans losing their lives as a result of COVID-19--90,000 Americans in 1 month. In the midst of all of this, over 90 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and are unable to afford to go to a doctor when they become ill. The isolation and the anxiety caused by this pandemic have resulted in a horrible increase in mental illness, in depression, in anxiety, and in suicidal ideation. Today, as we speak, over half of our people are living paycheck-to- paycheck, including millions of essential workers who put their lives on the line each and every day. More than 24 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work, while hunger in this country--hunger in the richest country in the history of the world--is at the highest level that we have seen in decades. Because of lack of income, over 14 million Americans are behind on their rent, averaging some $5,800 per family, and many of those families face eviction all across this country. People are worried that when the moratorium on eviction ends, they are going to be thrown out of their homes, put out on the streets. Americans who worry about eviction understand that they must not join the half a million Americans who are already homeless. That is some of what we are experiencing today. That is what the American people understand. Meanwhile, in the midst of this devastation to the working class and middle class of our country, the wealthiest people in America are becoming much wealthier, and income and wealth inequality--a longtime problem--is now soaring. Incredibly, while families throughout the country are struggling to put food on the table to feed their kids during this pandemic, 660 billionaires--not a whole lot of people--have increased their wealth by over $1 trillion. As a result of this pandemic, education in our country, from childcare to graduate school, is in chaos. The majority of young people in our Nation have seen their education disrupted. Kids are not getting the learning that they need, falling further and further behind. On top of that, it is likely that hundreds of colleges will soon cease to exist. In this moment of unprecedented crises, the Senate must respond through unprecedented action. The budget resolution we are debating today is simple, and it is straightforward. It will enable us to pass President Biden's $1.9 trillion emergency COVID relief plan through reconciliation with 51 votes instead of 60. Now, I have heard from some of my Republican colleagues who tell us: Well, this reconciliation concept, that is a radical idea. Why are you using reconciliation? They are telling us that it is absolutely imperative that we go forward in a bipartisan way and require 60 votes for passage. But I must say that when Republicans used this same reconciliation process, I didn't hear much about bipartisanship at that point. In fact, Republicans used the reconciliation process to provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent and large, profitable corporations by a simple majority vote. The only people who voted for that bill were Republicans--no bipartisanship in that bill. My Republican colleagues used reconciliation to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the drilling of oil--once again by a simple majority. The only people who supported that were Republicans-- not one Democrat. As we all remember, painfully, my Republican colleagues used the reconciliation process to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw up to 32 million Americans off of the healthcare they currently have. As you will recall, that was a 100-percent partisan vote, which fortunately lost by one vote. Further, weeks--weeks--before a Presidential election, the last election, my Republican colleagues pushed through their nominee for the Supreme Court with 50 votes. That was a few weeks before the election. Not one Democrat supported that nominee--a totally partisan vote. Well, as the incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee, this is what I believe: If Republicans can use reconciliation to help the wealthy and the powerful and pass legislation strongly opposed by the American people, we can and must use reconciliation to help Americans recover from the worst economic and public health crisis in the modern history of our country. In other words, now is the time for this Congress to stand with the working class and the middle class of this country and do what the overwhelming majority of the American people want us to do. It is worth pointing out that poll after poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans--over 70 percent--support what President Biden and what we are trying to do. They know we have to act boldly. So I hope we will not hear much more about bipartisanship, given my Republican colleagues' record on that issue. Let us be clear. The working class of this country and the middle class are facing more economic desperation than at any time since the Great Depression. I have to tell you that to me, emotionally, it was a painful sight to see in my own city of Burlington, VT, hundreds of cars lined up so that families could get the food they needed to feed their kids. What happened in Burlington is happening in every State of this country. People--many of whom have never had any public assistance at all--are lining up to get emergency supplies of food in order to keep their families alive. Whether it is the pandemic, which is killing 3,000 people a day; whether it is the economic collapse, which is leaving millions of our people destitute; whether it is the disruption of education in this country, which means that kids are falling further and further behind, this Congress must act and act boldly. For too long Congress has responded to the needs of the wealthy and the powerful and big-money campaign contributors. Now is the time, in this unprecedented set of crises, for us to respond to the needs of working families, whether they are Black or White, Latino, Native American, or Asian American. It is no secret that millions of our fellow Americans are literally giving up on democracy--giving up on democracy. They think that the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Government does not care a whit about the needs of working people. The people who go to work every day, who keep our country going, who put their lives on the line during this pandemic, they look at us, and they say: Does anybody there in Washington--all you rich guys, do you understand what is going on in our lives? Well, this week, during this debate, we are not only going to begin addressing the health and economic and educational crises we face, but maybe, even more importantly, we are going to begin the process of restoring faith in the U.S. Government. Maybe, just maybe, we can do what Abraham Lincoln talked about in the midst of the terrible Civil War, and that is, be a government and act like a government of the people, by the people, and for the people and not just powerful special interests and their lobbyists. What will this budget resolution mean for the average American? I know we are throwing out a lot of numbers; $1.9 trillion is a lot of money. What does it actually mean? How is it going to impact the lives of ordinary people? Let me just say a few words on that. Everybody is concerned about the pandemic, which has taken so many lives and caused so much illness and suffering. What this legislation is about is an effort to aggressively crush the pandemic and enable the American people to return to their jobs and schools by providing the funding necessary to establish a national emergency program to produce the quantity of vaccines that we need. We need to increase vaccine production, and, equally important, we need to significantly improve the distribution of vaccines so that we get them into the arms of people as quickly as we can. What this legislation means is that during this severe economic downturn, we must make sure that all Americans--low-income people, working-class people, middle-class people--have the financial resources that they need to live with dignity. This budget resolution will allow us to keep the promises that we made to the American people and increase the $600 in direct payments for working-class adults and their kids up to $2,000--another $1,400. I want you just to think--whether it is Connecticut or Vermont or South Carolina or anyplace else--think about, during this terrible crisis, what it will mean to an average family to suddenly get a check for $5,600 for a family of four on top of the $600 per person that they received a few weeks ago. Think about what that will mean to people who are losing hope right now. Passing this budget resolution will give us the tools we need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour, expand unemployment benefits, expand the child tax credit, and prevent eviction, homelessness, and hunger. Passing this budget resolution means that during this raging pandemic, we will be able to provide healthcare to millions of Americans who are uninsured and underinsured by expanding Medicaid, improving the Affordable Care Act, and other approaches. Passing this budget resolution means that we will go a long, long way forward to addressing the long-term problem of childhood poverty in America, and that is that by expanding the child tax credit, we have the opportunity to cut childhood poverty in this country in half and no longer be the major country on Earth which has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty. Let me very briefly mention a few of the specific provisions in the budget resolution that will enable the Senate to pass this budget under reconciliation. First, as I just mentioned, the overwhelming majority of the American people have told us very loudly and clearly that the $600 direct payment that Congress passed in December was a good start but is not enough. In this bill, we are going to increase that $600 by another $1,400. We cannot continue to allow workers in America to work at jobs that pay them a starvation wage. A United States of America job should lift you out of poverty and not keep you in it. So let us be clear: When we increase that minimum wage to $15 an hour, not only will we be providing a much needed raise for tens of millions of American workers, we will also, by the way, save taxpayers many billions of dollars each and every year. Moreover, this pandemic has caused tens of millions of American workers to lose their jobs through no fault of their own. For 45 consecutive weeks, unemployment claims have been higher than during the worst week of the great recession in 2008. This budget resolution that we are considering now will provide the funding necessary to provide 18 million Americans with $400 a week in supplemental unemployment benefits until the end of September. So, if you are watching us--if you are watching TV now because you are unemployed when you would rather be at work--understand that this bill will extend unemployment $400 on top of the normal unemployment your State provides until the end of September. We have not forgotten the unemployed. Further, all of us know that we have a childcare crisis in America. It was severe before the pandemic. It is even worse now. This budget resolution would begin to provide the resources necessary to provide childcare to 875,000 children in America, and it would expand the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 and $3,600 for kids under the age of 6. In other words, we hear what working families are going through, especially those who are struggling and hav children. This will be a major, major step in improving lives and easing anxiety for young couples with kids. In addition, let us not forget this pandemic has had a horrific toll on the finances of State and local governments, many of which are literally on the verge of bankruptcy. Over the past 10 months, State and local governments have laid off some 1.4 million workers, including 50,000 in December alone. These are teachers, firemen, cops, and other municipal and State employees. The budget resolution that we are debating today will provide $350 billion to prevent mass layoffs of public sector workers in State and local governments. The Congressional Budget Office has said that the best bang for the buck of all the money Congress has passed so far for COVID relief is to aid State and local governments. Further, if there is one thing this horrific pandemic should have taught all of us, it is that we must no longer consider healthcare as simply an employee benefit. Healthcare must be a human right. It is unacceptable to my mind that over 14 million Americans have lost their employer-provided health benefits over the past 10 months. Over 14 million workers have lost their health coverage, impacting even more people because there are wives and husbands and children involved as well. This budget resolution, will, among other healthcare provisions, enable the Senate to expand Medicaid. It will allow more Americans to receive the primary care that they need through community health centers. It will address the serious shortage of doctors and nurses in rural areas and inner cities by expanding the National Health Service Corps and will make sure that our veterans receive the healthcare that they have earned and deserve by increasing funding at the VA by $17 billion. In addition, in the wealthiest country on Earth, we can no longer tolerate hunger in America, and this budget resolution will enable the Senate to provide nutrition assistance to tens of millions of families struggling to get the food that they need--and that includes the disabled and the elderly--by expanding SNAP, WIC, and the Pandemic EBT Program. In America today, some 14 million Americans owe an average of $5,800 in back rent. If we do not get our act together, tens of millions of Americans will soon face the possibility of being thrown out of their apartments and homes and onto the streets. This budget resolution that we are debating will provide the funding for rent relief, utility assistance, and mortgage relief to millions of tenants and homeowners who are in danger of eviction or foreclosure. It also deals with the shame of homelessness in America. Today, in the midst of the dead of winter, we cannot have hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping in homeless shelters, in their cars, or out on the streets. And right here, in walking distance from this Capitol, there are tents located in parks where Americans are sleeping in the middle of the winter. This resolution provides investments in appropriate housing that will protect the health of our people and help decrease COVID-19 transmissions with safe and socially distant housing. Further, all of us must acknowledge that there is a pension crisis in America today. As a result of the greed on Wall Street, workers and retirees and multiemployer pension plans are in danger of seeing their retirement benefits cut by as much as 65 percent. That is unacceptable. Promises were made to those workers, and the U.S. Congress cannot renege on those promises. Not only is this $1.9 trillion emergency COVID-relief package the right thing to do from a moral perspective and a public policy perspective, it is exactly what the overwhelming majority of the American people want us to do. According to a recent poll from Change Research, nearly 70 percent of the American people support President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 plan; 83 percent support boosting direct payments from $600 to $2,000; 64 percent support raising the Federal minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour; and 62 percent of voters support additional unemployment benefits. We are living in an unprecedented moment in American history. The last year has been a year the likes of which none of us have experienced in our lifetime. And the American people, who are living in pain, in anxiety, in isolation--they are looking to the U.S. Senate, and they are saying: Are you going to hear and understand what we are going through? Are you going to do something to address the terrible problems in terms of healthcare, the economy, and education that we are experiencing? It is no great secret that, for many years, the Congress has listened very attentively to the needs of billionaires, to the needs of campaign contributors, and to the needs of lobbyists. Now is the time for us to listen to the needs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick, the disabled, and the poor. Now is the time to restore confidence that the American Government works for all of us and not just the few. I urge passage of this important, important piece of legislation. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the duration of the Senate's consideration of S. Con. Res. 5, the majority and Republican managers of the concurrent resolution, while seated or standing at the managers' desks, be permitted to deliver floor remarks, retrieve, review, and edit documents, and send email and other data communications from text displayed on wireless personal digital assistant devices and tablet devices. I further ask unanimous consent that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor during consideration of the budget resolution; further, that the staff be permitted to make technical and conforming changes to the resolution, if necessary, consistent with the amendments adopted during Senate consideration, including calculating the associated change in the net interest function, and incorporating the effect of such adopted amendments on the budgetary aggregates for Federal revenues, the amount by which the Federal revenues should be changed, new budget authority, budget outlays, deficits, public debt, and debt held by the public.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me say to my friend, Senator Thune, that I certainly concur with you as to what a pleasure it is to be spending New Year's Day with you and our colleagues. It is exactly what I, I know, and every other Member here wanted to do, but here we are because we have to be here. We are here because, back home in my State and all over this country, millions and millions of families are struggling to put food on the table. They are struggling to pay their rent. They are struggling to come up with the money they need to go to the doctor. This hits me, in a sense, in a personal way. The other day, I received a letter from a colleague of mine in Burlington, VT, where I live--the largest city in the State of Vermont, all of 40,000 people. He wrote to me, reporting on a food drive in Burlington, VT, where I live: Over 30 volunteers showed up to the Champlain School to help bag groceries and to hand them out to those who came out. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough donated food to provide a bag to everyone who showed up despite us planning on an increased need. The line of cars filled the parking lot, wrapped around the school, and went out onto the main road for half a mile. This represented a major up-tick for the October event that we were involved in. This was in Burlington, VT, with hundreds of cars lining up for emergency food and the volunteers not having enough food to distribute. They had to say to the families who were trying to feed their kids: Sorry. We do not have enough food. So what we are doing today is very simple, and that is that Senator Thune, Senator McConnell, and others have raised objection to the House-passed bill. In the U.S. Senate, when we have differences of opinion, what we should be doing is debating that bill. So all that Senator Schumer is asking and all that I am asking is simple: Bring the bill to the floor. We are not even asking you to vote for it. Bring the bill to the floor. On top of everything else, we need 60 votes to pass it--60 votes. Can we get 60 votes? I don't know. I think virtually all of the 48 Democrats will vote for it. It means, Senator Thune, that we need 12 Republicans. I gather we have one right here who indicated he would vote for it, and five or six others have been public about saying they will vote for it. Will we get the rest? I don't know. You don't know. What is the problem with giving Members of the U.S. Senate the opportunity to vote on the legislation? When we have that debate, you can come up and raise all of your objections, and we can debate it. Now, I heard Senator Thune and Senator McConnell before him talk about this bill being socialism for the rich, which I have to tell you I find somewhat hysterical because that is an issue I have been talking about for many, many years. I am very delighted that my conservative Republican friends now recognize that we do have socialism for the rich. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he said we live in a society where we have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor. King was right. Despite what my Republican colleagues are saying, the truth is that, according to the Tax Policy Center, the top 5 percent of Americans--the wealthiest people in our country--would receive less than 1 percent of the benefits of these direct payments--less than 1 percent. It doesn't sound, to me, like too much socialism for the rich. While we are on the subject of socialism for the rich, which my Republican friends have suddenly become very concerned about, let me talk about the Trump tax proposal that was pushed very hard by Senator McConnell and the Republican leadership and that, I think, every Republican voted for. Do you want to talk about socialism for the rich? It is not the bill that puts $2,000 into working-class hands all over this country. That isn't socialism for the rich. This is socialism for the rich. In that bill, Amazon--oh, by the way, I must say this, if I may: We were quoting the liberal Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos-- the wealthiest guy in the world. So here is Jeff Bezos' company, Amazon, and they received a tax rebate. They paid nothing in 2018 in Federal taxes. That is a corrupt tax system to begin with, but then, on top of that, they received $129 million as a tax rebate. That, Senator Thune, is socialism for the rich. In fact, this particular company is owned by the richest guy in the world, and you gave him a $129 million rebate, but it is not just Amazon. Delta Air Lines also paid nothing in Federal taxes in 2018; yet they received a $187 million rebate from that particular bill. Chevron, in helping to destroy our planet with their carbon emissions, received $181 million in a rebate. That, my friends, is what socialism for the rich is about. Socialism for the rich is not--in the midst of this terrible pandemic--putting $2,000 checks into the hands of working families. The truth of the matter is, as a result of this pandemic, we are living through the worst and most difficult economic period since the Great Depression. Tens of millions of families are facing eviction all over this country--in the wealthiest Nation on Earth. Moms are struggling to feed their kids, keep the electricity on, and be able to go to the doctor. Now, I hear from my Republican friends that the economy is doing better, but I would like to just read to them a few of the stories that I have received in my office. We asked people a simple question: How are you doing out there, and what is going on in your lives? We received many, many thousands of responses from people in every State in this country. I will read a few just to bring some dose of reality here to the U.S. Senate, which often, in the midst of all of the campaign contributions coming in from the rich, does not know what is going on in the real world. Here is the real world. A gentleman in Texas wrote: $2,000 is the difference between keeping our apartment and being evicted. A mother in Virginia wrote: $2,000 means I can afford to feed my three kids. Now, maybe we should give her a long lecture on macroeconomics and how well the stock market is doing, but all she is worried about is feeding her three children. A woman in Wisconsin wrote: $2,000 would mean not having to choose between rent and groceries and not having to ration my partner's meds. A woman in Nevada wrote: [It means] paying my rent and getting lifesaving treatment because I can't afford the $50 co-pay through my work insurance just to see my neurologist right now. A father in Florida wrote: It would mean I could pay my bills. My electricity and phone are about to get shut off. I didn't have money for my son on Christmas, and I won't have money for his birthday on January 2. A father in New Jersey wrote: It would mean I could pay off credit card debt accumulated during this pandemic, feed my children, and pay my bills. A parent in Massachusetts wrote: It would mean that I could pay my rent and electricity and put food on the table. A woman in Missouri wrote: It would mean getting out of crushing debt. It would mean survival without daily fear. Someone in Texas wrote: It would mean I could actually put food in the fridge. A man in Maryland wrote: It would mean I don't have to beg or go without food, shelter, and medicine. It would mean my family stays warm another couple of months and my dad gets proper treatment.

Mr. SANDERS. And all that I am saying is that, according to a very reputable tax center organization--people who do this for a living-- less than 1 percent of the benefits of the entire program go to the wealthiest people in this country. So when you are talking about trying to say: Oh my God, all of this money is going to the rich, that ain't really true. But I would also ask my friend: When did you suddenly become a religious adherent about concerns of socialism for the rich, when you gave 83 percent of the benefits for the rich and large corporations in the tax bill that you supported? Where was your concern about socialism for the rich when Amazon--owned by the richest guy in the world--got a $129 million tax rebate? I didn't hear much about socialism for the rich during that debate.

Mr. SANDERS. Reclaiming my time

Mr. SANDERS. I would.

Mr. SANDERS. The wealthiest in the world.

Mr. SANDERS. Well, I think my friend from Illinois missed nothing in the translation. He is exactly right. But I also--