Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize that two businessmen in Vermont, Steve Birge and Mark Curran, the owners of Black River Produce of Proctorsville, Vermont, were recently selected runners-up for the National Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Administration. Twenty-five years ago Steve Birge began Black River Produce, today a $27 million produce company, when he saw the poor quality of the produce used in the local restaurant in which he worked. Black River originally delivered fresh, local produce to local restaurants in the Proctorsville area of central Vermont. But after he met Mark Curran (while hitchhiking!), the two expanded the company, working with local farmers so that they could supply restaurants with the freshest and most healthful produce available. Today, Black River delivers high- quality produce not only throughout Vermont, but also into parts of western New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts, and eastern New York. It supplies not just restaurants, but grocery stores, schools, hospitals, ski areas, and nursing homes. Black River Produce has sales of more than $27 million a year, a work force of 100 employees, and a fleet of 30 refrigerated trucks and two tractor trailers. I salute Black River Produce's commitment to providing its customers with the highest quality foods. The company distributes high-quality Vermont foods, supporting not only local farmers, but other small businesses such as Grafton Cheese, Cold Valley apples, and products from Vermont Butter and Cheese. They are an integral part of the Vermont Fresh Network, which links local farms to local chefs. Although during out-of-season periods (Vermont, after all, has long winters) Black River distributes produce from out of state, and although it buys fish in Boston, its commitment to local agriculture and local business is noteworthy. In a time when both agribusiness and outsourcing have wrought havoc with traditional American family farms and with American businesses, I salute the remarkable accomplishment of Black River Produce in supporting local access to locally produced foods. Steve Birge and Mark Curran, and their many employees, have shown businesses around the nation that distributing the products from family farms is and can be good business, and that profits can flow both from helping local businesses, and from providing consumers with healthful foods.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and applaud the gentleman for all the good work he is doing for the United States. Mr. Chairman, no Member in this body disagrees that so long as our troops remain in Iraq, they should have the resources they need in order to protect their lives. We have not done well in this area up to this point, and we must do better. Further, in my judgment, the Bush administration has done a terrible job in keeping faith with our veterans. This bill makes a start in improving that situation, but we have a very long way to go in that area, especially with regard to veterans health care. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of good things in this bill, and there are in my view portions of this bill that are not good and that are very wasteful of taxpayer money. Most importantly, however, is what is lacking in this legislation, and that is there is no demand in this bill for the President to provide us with an exit strategy from Iraq, a timetable as to how we can get out. Since the war in Iraq began, we have lost 790 men and women, over 4,500 have been wounded; and we are spending billions every month. Meanwhile, anti-American feelings are growing throughout the Muslim world, breeding more potential terrorists, and we are becoming increasingly isolated from our long-term allies. Significantly, in a recent U.S. Government-sponsored poll, 82 percent of the Iraqi people indicated that they now disapprove of the U.S. and allied military being in their country; 82 percent disapprove. The war in Iraq, in my view, is not helping us in the very difficult struggle against international terrorism. In many ways, it is making a bad situation worse. The time is long overdue for President Bush to develop an exit strategy as to when the Iraqi people will really be allowed to govern themselves. It is not good enough for the U.S. to install Iraqi figureheads who do not have the support or confidence of the Iraqi people. The President must also tell us when the U.N. and the international community will be helping rebuild Iraq. That should not only be the burden of our soldiers and our taxpayers. President Bush must do all that he can to internationalize the transition situation. Lastly, Mr. Chairman, and most importantly, the President must begin to tell us when American troops will begin coming home. We have lost 790 men and women already, 4,500 have been wounded, many thousands of Iraqi men, women and children are dead. We need an exit strategy to get our troops home as soon as feasible.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk today about an essential element in our national life, America's credit unions. They are one of the most vital, one of the most democratic, institutions in America, and yet time and again credit unions are overlooked and even ignored by the mainstream media. But I know, as tens of millions across the Nation know, that credit unions are healthy, thriving, and essential to the prosperity of the Nation and the well-being of millions of families. The principle behind credit unions is simple. A group of people join together to pool some of their resources; in turn, those resources are available as low-cost loans to the members of the group. Without the need to make a profit, without heavy advertising costs, without huge bonus packages to corporate executives, credit unions can provide loans at rates lower than other financial institutions. And they also can provide loans to those who might otherwise be turned away from conventional banking institutions. Credit unions are cooperatively owned by those who deposit money in them, not by `investors' who want to make a profit from loaning money. They are democratic, owned and run by their members. And anyone who makes a deposit is a member. Although the concept of coming together to pool resources dates back to ancient times, the modern credit union movement began in the mid- nineteenth century, when economic depression, massive crop failures, and especially harsh winters created horrendous conditions for rural and working people in Europe. The first credit union dates from 1850 in Germany. Quickly, the idea spread across Europe. In 1901, in Quebec, the Canadian province neighboring my State of Vermont, the first credit union in North America was established by Alphonse Desjardins in a town called Levis. It was called La Caisse Populaire de Levis, and like its European counterparts it made credit available to all sorts of people who could not get loans from banks: small farmers, working families, and renters who had no collateral. In 1908, inspired by that model, the first credit union in the United States was founded. Parishioners of St. Mary's Church in New Hampshire, Vermont's neighbor to the east, formed the first U.S. credit union, with help from Desjardins. (Today, St. Mary's Bank is still a credit union and still vital, with more than $450 million in assets.) In 1909 Edward Filene, a progressive businessman whose department stores are still prominent in the Northeast--one is located in Burlington, Vermont--helped develop and enact the Massachusetts Credit Union Act. Many states followed Massachusetts in passing similar legislation. By 1930 there were 32 states with credit union laws, and there were a total of 1,100 credit unions nationwide. The depression, of course, made credit more important than ever to hard-pressed working people. In 1934, the Congress passed the Federal Credit Union Act. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the law in 1934, he said its purpose would be ``to make more available to people of small means credit for provident purposes through a national system of cooperative credit.'' Credit unions grew and flourished. By 1960 more than 6 million people were members at one or more of over 10,000 federal credit unions. I was proud to be an original sponsor, and to work side-by-side with credit unions and their members during a long and contentious struggle in 1998. We were successful in that fight, and passed the law that preserved the right of consumers to join credit unions. So, credit union membership remained open to many millions of Americans. Today, I am pleased to report, credit unions are stronger than ever, and serving more people than ever. There are over 12,000 credit unions in existence today. They have $316 billion in assets--and they serve 70 million people in our nation. The credit union movement's long and great history of making credit available to people of small means has been based on the same central idea from the outset. Credit unions enable everyday people to band together for the common good, allowing them to make basic financial services available through not-for-profit and democratic means. In our day, unhappily, tragically, the conditions that led to the beginning of the credit union movement in Germany more than a century- and-a-half ago still exist. Families, even with two and three workers in a household, even with people holding multiple jobs, often cannot pay their bills, their health care, their pharmaceutical costs. Our economy is booming--but only for some. Corporate profits are up, productivity is up and stock prices are relatively high. The wealthiest people in our country have never had it so good. The richest one percent of our population now owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, and the typical CEO of a major corporation now earns over 300 times more than the average worker. But workers across the country are often working longer hours for lower wages than they earned twenty-five years ago. Thirty percent of our workers earn poverty or near-poverty wages. In fact, low-wage American workers are now the lowest paid in the industrialized world. One out of every five children in America now lives in poverty, compared to one out of seven twenty-five years ago. Thirty-four million Americans live in hunger or in families so poor that parents skip meals so their children can eat. Ordinary Americans are struggling. They need allies like the credit union movement. Meanwhile, the for-profit financial services industry has left many ordinary Americans behind. Mergers have led to larger institutions serving higher-end customers, the loss of local ownership and control, less competition, higher fees, and the lack of life-line financial services to moderate- and low-income consumers. There are 20 million American adults who do not have checking or savings accounts. Some have been priced out by high fees. Others simply can't get small loans from banks. When their cars break down, they borrow the money to fix them from wherever they can--like payday loans. Banks often think that the best way for working people to get a loan is to draw heavily on their credit cards--cards that often charge hefty monthly penalty fees on top of close to thirty percent interest rates! So America's credit unions are just as vital today as they were when Desjardins helped organize that first credit union in New Hampshire. Yet even though credit unions serve seventy million people--perhaps because they serve seventy million people--they are under attack by the for-profit financial establishment. Today, huge corporate banks are hard at work lobbying Congress to tax credit unions. Unscrupulously, the banking lobby has even questioned the safety and soundness of credit unions. They hammer away and hammer away at their theme: ``It is not fair that credit unions are not taxed. They get a federal subsidy.'' Yet it is the banks, with their multi- million dollar CEO's, their rising profits, and their rising ATM surcharges, that come before Congress to ask for huge bailouts for bad overseas investments. When the banks say that credit unions should pay a billion a year in taxes, they conveniently forget to mention that privately owned banks have received hundreds of billions in taxpayer support in the last fifteen years, ranging from outright bailouts of failed domestic banks to underwriting of their losses abroad. Credit unions are tax exempt for good reasons, and not because anyone is doing them a special favor. Credit unions are tax-exempt because they are not-for-profit institutions. And under federal law, and rightly in my view, non-profits are exempt from taxes: churches, hospitals, libraries, universities--and credit unions. For almost all of the past century, credit unions brought people together, allowed them to share their resources, and served the financial needs of their members in good times and bad. It is my belief that credit unions and their members have the potential to be an even more important economic, social and political force in our country in the decades ahead. In a nation facing forces that threaten to rip our economic well-being apart--downsizing, outsourcing, shipping jobs abroad--credit unions remind us that we can work together for the common good. They show us, day after day, that it is not necessary to incorporate the profit motive into every aspect of American life. In fact, credit unions show us how, if profits are not involved, people can come together to help themselves, sustain themselves, and create healthy communities. I never make excuses for the fact that I am a strong supporter of credit unions. I want to see credit unions grow and flourish because I believe credit unions are good for the working people of Vermont and good for America.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize today a woman who is, at one and the same time, exceptional and representative. Bonnie Gainer has served with great dedication as director of the Rutland County Women's Network. Originally the Battered Women's Shelter, this organization has been a mainstay for women who seek counsel, help, and often a safe haven, from abusive relationships. Bonnie Gainer is exceptional in both the depth of her commitment to women in need, and her ability to organize both staff and community so that those women can find the support and assistance that they all too often desperately require. But in another sense, she is representative: all across Rutland, all across Vermont, all across this nation, women respond and have been responding to the inhospitable condition in which too many of their sisters live. Physical and mental abuse is, tragically, widespread in America. It is not limited to women, of course, but with Greater frequency than most can imagine wives, girlfriends and daughters find themselves trapped in difficult and dangerous relationships. It is both a point of pride--in the good work they do--and despair--that the number is so large--that I report that the Women's Network has sheltered women in Rutland for 1087 bed- nights in the past three months alone. For a decade and a half Bonnie Gainer has led the effort to provide a haven and an alternative to women who are abused. She has been a bulwark in the community, a truly essential resource for hundreds and hundreds of women. She is a remarkable woman, and I salute her, and the many, many other women who support each other in times of desperate need.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to share with you some information regarding an outstanding program in my State that helps schools save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in energy costs, while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollutants. Since 1993, the Vermont Superintendents Association's School Energy Management Program has assisted Vermont schools with the implementation of cost-effective energy choices and efficiency measures. Energy cost savings realized by the more than 125 public and private schools which the School Energy Management Program has assisted now exceed an estimated $950,000 annually. A significant proportion of these annual savings is due to the 23 public schools which utilize biomass wood chips for all or part of their heating requirements. The concept of the School Energy Management Program was developed by the Vermont Department of Public Service in 1993 and the Vermont Superintendents Association agreed to host the program. The program is supported by the Federal Government via various grant funds; the Vermont Department of Public Service; the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; the Vermont Department of Education; Efficiency Vermont, the statewide electric efficiency utility; the Montpelier-based Biomass Energy Resource Center; the Vermont Department of Health; the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust's School Management Resource Center; the state's electric and natural gas utilities; and private architectural and engineering firms. Participation in the program is voluntary and core consulting and assessment services of the School Energy Management Program have traditionally been provided to schools at no direct cost to Vermont school district taxpayers and with no compensation or ``shared savings'' demands. The program takes pride in ``saving real taxpayers real money'' for the long term, while improving the educational environment for Vermont students and saving energy. The program works to accomplish on-site energy assessments and provide energy conservation consulting services to schools. The program's work is not limited to one energy source or type. It includes: biomass heating, including ongoing support to the 23 Vermont public schools which now utilize biomass wood chip heating systems; electric energy efficiency; advice concerning electric, natural gas, propane, and fuel oil water and space heating fuel choices; and school kitchen equipment efficiency. One of the program's most remarkable components is the development of wood chip heating systems, an environmentally sound energy choice saving money for Vermont schools and Vermont taxpayers. These systems provide many benefits to Vermont schools and set an excellent example for schools and public buildings in Vermont and across the country. Wood chip heating can provide significant cost savings to many schools: Vermont schools currently save over $366,000 in fuel costs annually by utilizing wood chip heat. More than 10 percent of public school students in Vermont currently attend wood heated schools and in Vermont there are now 23 public schools which use wood chips for heat and two more schools will start using wood chips for heat in late 2004. Wood chips are a renewable source of energy, currently saving Vermont schools over 720,000 gallons of fossil fuel annually by utilizing wood chip heat. Wood chip utilization recycles carbon that already exists in the natural carbon cycle; therefore no new carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere from this biomass energy source. Wood chips are supplied from Vermont and the adjacent region; hence money spent on wood chips stays in the local economy and supports jobs in the area's forest products industry. For buildings 50,000 sq. ft. and larger, fuel cost savings likely more than offset capital financing costs combined with additional maintenance staff time requirements; hence, in many cases, a system can ``pay for itself'' in 5 to 10 years. I enthusiastically commend the Vermont Superintendents Association's School Energy Management Program for setting an excellent example for school systems and other public and private facilities throughout Vermont and across the country. Mr. Speaker, it is my intention to introduce legislation to encourage schools across the country to take advantage of their innovative, environmentally sound and cost-effective heating and energy solutions. It is imperative that American schools save money on energy costs for their taxpayers, help improve environmental conditions related to heat and energy production, and help support their local job markets in the process.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, as the only independent in the House of Representatives, not a Democrat, not a Republican, I want to take this opportunity to share some ideas that many Americans may not get a chance to hear very often. One of the concerns and one of the most important issues that I think is facing this country is increased corporate control over the media and the fact that fewer and fewer large corporations control what we see, what we hear and what we read. What concerns me about that is not just that, for example, the Disney Corporation has just announced that it will not distribute Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. They will not distribute that as had been previously arranged, because it is apparently too critical of President Bush and that it also might endanger some tax breaks that the Disney Corporation gets in Florida through President Bush's brother, the governor, there. That concerns me. That is not my major concern. And it is not just that recently, as I think most Americans know, Sinclair Broadcasting, a right-wing company, decided that it would not carry Ted Koppel and Nightline's sensitive and respectful tribute to the over 700 young men and women who have been killed in Iraq, because somehow Sinclair believed that that was too political, too antiwar. Apparently it is not appropriate for the American people to actually see the face of war and the men and women who have died in that war. But that is not my major concern about corporate control over the media and it is not just that when we turn on commercial talk radio, what we hear almost always, and with few exceptions, is the fact that there are extreme right-wing voices out there who pound away at right- wing themes and despite the fact that our Nation is almost equally politically divided, for millions of Americans, their only option on talk radio is one right-wing extremist after another. That is a concern, but not my major concern. My major concern when I talk about corporate control over the media is that while we get inundated every single day by stories of Michael Jackson or Kobe Bryant or Martha Stewart or Britney Spears or a host of other celebrities, what we do not hear about much in the media and what we do not hear much about on the floor of Congress is the reality of what is happening to the middle class of this country, what is happening to ordinary working people. That, in fact, is the most important issue that we should all be talking about. It is the most important issue that the media should be focusing on and that Congress should be discussing. So let me talk a little bit about some of those issues today, not about Michael Jackson, not about Britney Spears, but about what is happening to the middle class of this country. Mr. Speaker, let me be very blunt. The United States of America today is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate Nations, not one Nation, but three separate Nations. One part of that Nation is an increasingly wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with incredible wealth and economic and political power; a small number of people, tremendous wealth, tremendous power. Then we have the second part of America, the largest part, which is the middle class, the vast majority of our people; and that middle class tragically is shrinking, getting smaller. It is a middle class where the average American worker is now working longer hours for lower wages; and that is what is happening to the middle class. And then the third segment of our society are those people at the bottom, and that is a growing number of Americans who are living today in abject poverty, barely keeping their heads above water, barely paying the bills that they need in order to survive. And those are the three Americas: a handful of great wealth, great power; a shrinking middle class; and more and more people who are living in poverty. Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country. That is not new, and there has always been in this country and in every country a gap between the rich and the poor; but the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in this country have not been seen since the 1920s. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian Nation with a growing and expanding middle class, we are becoming a Nation with by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The CEOs of the largest corporations in America today earn more than 500 times what their employees are making. While workers are being squeezed, while workers are being forced to pay more and more for health insurance, while their pensions are being cut back and promises made to them being swept back under the rug, while retiree benefits are being cut, while workers' jobs in this country are being sent abroad, the CEOs of the largest corporations make out like bandits. Their allegiance is not to their employees; it is not to the American people. It is to their own bottom line. I am not just talking about the crooks who ran Enron, WorldCom or Arthur Andersen, all of those companies. I am talking about the highly respected CEOs, like the retired head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 2000, received $123 million in compensation, and $10 million a year in pension for the rest of his life; and he did that after throwing many, many thousands of American workers out on the streets as he moved his plants abroad. And I am talking about people like Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, who received $366 million in compensation while slashing the pensions of his employees. And I am talking about Charles A. Heimbold, Jr., of Bristol-Myers Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make it impossible for many seniors in this country to pay the outrageously high prices that his company and other companies are charging for prescription drugs. Mr. Speaker, today this Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families who constitute 1/100th of 1 percent of our population receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in this country; 1/100th of 1 percent earn almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States. New data from the Congressional Budget Office show that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to 2000. In other words, what we are seeing is movement in the wrong direction. The gap is so wide that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. According to data from the Congressional Budget Office between 1973 and 2000, the average real income, inflation accounted for income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent and the income of the top 1/100th of 1 percent rose by 599 percent. Middle class shrinking, people working longer hours for lower wages, the very, very wealthiest people in this country seeing huge increases in their income. Mr. Speaker, in my view, growing income and wealth inequality is not what America is supposed to be about. A Nation in which so few have so much and so many have so little is not what America is supposed to be about. Mr. Speaker, it is increasingly common to see people in our country in today's economy work not at just one job but at two jobs, and occasionally it is not uncommon to see American workers have three jobs. Is that what this global economy in which we were promised so much is supposed to be about? When some of us were growing up, the expectation for the middle class was that one worker in a family could work 40 hours a week and earn enough income to pay the family's bills. One worker, 40 hours a week. Well, in my State of Vermont and all over this country, it is increasingly uncommon when that occurs. In my State and all over America, the vast majority of married couples have both husband and wife out in the workforce. Sometimes that is the way they want it to be, but more often than not it is the way it has to be because inadequate wages and inadequate income require two breadwinners to work incredibly long hours in order to pay the family's bills. And then with husband and wife out working, we wonder and we are surprised when kids do not get the attention that they need and when kids get into trouble. Well, we should not wonder too much as to why that happens. Mr. Speaker, in terms of what is happening to the middle class, we have lost over 2.6 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years; and with 8.4 million workers unemployed, unemployment today is at 5.7 percent officially. In real truth, however, the unemployment numbers are much higher than that because there are a lot of unemployed and underemployed people who do not fall within the official unemployment statistics. These are the people who are working part-time because they cannot find full-time jobs, and those numbers are soaring. We have seen an increase of 300,000 part-time jobs just last month. And there are people who are not counted as part of the unemployment statistics because they have given up looking for work when they are located in high unemployment areas. Furthermore, there are millions of people today who are counted as employed, but are working at jobs that are far below their educational levels and their skill levels; but they also count as part of those people who are employed. Now, when we talk about unemployment and we talk about the economy, one of the more important points to be made is that since the beginning of the Bush administration we have lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs in our country; 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. That is an issue that I want to spend a moment on because what is happening in manufacturing today is a disaster for this country and bodes very, very poorly for our future. The bottom line is, and Congress must finally recognize this, that our trade policies are failing. They are failing. NAFTA has failed, our membership in the WTO has failed; and perhaps above all, permanent normal trade relations with China, PNTR with China, has failed. The time is now, and it is long overdue for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to editorial writers all over this country, all of whom have told us year after year after year how wonderful unfettered free trade would be. Well, they were wrong. The answer is in. They were wrong. These people told us that unfettered free trade would create new jobs. Instead, we have lost millions of jobs, and we have run up a record- breaking trade deficit. They told us that unfettered free trade would improve the standard of living of the middle class; they were wrong. Real wages have gone down or have stagnated for millions of American workers. Let us be very clear. The decline of manufacturing is one of the reasons why our middle class is shrinking and why wages for middle- class workers are in decline. When we talk about the loss of almost 3 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years, we should appreciate that the vast majority of that job loss has taken place in manufacturing. Further, the collapse of manufacturing is one of the reasons that real inflation accounted for wages have declined. Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent less than they were in 1973. Now, just think for a moment, just for one moment let us take a look at this rather incredible piece of information. Every American knows that in the last 30 years there has been an explosion in technology. We all know what computers have done. We know what e-mail has done; we know what faxes and cell phone and satellite communications have done. We know what robotics in factories has done. In other words, we are a much more productive Nation than we were 30 years ago, and almost every worker in our economy is producing more. Given the fact that productivity is expanding and increasing, that technology is exploding, what common sense might suggest is that workers today would be working fewer hours and earning more money because of the increase in productivity. But the reality is exactly the opposite. Why is it that in 1973, the average American worker, in inflation accounted for wages, made $14.09 per hour, while in 1998, 15 years later, he or she made only $12.70 per hour, a significant decline in real wages? And that is, to my mind, one of the most important economic issues that we have to deal with, productivity going up, technology exploding, and yet the real wages for millions of American workers is declining and the middle class is shrinking. Let us be honest and acknowledge that manufacturing in this country today is in a state of collapse. In the last 3 years, we have lost 16 percent of all manufacturing jobs, 16 percent in the last 3 years, and we are back to levels that were last seen in the 1950s, early 1950s. We only have 14.3 million manufacturing jobs. And, Mr. Speaker, here is the tragedy. People would not be all that upset if when we lost manufacturing jobs, if the new jobs that were created were paying as much or more as the manufacturing jobs that we lost. But the fact of the matter is that when we are losing manufacturing jobs, we are losing jobs that pay in almost every instance a living wage. In Vermont manufacturing, for example, pays over $42,000 a year. That is a good wage and those jobs often have good benefits. And what is happening now is that the new jobs that are being created which are replacing the old jobs that we are losing are paying significantly lower wages with significantly lower benefits than the manufacturing jobs that we have lost. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, the new jobs being created in America on average pay 21 percent less than the jobs we are losing. So despite what some politicians and what corporate leaders might tell us, the trend is not toward better-paying jobs. The trend is toward lower-paying jobs with fewer benefits. When we talk about the economy not only for the current generation, but for our children and for our grandchildren, the key question that we should be asking is what kind of new jobs will be created in the future? Will these jobs be good paying? Will they be challenging jobs that a well-educated American population can jump into with enthusiasm? Are those the kinds of jobs that will be available for our kids and for our grandchildren, or is it, in fact, going to be something very different? Because when we talk about the future of America, to a large degree that is what we are talking about. What kinds of new jobs will be created in the future? In that regard, the Bureau of Labor Statistics every 2 years does an important study forecasting the top ten occupations that will have the largest job growth in a 10-year period. In this case, the Bureau's forecast which was released on February 11, 2004, covers the years 2002 through 2012, a 10-year period. And let me quote from Business Week Magazine as to what the results of that study showed: ``According to a forecast released February 11 by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a large share of new jobs will be in occupations that don't require a lot of education and pay below average.'' And pay below average. Those are the jobs, the newly created jobs, that our children and our grandchildren will be looking forward to receiving, jobs that require minimal education and pay low wages. The fastest growing of all of those jobs will be for medical assistance, nursing aides, orderlies and attendants, jobs that require nothing more and ``moderate on-the-job training.'' So the key point here is that instead of creating an economy where future generations will be challenged with jobs that require good education, good skills, the new jobs that are being created will require high school degrees. They will be low wage. They will have minimal benefits. In fact, of the ten occupations pinpointed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of them require only a high school degree; two require college degrees; and one an associate's degree, a 2-year education in college. And that is an issue, in my view, that we should be paying a great deal of attention to because, Mr. Speaker, it tells us that a profound lie is being perpetrated on the American people. It tells us that unless we fundamentally change our public policies and do that very quickly, the middle class will continue to shrink and the jobs being created for the coming generations will be, by and large, low-wage and unskilled work, and that, in my view, is not what we want the future of America to be. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the economy and when we talk about trade and manufacturing, let us remember that in the year 2003, the United States had a $500 billion trade deficit, $500 billion record- breaking trade deficit. In 2003, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, China, was over $120 billion and that number, trade deficit with China, is projected to increase in future years. In recent years that deficit has gone up and up and up. In 1990, it was $11.5 billion; in 2001, it was $83 billion; 2002, $103 billion; in 2003, it was $120 billion. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 billion in 5 years, and that means, of course, that we are importing more and more and the gap between what we are importing and what we are exporting is growing wider and wider. Mr. Speaker, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. Many employers are making it very clear that if workers do not accept cuts in their health care coverage or do not take cuts in wages that they will be moving their operations to China, to Mexico, to India, or to other developing countries. Today, wage growth is the slowest in 40 years. Millions and millions of Americans are working incredibly long hours, and yet they are not making anything more than they made a year ago. One of the sectors of our economy, and we do not talk about this too much, where people are being hurt the most is among young workers without a college education. Not everybody goes to college. For entry level workers without a college level education, the real wages that they have received dropped by over 28 percent from 1979 to 1997, which are the latest figures that I have seen. And the drop for women during that period was only 18 percent. And the reason for that is quite clear. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, if someone did not go to college, and most people did not, what they would have been able to do is to go out and get a job in manufacturing, and millions of workers did just that. And with those wages and with those benefits, people without a college degree were able to enjoy a middle class life-style. They were able to take care in an adequate way for their kids. They were able to save up so that their kids could have a better life than they did. But all of that is changing now, and when young people leave high school and do not go to college, the job opportunities for them are most often very limited. There are jobs available at McDonald's, at Wal-Mart, at service industry jobs like that, but unfortunately those jobs pay low wages and do not allow people to earn a middle class income. Mr. Speaker, what is happening to our economy today can be best illustrated by the fact that not so many years ago, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and workers in General Motors earned and still earn a living wage somewhere around $26 an hour with very strong benefits and with a strong union to represent their needs. Today, in contrast, our largest employer, private employer, is Wal- Mart, and that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a General Motors economy where people produce real products, earn good wages with good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy where people earn low wages and minimal benefits. Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 an hour or $13,861 annual. These are wages, paid by the largest employer in America, that are below the poverty level. And that is what the American economy is about today. The largest employer in America, Wal-Mart, pays its workers below- poverty wages. In fact, many of these workers qualify for the Federal Food Stamp program, which means that Wal-Mart is being directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Obviously Wal-Mart is not the only company receiving welfare from the taxpayers of this country, but they are the largest. Wal-Mart has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their workers are entitled to. And not so long ago, Federal agents raided their headquarters, and 60 of their stores across the country, arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. Wal-Mart is vehemently anti-union and will do everything that it can to make sure that workers in a Wal-Mart store do not have the rights to collectively bargain. Mr. Speaker, a recent study indicated that for every Wal-Mart superstore that employed 200 workers, taxpayers were subsidizing their low-paid workers to the tune of $420,000 per year, which equates to about $2,100 per employee. In other words, we have the absurd situation that many of the employees at Wal-Mart need Federal help in order to keep their families alive, whether it is food stamps, whether it is health care for their children or for themselves, whether it is subsidized housing. So you have the taxpayers of this country pouring huge amounts of money into subsidizing Wal-Mart's employees. Meanwhile, and what an irony this is, five out of the 10 wealthiest people in America are in the Walton family, the family that owns Wal- Mart. They are each worth, each one of the five, are worth $20 billion each, collectively $100 billion. And last year the Walton family of Wal-Mart saw an $8.5 billion increase in their wealth. So what you have is one of the richest families in America growing much richer. We are seeing Wal-Mart workers earning subsistence wages, and you are seeing the taxpayers of this country forced to subsidize those workers because they cannot earn a living wage in Wal-Mart. What an outrage. One of the richest families in America sees a huge increase in their wealth, and they need Federal help in order to keep their workers alive. This is something that should not continue to go on. That, Mr. Speaker, is what the transformation of the American economy is all about. We have gone from an economy where workers used to work producing real products, making middle-class wages with good benefits, to a Wal-Mart-style economy where our largest employer pays workers poverty wages with minimal benefits, and, in the process, has a huge turnover. Incredibly, since 1989, 98 percent of the new jobs created in the United States have been in the service sector, where on average workers earn substantially less than they do in manufacturing. Mr. Speaker, before I talk about China and my great concerns about our current trade relations with China, let me say a few words about the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. That is an agreement, as you know, that the President wants to expand into a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas. In 1994, the United States had a $2.4 billion trade surplus with Mexico. That was pre-NAFTA. Today, 10 years later, we have a $36 billion trade deficit with Mexico, one of the results of NAFTA. Through the end of 2002, the United States lost over 879,000 jobs as a result of NAFTA, jobs that formerly existed and were eliminated, as well as those created in other countries instead of here as a result of the growing U.S. trade deficit. Nearly 80 percent of those job losses were in manufacturing industries. Now, some people, they think, well, if NAFTA was bad for the United States in terms of job loss, then it must have been good for our friends in Mexico and Mexican workers. Well, guess again. NAFTA has been a disaster for the poor and working people of Mexico. Since 1994, when NAFTA went into existence, the number of people classified as poor or extremely poor has risen from 62 million to 69 million out of a population of 100 million. Since 1994, Mexico's agricultural sector has lost well over 1 million jobs, and NAFTA has played a major role in decimating rural employment on farms in Mexico. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight, it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with countries like China would be a disaster. In all honesty, if we check the Congressional Record, what is happening now in terms of trade and its impacts on American workers is precisely what many of us predicted would happen. Why should we be surprised about what is happening? With educated, hard-working Chinese workers available at 20 cents an hour or 30 cents an hour or 40 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into the United States tariff-free, why would American multinational corporations not shut down their plants in this country and move to China? Why would they not? Essentially, the trade agreement we established with China says to them, throw American workers out on the street. Go to China; hire cheap labor and bring your product back here. That is what many of us predicted over the years when the debate about most favored nation status with China was taking place; and that, of course, is precisely what has occurred. Mr. Speaker, General Electric, as we all know, is one of the largest corporations in America. Here is what their CEO, a gentleman named Jeffrey Immelt, had to say about China at a GE investor meeting on December 6, 2002, a year and a half ago. This is Mr. Immelt, CEO of GE: ``When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there.'' This is what he is saying to GE plant managers. Then he continues: ``I am a nut on China. Our sourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive.'' What Mr. Immelt is saying is, frankly, what almost every CEO of a major corporation in America is saying, and they are saying, see you, American workers. We are out of here. We do not have to pay you a living wage. We are going to China. China, for CEOs of American corporations, is a wonderful, wonderful place to do business. Do they have to worry about democratic rights in China? Of course not. If workers stand up for their rights, they go to jail. If workers try to form a union, they go to jail. There are virtually no environmental protection regulations in China, a very polluted country. So for corporations like General Electric, China becomes a wonderful place to work, and that is why they are moving there as fast as they can. Should anybody in this country be surprised that Motorola, another major corporation in America, eliminated almost 43,000 jobs in this country in 2001, while investing $3.4 billion in China? Who is shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of thousands of American workers out on the street, while investing billions in China? Boeing, another great American corporation, has laid off 135,000 American workers, while it has increased outsource design work to China, Russia, and Japan. In the last 30 years, General Motors has shrunk their U.S. workforce by over 250,000. IBM has signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years. Honeywell is going to China. Ethan Allen Furniture is going to China. And on and on it goes. In fact, the exception to the rule is that company that says, we are going to grow jobs in the United States of America. In terms of General Motors, just a few months ago that company announced plans to increase by 20-fold, 20 times, the number of auto parts it buys from China and uses in the U.S., Europe, Mexico, elsewhere, a 20-fold increase. According to the Detroit Free Press, ``GM, the world's largest auto maker, will more than double the number of parts it buys in China for cars it makes there, going from $2.8 billion for Chinese parts to $6 billion annually.'' There are people who believe that that move might be the beginning of the end for auto manufacturing in the United States and all of those decent-paying jobs that exist there. Mr. Speaker, one of the most distressing aspects of this entire discussion regarding our economy is the degree to which the Bush administration has sold out the needs of American workers. Let me quote from a recent report written by Mr. Gregory Mankiw, the President's Chief Economic Advisor. Here is the man who is the President's major adviser on economic issues. Here is what he says on page 25 of the report that he sent to Congress: ``When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it, rather than produce it domestically.'' In case you did not fully get it, let me read it again: ``When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it, rather than to produce it domestically.'' Let us think for a moment what Mr. Mankiw, the President's Chief Economic Adviser, has just told the workers of the United States. What he has said is that companies should throw you out on the street because they can produce cheaper in China and in other countries, where wages are a fraction of the price that they in the United States of America. That is what companies should do. That is what the President's Chief Economic Adviser is telling corporations: go abroad, if you can produce cheaper. What is wrong with that? Well, what happens to the many millions of American workers who lose their jobs? Well, apparently the President's economic adviser and the President himself are not worried too much about that. They are more worried about corporate profits and the ability of companies to produce with workers who are paid 30 cents an hour. Over the years, Mr. Speaker, advocates of unfettered free trade have tried to gloss over the bad news about the decline in factory employment by promising us that a new high-tech economy was in the making. In other words, American workers, do not worry. Yes, it is true you are going to lose jobs. In auto manufacturing, in steel, in textiles, in footwear, in almost every industry, you are going to lose those blue collar jobs. But you do not have to worry about that, because there is a new high-tech economy that is being developed, an information technology. You do not have to work in those loud, noisy factories. You and your kids are going to be able to have those wonderful jobs, high- paying jobs in quiet offices, and all you have to do is learn how to master the computer and become an expert in information technology, and those great jobs will be there for you and your kids. We have heard that mantra over and over and over again: yes, we lose blue collar; but we are going to gain high-paying white collar jobs. We do not have to worry about that old economy any more. We have got a new economy coming. Well, I think that many Americans are beginning to catch on that the people who told us that are dead wrong in terms of the future of this country; that in fact not only have we lost and we will continue to lose good-paying blue collar manufacturing jobs, we are now at the cusp of beginning to lose millions of even better-paying white collar information technology jobs. In 2003, the estimate is that the United States lost 234,000 information technology jobs. Many of them ended up in India, which saw a gain of over 152,000 information technology jobs. When Americans argue with the phone company as to whether or not they are being ripped off, more often than not, they are going to be talking to somebody in India. When you are trying to figure out how to get your computer working again, as often as not you are going to be talking to somebody not in New York, not in L.A., but in India. One of the new areas where information technology jobs are leaving the United States is in tax preparation. Tax experts say that Indian Chartered Accountants, and that is India's equivalent to our CPA, certified professional accountants will prepare 150,000 to 200,000 returns this year, up to 20,0000 something returns in 2003. In other words, so long as there is a skilled worker behind a computer, and there clearly are skilled workers in India, China, the former Soviet Union countries, they are prepared and will and can do the work that Americans used to do at a fraction of the wages that Americans have earned. Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development, and outsourcing in China. Recently, Intel Corporation Chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China. In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has our unfettered free trade cost us much of our textile industry, footwear industry, steel, tool and dye industry, electronics, furniture, as well as many, many other industries, it is now going to cost us, unless we change it, millions of high-tech jobs as well, and the future of our economy. Lou Dobbs who, in my view, has done an excellent job on CNN talking about this issue, reported on a recent University of California at Berkeley study warning that as many as 14 million white collar jobs in the United States could be shipped overseas to India, China, and other countries, representing 11 percent of all U.S. employees. These jobs include over 2.8 million computer and math professionals with average salaries of over $60,000 a year, and over 2.1 million business and financial service support jobs with average annual salaries of over $52,000. And what the University of California at Berkeley study showed is that there is ``A ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs'' which is sweeping across America. And we know why American companies will be going to India and elsewhere, because the wages are a fraction of what they are in this country. In the U.S., a telephone operator earns $12.57 an hour; in India, less than a dollar an hour. A payroll clerk in the U.S. averages over $15 an hour, while in India, it is less than $2 an hour. An accountant in the U.S. makes over $23 an hour, while in India that wage is between $6 and $15 an hour. Jobs most vulnerable to this new wave of outsourcing the researchers tell us include medical transcription services, stock market research for financial firms, customer service call centers, legal online database research, payroll and other back-office activities. Mr. Speaker, last month, I held a town meeting in Montpelier, Vermont dealing with the issue of outsourcing, and we had many, many hundreds of workers who came to that meeting and a number of them were employed by National Life, an insurance company in Montpelier, and these workers felt betrayed, sold out by the fact that National Life had now outsourced a number of jobs from that company which were going to India. In fact, some of these workers were being asked to train their Indian counterparts. Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear on this issue. The United States needs to have a strong and positive relationship with countries like China and India. I am not antiChinese; I have a lot of respect for the Chinese people. And I am not antiIndian; I have a lot of respect for the people of India. I am an internationalist. In fact, it is my view that not only the United States, but every other industrialized country on earth has a moral obligation to do everything that we can to address the terrible poverty that exists all over this world, where 1 billion people are living on less than a dollar a day, where children are dying of preventable diseases, where people do not have access to clean water, where people cannot get affordable prescription drugs and die of preventable diseases. The United States has a moral obligation to work with those countries to improve their health care systems, their educational systems, their infrastructures, to do everything that we can to improve the standard of living of those people. But, Mr. Speaker, we do not have to destroy the middle class of this country and wipe out millions of decent-paying jobs to help poor people abroad. We can and should help poor people, but we do not have to destroy what is best in our economy. Mr. Speaker, the issue here is whether we continue to be engaged in a race to the bottom where American wages and the quality of our jobs and our working conditions goes down, down, down, or whether we are asking poor people in the world to see their wages and working conditions go up, up, and up. And unfortunately, we are moving today in the wrong direction. Mr. Speaker, by definition, a sensible and fair trade agreement works for both sides, not just for one. Trade is a good thing. It is a good thing when it benefits both parties. The New York Yankees do not engage in free trade by exchanging their top ballplayer for a third-string, minor leaguer. They do not say, hey, we are opening up our roster, you can take anybody you want, you give us anybody you want, because hey, that is what free trade is about. They trade for equal value. Every time we go shopping and every time we buy a product, we are trading money for a product, equal value. And that is what we have to do in terms of our overall trade policy. Trade is good when it works for America and it works for the other country. It is not good when it throws American workers out on the street, when it lowers wages, and when the only beneficiaries of it are the CEOs of large corporations who make huge compensation packages, earn huge compensation packages at the expense of American workers. Mr. Speaker, in order to address some of these problems, I have introduced two pieces of legislation that would move us forward in protecting the middle class of this country and the decent-paying jobs that we have. The first bill that I have introduced is H.R. 3228 which would repeal once and for all permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. It will acknowledge finally that our current trade policies with that country, with China are a failure and that we need a new beginning. I am happy to say that this tripartisan legislation has garnered well over 50 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. So we are beginning to move forward in a tripartisan way to establish positive trade relations with China and not one that is costing us huge-paying jobs. The second piece of legislation that I have introduced, H.R. 3888, will end corporate welfare for those corporations who are laying off American workers and moving to China and other low-wage countries. Mr. Speaker, it is not acceptable to me that taxpayers of this country are providing tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the same exact companies who are saying to American workers, bye- bye, we are off to China. That is an insult to our working people and an insult to the taxpayers of this country.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a resident of Vermont, Kathy Francis. I am not the first to recognize her merits. She has already been honored by the Vermont Foster and Adoptive Family Association as the Vermont Social Worker of the Year. In a week she will be recognized by the National Foster and Adoptive Families Association as National Social Worker of the Year. We all know that our nation's future lies with its children. The young of today will be the adults of tomorrow. But being young is not always an easy or comfortable position: many children in America are at risk, and need adults--parents, relatives; teachers, social workers, families--to support and guide them. Perhaps most at risk are those without birth parents. And it is toward these children that Kathy Francis has made a major, ongoing commitment. A child protective social worker for Vermont's Social and Rehabilitative Services Department for the past ten years, Kathy has worked overtime, and with great dedication, to make sure that the children she serves, and the families they are placed with, have support of every kind. That these children will move forward to live rich and productive lives, and that the families they live with will surround them with support and love (and will receive love in return), has much to do with Kathy's ardor, perseverance and devotion to these Vermont children. She is profoundly deserving of being honored Social Worker of the Year, and Vermont is greatly proud of her.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, we live in a nation in which the mass media are so obsessed with the antics of celebrities like Michael Jackson and Donald Trump that we often forget that courage and heroism are all around us, that for many of our friends and neighbors each day is a difficult but victorious struggle against tough conditions. I want to talk today about Donna Covais, a Vermont woman who represents what is best in American daily life. Seven years ago, Donna began to lose her sight as a result of diabetic retinopathy. A year later, she was blind. Of course, she was afflicted by despair: who wouldn't be, in those conditions? But she did not succumb to that despair. Formerly a florist, she began taking courses at the Community College of Vermont, and through the intercession of a local business, Gardener's Supply Company, she was encouraged to begin, even though blind, a garden. What a success her foray into gardening has been! Blindness has not impeded her from making the world bloom--or from playing a vital role in our social community. Donna Covais has won a local prize for the best use of gardening space in Burlington. She has drawn upon her experience and made a gardening video for the Vermont Association for the Blind. She has traveled to Virginia to speak before the American Horticultural Therapy Association. Donna has recently completed her degree program in horticultural therapy at Johnson State College; she's even done a practicum in the world beyond the safe harbors of college classrooms, at Essex High School in Vermont. A wife, a mother, a gardener, Donna has not let physical disability stand in the way of living a rich and fulfilling life, and giving much to the community in which she lives. I began by saying that many of our friends and neighbors struggle with adversity and triumph over it. Let me conclude by pointing out that not only Donna, but her husband Joe, has been the master of his fate. For Joe too has suffered first deteriorating vision and then blindness, as was the case with Donna. Joe too has had to remake his life, which he has done by earning first a B.A. in psychology and the then an M.A.: he is now teaching Psychology at the Community College of Vermont, and is interested in counseling disturbed adolescents. He will be particularly qualified to bring them proof that facing life with courage, determination, and an openness toward the future can really work. Donna and Joe Covais are examples, I believe, of what is best in America and the American spirit, and I commend them for the example they have provided to all of us.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the players of the University of Vermont Men's Basketball Team, and their coach, Tom Brennan, on an extraordinary basketball season. It is certainly worthy of both recognition and celebration when a team finishes a tough schedule with over 20 wins--UVM went 22-9 on the year--and wins its conference championship. UVM lost its first game in the NCAA tournament to Connecticut, but there is no disgrace in losing to the only team which never lost a game in the entire tournament, for UConn was the eventual champion of the collegiate Division I basketball. And it is certainly worth acknowledging the excitement that the team evoked all over the state of Vermont; our state is very proud of the wonderful record of this year's glorious team, and of both the men's and women's basketball teams at the University of Vermont in recent years. And the state is very proud as well that Vermont's own Taylor Coppenrath was selected to the AP All-America Team, as an honorable mention. But what the people of Vermont are most proud of, and I include myself in their number, is that this basketball team not only played well on the basketball court, they worked hard and learned well in the classrooms and laboratories that are the heart of our state university. College is, after all, primarily about academics and not athletics. At a time when the nation, and the NCAA as well, is deeply concerned that many athletes competing in major sports at Division I schools are not graduating from college, when there is widespread concern that often the educational mission of universities is put aside in the interest of athletic success, the men's basketball team in Vermont reminded us all that education and athletics can go together. Of the 64 teams in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball tournament, only the University of Vermont had 8 of its players with a grade point average of 3.0 or better. The Catamounts had the best GPA of any team in the 65-team NCAA tournament. The team's dual achievement--succeeding at the highest level in both athletics and academics--makes Vermont proud, and serves, I believe, as an example to the nation. Our congratulations go to the members of the 2003-2004 University of Vermont Men's Basketball Team: T.J. Sorrentine, Jack Phelan, Kyle Cieplicki (of Shelburne, VT), Martin Klimes, Mike Goia, Taylor Coppenrath (of West Barnet, VT), David Hehn, Germain Njila, Alex Jensen, Corey Sullivan, Matt Hanson, Scotty Jones and Matt Sheftic (of Essex Junction, VT). And to those who helped them succeed on the court and off: Tom Brennan, head coach; Jesse Agel, associate head coach; Pat Filien, assistant coach; Jeff Rush, assistant coach; Chris Poulin, athletic trainer/strength coach; Reza Mohamed and Amarildo Barbosa, student managers; and Ryan Gore, student athletic trainer.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I am saddened by the degree to which the Republican Leadership has turned this resolution into a partisan political defense of President Bush's view of the war in Iraq. Instead of commending and thanking the men and women in our Armed Forces who are serving so bravely in Iraq, a resolution that would have probably been passed unanimously, this resolution re-writes history and justifies a war that need not have been fought. Yes. Saddam was a terrible dictator, but getting rid of him was not the reason why President Bush told us we had to go to war. The American people were told that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be used against us, something which turned out not to be true. It is particularly outrageous that, in order to spin the war in as positive light as possible, this resolution does not say one word about our gratitude to the over 560 families who have lost a loved one in Iraq--including six Vermont families--or the over 2,800 soldiers who have been injured. What must these families be thinking when the sacrifice of their loved ones are not even acknowledged in this resolution? If Congressional Republicans really want to say thanks to the troops they should adequately fund veterans' benefits, increase military pay and provide the money to buy the body armor and other equipment our troops need. But using the sacrifice of our troops for partisan political advantage is something that I cannot support.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, among other things, the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act would make it easier for some of the biggest banks and other financial institutions in this country to merge. At a time in America where big institutions are becoming bigger and small institutions are being driven out of business, I think we have to ask whether this is a good idea. At a time in America when the people at top are making out like bandits, the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing. I think we have to ask whether it is proper for the United States Congress to give ``regulatory relief'' to huge multibillion dollar institutions. I think not. Specifically, this bill would reduce the Federal review process for bank mergers from 30 days to a mere 5 days. This bill would allow the Officer of Comptroller Currency to waive notice requirements for national bank mergers located within the same State. This bill would end the prohibition of out-of-state banks merging with in-state banks that have been in existence for less than 5 years. This bill also gives Federal thrifts the ability to merge with one or more of their nonthrift affiliates; and, finally, this bill would eliminate certain reporting requirements for banks' CEOs in regard to inside-lending activities. Mr. Chairman, I have serious concerns about the provisions in this bill; but equally important, I have major concerns about what this bill is not addressing, what it is not addressing, and what the American people and consumers all over this country are deeply concerned about. For example, while the prime rate is at a historic low of 4 percent and the Federal Reserve has lowered the Federal funds rate 13 times to a mere 1 percent; credit card issuers are making record-breaking profits by ripping off consumers through outrageously high interest rates of 25 to 30 percent. How come in the midst of giving the ability of large banks to become larger, we forgot about demanding that interest rates go down so that people who already are hurting are not forced to pay usurious interest rates. I guess we just forgot about that. Mr. Chairman, at a time when banks are making record-breaking $7.3 billion in late fees they collect from consumers, another major rip- off, there is nothing in this bill that would bring down these excessive fees. I guess we forgot about that issue as well. Mr. Chairman, every Member of this Congress understands that throughout America we are hemorrhaging decent-paying jobs in manufacturing and in information technology; and one of the areas, one of the industries where we are hemorrhaging good-paying jobs is in the financial services industry. No mention, no mention in this bill of a concern that with these mergers comes the loss of decent-paying jobs. Maybe when we talk about financial services, we might want to talk about the ordinary people who do business in banks rather than just the needs of the CEOs who make huge compensation packages running these banks. Mr. Chairman, while credit card issuers are ripping off middle class Americans by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees, credit card CEOs are laughing all the way to the bank; and mark my words, this will be an issue that the American people will demand this Congress to address. We cannot ignore the fact that scam after scam is forcing hard-pressed American people to pay 20, 25 percent a year in interest rates on their credit card. That issue will come before the United States Congress. In the midst of all of these rip-offs, if I may use that word, the compensation packages of the CEOs are going sky high. Over the past 5 years, the CEO of Citigroup made over $500 million in total compensation and the CEO of Capital One made over $169 million in total compensation. When we deregulate these industries, maybe we want to say a word on that issue as well. Bottom line is that this legislation works on behalf of the largest financial institutions. It does not work on behalf of consumers, and I respectfully ask for a ``no'' vote on it.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, as the only Independent in the House of Representatives, my views are a little bit different than many of my Democratic and Republican colleagues. So I want to share some thoughts today, thoughts that are not necessarily often expressed here on the floor of the House or often expressed, unfortunately, in our corporately controlled media. Also I would like to mention to Members of the House that if they need any further information on any of the issues that we are going to be discussing they can get it from our Web site which is www.Bernie.house.gov. Mr. Speaker, the corporate media does not talk about it terribly much, and we do not talk about it terribly often here on the floor of the House, but the United States of America is rapidly becoming three separate nations. We are becoming a Nation which has an increasingly wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with incredible wealth and power. That is one part of our Nation. The other part of our Nation is a middle class, the vast majority of our people, and that part of our society is shrinking. Middle class is shrinking. The average worker in America is working longer hours for lower wages. And the third part of our society, the low-income people, what we are seeing is a substantial increase in poverty, and we are seeing millions and millions of the poorest people in this country struggling hard just to keep their heads above water. One America incredibly rich, another America working longer hours for low wages, another America struggling hard to make ends meet. Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country. That is not new. And there has always been a gap between the rich and the poor. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in this country today have not been seen since the 1920s. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian Nation with a growing middle class, we are becoming a Nation with by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the entire industrialized world. It is not England with its royalty. It is the United States of America which has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of major countries. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent, yes, that is right, the wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The CEOs of our largest corporations now earn 500 times what their workers are making, while their employees are being squeezed, being forced to pay more for their health insurance, while pensions are being cut back for workers, while retiree benefits are being cut. The CEOs of large corporations are making out like bandits. And I am not just talking about the crooks who ran Enron or WorldCom or Arthur Andersen. I am talking about the highly respected CEOs like the retired former head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 2000, he received $123 million in compensation and a $10-million-a-year pension benefit for his lifetime, and meanwhile he cut back on the jobs that GE had in America and shipped substantial amounts of those jobs over to China and Mexico. But he did take good care of his own needs. And I am talking about Lou Gerstner of IBM. He is the former head of IBM, who, from 1997 to 2002, received $366 million in compensation while slashing the pension benefits of his employees. I am talking about people like C.A. Heimbold, Jr. of Bristol-Myers Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make it almost impossible for many seniors in our country to afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs. Mr. Speaker, we do not talk about this issue enough, but we should, and that is that today the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, who constitute 1/100 of 1 percent of the population, a tiny, tiny percentage of Americans, receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States of America; 1/100 of 1 percent receive as much income as the bottom 20 million families. And I defy anyone to tell me that that is in any way fair or that is in any way what the United States is supposed to be. New data from the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, shows that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to the year 2000. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. Mr. Speaker, according to data from the CBO, between 1973 and 2000, the average real inflation-accounted-for income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually declined by 7 percent, the average worker seeing a decline. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent. The income of the top \1/10\ of 1 percent rose by 343 percent, and the income of the top \1/100\ of 1 percent rose by 599 percent. I know I am throwing out a lot of figures, and I suspect that I am boring some people, but the important point to be made here is the middle class is shrinking, and the people at the very top are doing extraordinarily well. Mr. Speaker, when I was growing up, the expectation was that for someone in the middle class, that person in that family would be working 40 hours a week and would earn enough money to take care of the needs of a family. One person, 40 hours a week, earning enough money to take care of the whole family. I think, Mr. Speaker, we can all agree that that is no longer the reality for very many families in this country. What has happened is, because of the shrinking of the middle class, the decline in real wages, it is very rare indeed in my State of Vermont or in any State in this country that we see a situation in which both people in a marriage are not now forced to work, leaving kids at home or in child care. In terms of what is happening to the middle class, we have lost over 3 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years, and with over 8 million workers unemployed, the unemployment rate today is at 5.4 percent. But I think we all know that that unemployment, the official unemployment statistic, very much understates the reality facing workers in America. Today if one is living in a high unemployment area, and if they have given up looking for work, they are not a statistic. If they are working part time and want to work full time, but there are no full-time jobs available, they are not a statistic. So the reality is that real unemployment is substantially higher than official statistics indicate. In addition, of course, there are millions of Americans today with a college degree or higher education degrees who are working at jobs that require far less education than their abilities would provide. Mr. Speaker, here is a point that I want to spend a little bit of time on: Importantly, over the last 3 years, of the 3.3 million private sector jobs that have been lost, over 2.8 million of those jobs were in the manufacturing sector. And one of the reasons for that is that we have a disastrous trade policy which almost tells corporate America, leave the United States of America, go to China, go to Mexico, go to some disparate Third World country where people are paid pennies an hour. That is what we want them to do. The reality is that NAFTA has failed, our membership in the World Trade Organization has failed, and perhaps, above all, permanent normal trade relations with China has failed. Mr. Speaker, the time is now, and it is long overdue for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to the editorial writers all over this country who year after year after year have told us how wonderful unfettered free trade is, how many new jobs would be created. The results are in. They are wrong. Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for working Americans. It has been a disaster for the middle class. And it is high time we understood that. It is high time we ended our disastrous trade policies and begin to negotiate trade policies that work not just for corporate America, not just for CEOs who make huge compensation packages, but trade policies that are fair for the working people of this country. Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that is not talked about enough, is not talked about enough, is a very simple question, and the question is this: If in the last 20 or 30 years we have seen an explosion of technology, if we have seen the development of sophisticated computers, we have seen the development of e-mail, we have seen faxes, we have seen cell phones, we have seen satellite communications, we have seen robotics in factories, we are a Nation which has experienced a huge increase in productivity. My question is, if the average worker today is far more productive than he or she was 20 years ago, why is that worker not working shorter hours and earning more money, rather than, in fact, working longer hours and earning less money? Why is it that in 1973 the average American worker in inflation-accounted-for wages made $14.09 an hour, while in 1998 he or she made only $12.77 an hour? There is something wrong when productivity is exploding and workers are earning less in real wages. In terms of manufacturing, we have, unbelievably but true, we have in the last 3 years lost 16 percent, 16 percent, of the jobs in our manufacturing sector. At 14.3 million jobs, we are at the lowest number of factory jobs since 1950, since 1950. In my own State of Vermont, one of the smallest States in this country, we have lost some 9,300 manufacturing jobs since 2001. And here is the tragedy: We are not, when we lose manufacturing jobs, just losing jobs; we are losing good- paying jobs. In Vermont, for example, on average, someone working in manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent income. And when that employee loses his or her job, in almost every instance the new job that is acquired pays less than the job that has been lost and provides lower benefits. So when we look at the economy, as important as it is to look at the rate of unemployment, it is equally important to look at the jobs that are being lost and what they paid and the new jobs that are being created and what they pay. In that regard, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that in 48 out of our 50 States, more good-paying jobs were lost than were created. Nationally what they discovered is that new jobs created paid 21 percent less than the jobs that were being lost. We are losing decent-paying manufacturing jobs, good benefits; we are growing low-wage service industry jobs, poor benefits. In my State of Vermont, those numbers are higher. The new jobs being created are 29 percent less than the jobs we are losing. Now, when we talk about the economy, the $64 question on everybody's mind should be, what is going on for the future? What is going on for the future? Will the new jobs that are being created for our kids and our grandchildren be challenging jobs, be important jobs, be jobs that provide them with a middle-class standard of living? Those are the questions that parents are asking all over America; what kind of jobs will be available for our kids or our grandchildren? Every 2 years the Bureau of Labor Statistics does a study, and what their study is about is to project and to study what new jobs will be created in largest numbers over the next 10 years. They just completed a study covering the years 2002 to 2012. In other words, the question is, in what occupations are we going to see the most job growth, and what occupations will we see the least job growth? Let me quote from Business Week as to what the results of that study showed: ``According to a forecast released February 11 by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a large share of new jobs will be in occupations that do not require a lot of education and pay below average.'' Pay below average. That is what is being projected in terms of new jobs for our kids. Think for a moment. All of this technology, all of this emphasis on education, and the new jobs that are going to be created pay below average. Of the 10 occupations that are expected to grow the most, only 2 would require a bachelor's degree; 1 of those 10 jobs requires an associate degree, 7 require a high school degree. So the conclusion there, the reality there, is that many of the new jobs being created for the future are waiters jobs and waitresses jobs, food preparation jobs, customer service representatives, jobs that require on-the-job training, jobs that do not require a college education and jobs that are low wage. In other words, Mr. Speaker, it tells us that a profound lie is being perpetrated on the American people. It tells us that unless we change our public policies very quickly, the middle class will continue to shrink, and the jobs being created for the coming generations will, by and large, be low-wage, unskilled work. That is not the America that I want to see for our kids or grandchildren, nor do I think that is the America that most Americans want to see. Now, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of manufacturing, when we talk about the loss of decent-paying jobs to China and other countries, let us understand that this year alone the United States has had a $500 billion record-breaking trade deficit, $500 billion more in goods and services than we are sending out. In 2003, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, was $120 billion, and that number is projected to increase in future years. In fact, the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 billion in 5 years. I hope those Members of Congress who told us how great most favored nation status with China would be, how great permanent normal trade relations would be, hear those numbers. $120 billion trade deficit today. The expectation is that in 5 years that number will be $330 billion. Mr. Speaker, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. It is squeezing wages, because companies have now the opportunity to easily go to Mexico or to China. They are putting the squeeze on American workers, and they are saying if you do not take cuts in wages, if you do not put more into your own health care package out of your own pocket, we are going to be going. This trend of wage squeezing is most apparent and most dramatic among people who only have a high school diploma who are now going out into the labor market. They are seeing a huge decline in wages today compared to what the case was 20 years ago, and the reason for that is obvious; 20 or 30 years ago there were factory jobs available that enabled high school graduates to earn a middle-class standard of living. Today those jobs are gone, and they are only available at McDonald's, at Wal-Mart, and people cannot make it on those wages. I think, Mr. Speaker, if I were to summarize what is happening in our economy today, I think the easiest way to do it would be to point out that not so many years ago General Motors was the largest employer in America. General Motors, with a strong union, paid its workers and pays its workers today a living wage, good wages, good benefits. But today, Mr. Speaker, the largest employer in the United States of America is Wal-Mart, not General Motors. That is the transition, from a GM economy of good wages, to a Wal-Mart economy of poverty wages. Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 annually, wages which are below the poverty level. That is what is going on in the American economy. Our largest employer now pays workers wages that are below the poverty level. Ironically, and pathetically, many of these workers qualify for Federal food stamp programs, which means that Wal-Mart is being directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Wal-Mart, our largest employer, has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their workers are entitled to, and some months ago Federal agents raided their headquarters and 60 of their stores across this country, arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. That is our largest employer. A recent study, and this is really incredible and an issue that I intend to move vigorously on, a recent study indicated that for every Wal-Mart Super Store that employed 200 workers, taxpayers were subsidizing these low-paid workers to the tune of $420,000 per year, which equates to about $2,100 per employee. Can you believe that? Wal- Mart salaries and benefits are so low that taxpayers throughout this country have got to provide health care benefits and food stamp benefits and housing benefits to supplement the pathetically low wages that Wal-Mart, our largest employer, is providing. Now, here you add insult to injury, Mr. Speaker. It turns out that while the taxpayers of this country, the middle class of this country, is subsidizing Wal-Mart, 5 out of the 10 wealthiest people in America are in, yes, you got it right, the Walton family, and the widow of Sam Walton as well. So these five people who own Wal-Mart are some of the wealthiest people in America. Each of them is worth about $20 billion. Five people owning Wal-Mart, $20 billion apiece, $100 billion for one family, and, guess what? The middle class of America is subsidizing their employees because they are paying their workers poverty wages. Now, if that makes sense to somebody, please give my Web site an e- mail. You tell me, www.Bernie.house.gov. If that makes sense to you, you e-mail that to me. That is what the transformation of the American economy is all about, the loss of good-paying jobs, the creation of poverty-wage jobs. Mr. Speaker, not only has permanent normal trade relations with China been a disaster, but so has NAFTA. We have an increased trade deficit with Mexico. We have lost many, many jobs to Mexico. The irony there is that people might think, well, you know, NAFTA was bad for workers in the United States, but maybe it helped the poor people in Mexico. Well, think again. Think again. NAFTA has been a disaster for the poor and working people of Mexico. Since 1994, when NAFTA went into existence, the number of people classified as poor or extremely poor has risen from 62 million to 69 million out of a population of 100 million. Since 1994, Mexico's agricultural sector, their rural area, has lost 1.3 million jobs, which is one of the reasons that we are seeing an increase in illegal immigration. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster, which is why I and many other Members in the House have opposed it from the beginning. When you have disciplined, educated people in China available to work at 20 or 30 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff- free, why would American corporations not shut down their plants in this country and run to China? It did not take a genius, frankly, to anticipate that that would occur. Now, Mr. Speaker, General Electric is one of the largest corporations in America, and here is what their CEO Jeffrey Immelt had to say about China at a GE investor meeting on December 6, 2002, and I put it up here on this chart. I think it is so important that the American people really should take a strong look at this statement from the leader, from the CEO of one of the largest corporations in America, and here is what he said: ``When I am talking to GE managers,'' GE is a conglomerate, they have many separate companies, ``When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there.'' And then he continues: ``I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive.'' In other words, what Mr. Immelt is saying very directly, and virtually every other corporate head is saying, maybe not quite as overtly, is we are packing up, folks, and we are leaving. Why should we pay American workers 15 or 20 bucks an hour? Why should we allow unions to be formed? Why should we obey environmental regulations when we can go to China and have a workforce in which if workers there try to form a union, they go to jail. If they speak up for democratic rights, they go to jail. If they want environmental protection or worker safety, they go to jail. What a fantastic place for Mr. Immelt and his other CEO friends to move to, and that is precisely what they are doing. They are selling out the working people of this country; they are selling out this country entirely. Should anybody be surprised that Motorola eliminated almost 43,000 American jobs in 2001 while investing over $3 billion in China, or that it plans to invest $10 billion there by the year 2006? Think about your State. Think about your community. Is Motorola building a new factory there? No, they are not. They are off in China. Who would be shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of thousands of American workers out on the street while investing $1.5 billion in China? From 1975 to 1995, GE eliminated 269,000 jobs; and on and on it goes. IBM signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years. Honeywell is moving rapidly to China. Should anyone be surprised that they have built 13 factories in China, or that Ethan Allen furniture has cut jobs at saw mills in America and 17 manufacturing plants, including the State of Vermont, as they move furniture manufacturing to China? And recently, Mr. Speaker, and this is very alarming, very alarming news, General Motors, one of the largest corporations in America, they have announced that they will be investing billions of dollars in China in order to build and manufacture automobile parts. Will this be the beginning of the end of the automobile industry? Will the automobile industry follow so many of the other industries as it shrinks and shrinks, and as our jobs go abroad, good-paying jobs? Mr. Speaker, as I think many Americans know, just several weeks ago, the chairman of the President's Economic Council, President Bush's economic adviser made the outrageous statement that outsourcing in the long run is good for the United States. Outsourcing is good for the United States. And their report suggested that if products can be built cheaper in other countries, why, that is where they should be manufactured. What a disgrace. So workers who are making today 15 or 20 bucks an hour, well, yes, the products that they manufacture are going to be costing more to produce than when they are made in China by workers making 20 cents an hour. And the President's chief economic adviser says, well, that is where they should be manufactured. I think that is beyond comprehension. Now, Mr. Speaker, as bad and as frightening and as disastrous as the decline of manufacturing is in the United States, there is another trend which is taking place which might even be more frightening. Now, over the years, from the first President Bush to President Clinton to this President Bush, from corporate America, from newspaper editorials, from defenders of our trade policy here on the floor of the House, what they told us is they said, well, yes, in free trade, unfettered free trade, there are winners and there are losers. Yes, we might lose some of those blue collar factory jobs; but do not worry, America, because while we lose those blue collar factory jobs, we are going to be creating new white collar information technology jobs that pay people much higher wages than those blue collar jobs that we are losing. That is what they told us. Unfortunately, as the American people are beginning to learn big time, the advocates of unfettered free trade are wrong again. We now know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only casualty of unfettered free trade. We now know that we are going to see and are seeing the loss of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of good-paying white-collar information technology jobs, many of them going to India and other countries. According to Forrester Research, a major consultant on this issue, they said, ``Over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs, $136 billion in wages, will move offshore.'' The information technology industry will lead the initial overseas exodus. Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development on outsourcing in China. Recently, Intel Corporation chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China. In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has our unfettered free trade cost us much of our textile industry, our footware industry, our apparel industry, our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronics industry, our furniture industry, and many other industries. It is now going to cost us millions of high-tech jobs as well. Mr. Speaker, just last week, I sat down in my office with eight workers from the State of Vermont who work for National Life Insurance Company, and they told me that their jobs and the jobs of many of their colleagues will soon be going to India, and that in the near future, they will be sitting next to Indian workers and training them on how to do their jobs. And that is what is happening throughout America. Corporate America is selling out not only blue collar workers; they are selling out white collar workers. According to the University of California at Berkeley Business School, let me quote from a study that came out on October 29, 2003. This is the University of California Berkeley Business School: ``A ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs is sweeping the United States,'' according to a study published by the University of California Berkeley researchers who say the trend could leave as many as 14 million service jobs in the United States vulnerable. The study also indicates that jobs remaining in the U.S. could be subject to pressure for lower wages. And why would that be? Well, here are some comparisons between wages in the U.S. and India where a lot of these high-tech jobs are going. In the U.S., a telephone operator earns $12.50 an hour; in India, less than a dollar an hour. A payroll clerk in the U.S. averages $15 an hour, while in India that person makes less than $2 an hour. So what we are beginning to see, what we are beginning to see in occupations such as medical transcription services, stock market research for financial firms, customer service centers, legal online database research, payroll and other back-office activities, what we are now seeing is those jobs, often good-paying jobs, are also heading out of this country. Now, Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear on several issues. I am not anti-Chinese. I am not anti-Indian. I am not a xenophobe. I am an internationalist. I am more than aware that 1 billion people on this planet live on less than a dollar a day, and I think that the United States and the other countries in the industrialized world have a moral obligation to do everything that we can so that children get the education they need in developing countries, people get the health care and the prescription drugs that they need, that the water that people drink around the world is drinkable. That is our moral obligation. But in order to help poor people around the world, we do not have to destroy the middle class of this country. There are other ways to do that. And ironically, many of these neo-liberal-type approaches are being rejected in Latin America and many other countries around the world because they are not working. The IMF approach, the World Bank approach are being rejected in country after country where governments are being forced to cut back on education, health care, and food subsidies. People do not want to see foreign companies coming in, driving out locally owned manufacturing and their locally owned business. So the issue is not, do we help poor people around the world. We do. But do we do it in ways that do not destroy the middle class in this country, and I think we can. The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is we have got to end the race to the bottom. The goal of our economic policy should be to lift up poor people in the world, not lower the standard of living of American workers. And, Mr. Speaker, that is why, among other things, I have introduced legislation which would terminate, end completely, permanent normal trade relations with China. Trade in itself is a good thing, but it is only a good thing when it works for both sides. The New York Yankees do not trade their number one shortstop for a third-string, minor leaguer and say, well, that is just trade. You trade for equal value. And I believe that the United States has got to negotiate trade agreements with China, India, any country on Earth that work for them and work for us, but that are not one-sided, that work only for the CEOs of large corporations and work against the best interests of the middle class in this country. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about what is happening to the middle class, when we talk about the loss of decent-paying jobs, when we talk about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, we should also mention something that rarely, rarely gets discussed on the floor of this House. That is, that the American worker today is now working longer hours than the worker in any other industrialized country. Over the last 30 years, workers in middle-income, married-couple families with children have added an average of 20 weeks at work, the equivalent of 5 more months. Most of the increase comes from working wives, many more of whom entered the labor market over this period, adding more work, more weeks per year and more hours per year; in fact, middle-incomewise adding close to 500 hours of work per year between 1979 and 2000. Mr. Speaker, in my State and I believe all over this country, the American people are physically exhausted. They are stressed out because they are working not one job in many instances, but two jobs, occasionally three jobs. According to statistics from the International Labor Organization, the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That is an increase of almost 1 week of work per year. People are working today in order just to earn enough money to pay the bills, and they are becoming exhausted. Mr. Speaker, I have talked a little bit about what is going on with the middle class and the conversion of our economy from a growing and strengthened middle class, where we did things like manufacture real goods, to a shrinking middle class, where Wal-Mart is now our major employer, but let me now talk about the people who are not even in the middle class, people who are low income. We have got to ask a question about what is happening to the 11 million Americans who are trying to survive on the pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour which exists here in the Congress. Now, can one imagine at that time, when the President of the United States and the Republican leadership have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent, there has not been one word of discussion about raising the minimum wage to a living wage? Tax breaks for billionaires, but allow millions of low-income workers to try to make ends meet on $5.15 an hour? What an outrage. Mr. Speaker, when we look at our national priorities, we have got to recognize the national shame that in America today poverty is increasing, and we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. We are a Nation that gives tax breaks to billionaires, but we have 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness in this year, 1.3 million of them children. What kind of priorities is that? What kind of priorities do we establish when millions of senior citizens in America today are unable to afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs? What about veterans, men and women who have put their lives on the line defending this country? Those veterans today, if they walk into a VA hospital or clinic, will more likely than not be placed on a waiting list. Tax breaks for billionaires, but we cannot keep our promises to the veterans of this country, many of whom came back from war wounded in body and wounded in soul, and now this President is attempting to raise premiums for our veterans, attempting to raise the cost of prescription drugs for our veterans. What sense of decency is that? What kind of priorities are that when you say, yeah, if you are a millionaire or a billionaire, we give you a tax break, but if you are a veteran who put your life on the line defending this country, sorry, we just do not have enough money to take care of you? Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the health care crisis in America, obviously it goes well beyond the problems facing our veterans. We have got to be honest and we have got to acknowledge that our health care system today is in a state of crisis, and we have a lot of information on that issue and on prescription drugs on our Web site, which is www.Bernie.house.gov. The reality in terms of health care is that today 43 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and more and more people are underinsured, higher and higher premiums, higher and higher copayments and higher and higher deductibles. Mr. Speaker, to my mind, the only solution to the growing crisis in health care, the escalating costs, the fact that more and more people are uninsured or underinsured, is for the United States Government to do what every other industrialized country on Earth has done, and that is establish a national health care system which guarantees health care as a right of citizenship to every man, woman and child. It is morally unacceptable that when a worker loses his or her job, that worker can find himself without any health care, and if injury occurs or an accident occurs, that person can go bankrupt paying off the medical bills, see their credit destroyed and, in some cases, never, ever recover financially from those health care bills. Either health care is a right of all people, or it is not. Either we provide the best health care in the world to the rich, or we say that everybody in America should have health care through a nonprofit, cost- effective, national health care system. The irony here, Mr. Speaker, is that some people say, well, that is a great idea, good idea, everybody should have health care; we cannot afford it. Wrong. Our system or our nonsystem today is by far the most wasteful and bureaucratic in the entire world. Mr. Speaker, we spend twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other country on Earth. It is not that we are not spending enough money, it is that this is a system geared toward profit-making for the insurance companies and for the pharmaceutical industry rather than in providing cost-effective quality care to all of our people. Study after study have shown that if we move toward a single payer national health care program, we can provide good quality health care to every man, woman and child without spending a nickel more than we are currently spending because we are going to get rid of all of the bureaucracy, and all of the bill collectors, and all of the advertising and all of the CEOs making exorbitant salaries. We are going to put health care dollars into health care. Some people may say, well, Bernie, you know, good idea, but you are way out of touch with the American people; they like the current system. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. A recent ABC poll indicated that 62 percent of our population said that they would favor a system of universal health care financed by the government, paid for by the taxpayers, as opposed to the employer-based system we now have. The American people want change. They are tired of this irrational, wasteful, bureaucratic health care system which is causing so much pain in America where elderly people cannot even fill the prescriptions their doctors are making, and President Bush's Medicare proposal is not going to help them; where people today are getting sick, and they cannot walk into a doctor's office because they cannot afford the deductible, and some of those people are dying; where doctors now are telling us that the patients they are seeing are far sicker than used to be the case because people just do not have health insurance. Mr. Speaker, given the very serious problems facing our country, and especially the middle class, it is appropriate, I think, to ask what President Bush and his administration have done to address some of those problems. What are their priorities? What are they doing to increase wages in America, to expand the middle class, to lower poverty, to make sure that all of our Americans get the health care that they need? I found it ironic that when the President gave his State of the Union Address, he had almost nothing to say about health care, almost nothing at all, and the reason is that he is not doing anything on health care, that he is tied to the insurance companies and the drug companies who make huge contributions for his campaign, for the Republican Party, and, in fact, they are not prepared to address the very serious problems facing the middle class of this country. Not only has the President and the Republican leadership provided hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, people who contribute heavily to their campaigns, they are making it now more difficult for workers to join unions and earn higher wages. They have incredibly pushed an agenda which would deny overtime pay to some 8 million Americans. Now at a time when workers are forced to work longer and longer hours, and many of their income depend on that overtime pay, the President wants to deny some 8 million Americans the overtime pay that they are getting today. Interestingly enough, we are seeing some bipartisan concern about the rapidly escalating deficit, which this year will be over $500 billion, and our national debt, which is now at $7 trillion. Some of you may have heard the other day that Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed, he has a response to this growing deficit. Greenspan, who supported hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest people, who supported the President's tax proposal, which in a decade will cost us $1 trillion, he has a solution to the problem. His solution is let us cut Social Security, let us cut Medicare. In other words, tax breaks for billionaires, run up a deficit, and then you deal with the deficit crisis by cutting back on the cost-of-living increases for our seniors in Social Security and in Medicare and making the retirement age when people receive Social Security later and later. I think that is an outrage. That is why I have asked the President, who appointed Mr. Greenspan to his position, that is why I have asked the President to fire Mr. Greenspan. You do not support policies which give huge tax breaks to the rich, run up the deficit and then tell the elderly and the sick that they are the ones who will have to balance the budget. We should be very, very clear that these tax breaks, not only are they, in my view, immoral in terms of providing scant resources to people who do not need them, while we have children sleeping out on the street, but, in fact, what they are doing is leaving a terrible legacy for our children and our grandchildren. Think for a moment about the morality of tax breaks for people who do not need it today and telling our kids and grandchildren that they are going to have to pay off that debt either in higher taxes or in cuts in such programs as education, veterans' needs, affordable housing and many other needs facing the middle class. But, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you something else. I think that there is more behind this than one would initially think, and I think that there is really an ulterior motivation in driving up this deficit, in driving up the national debt, and I think we heard Mr. Greenspan tell us what it is. If this President drives up the national debt, what we will be hearing in years to come is we cannot afford to retain those government services which protect the middle class, protect the seniors, protect the sick, protect the children, protect low-income people. In my view, Mr. Speaker, this President is the most extreme, reactionary President in the modern history of this country. And I think that he and his right wing friends want to bring us back to the 19th century, when ordinary people had almost no rights at all. I think behind their driving up the national debt is their desire to cut back and eliminate one program after another which the middle class and working families of this country depend upon. Greenspan now says, well, let us lower COLA benefits for seniors. Let us raise the retirement age. Ultimately, in my view, and I speak only for myself, I think they want to destroy Social Security completely and privatize it. And then, if they are successful, the day will come where if you are a senior citizen and you do not have a lot of money and you did not invest well, or the stock market goes down, you know what, you do not have anything. I think they want to privatize Medicare, not just cut back. And if they are successful in doing that, what happens if you are a low-income senior who is quite sick? Do you think there are private insurance companies who are going to provide benefits to you? Why? They cannot make any money out of you. These people want to eliminate the minimum wage. There are dozens and dozens, if not a majority of Republicans on the floor of the House, and Alan Greenspan, I should add, who not only do not want to raise the minimum wage above $5.15 an hour; they want to abolish the minimum wage. Their belief is that if an employer can get somebody to work for them for $2 an hour, government should not be involved. There are people who want to weaken environmental standards so that our children have to breathe more and more pollution. Mr. Speaker, let me conclude my remarks by suggesting that if any of the Members here want more information on any of these issues they can find it on my Web site, bernie.house.gov.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, just a few more steps on how a bill becomes law. Step number four is to mislead members of one's own party, of one's own party who have reservations about this bill. There were many honest Republican conservatives who had from their own perspective doubts about the bill. They did not want to spend the kind of money that is going to have to be spent. So what the President says and what the Republican leadership says is this bill over a 10-year period is going to cost $395 billion; they can vote for it, $395 billion. Amazingly enough, 2 months later, 2 months after the President signed the bill into law, he submitted a budget to Congress that put the estimate of that legislation at $530 billion. Only $135 billion off over a 10-year period. It is likely many of us believe, in fact, that that bill will cost a lot more because it does not have any cost containment. Step number five is to stick to one's story regardless of the facts. In the State of the Union address, the President stated that ``for a monthly premium of about $35, most seniors can expect to see their drug bills cut roughly in half.'' Unfortunately, that claim is simply untrue. The reality is that most seniors will see their drug bills cut by only about one third and maybe even less. Step number six is to turn one's work on the bill to one's own personal gain. And I think the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) made this point. Here we have the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that wrote this legislation, took the lead in shaping this bill. According to The Washington Post, that gentleman, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), is expected to take a job from PhRMA, which is the lobby from the pharmaceutical industry, and leave the House of Representatives before his term expires. Another key player, Thomas Scully, the immediate former head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the White House point person on the Medicaid bill, recently left his post to work for a law firm that represents pharmaceutical and other health care interests; and we were told that this bill was really written for the senior citizens of the United States, not for the pharmaceutical industry. The last and final point in terms of how a bill becomes a law is to use taxpayers' money to ``educate'' the citizens if they are not buying their story. Recently, President Bush has launched a $23 million advertising blitz all at taxpayer expense to tout the Medicare bill. A media firm working for his reelection campaign will get a cut of the pie for buying the air time for the government touting the new Medicare law. The bottom line here is, I think it is time to rewrite the textbooks in this country about how a bill becomes a law. What we have seen in the last many months, a year, is a shameful process. It is a process of big money buying clout and buying legislation, and it is something that we have got to change immediately. I yield back to my friend.

Mr. SANDERS. That is the third key point. Ignore the rules of the House of Representatives; and if you are losing, do not accept that. Just keep going and 3 hours later twist enough arms so that at 5:53 in the morning, I believe it was, you will get the votes to pass it.

Mr. SANDERS. It is important for the American people to see how a bill becomes a law. Number one, if you have an interest and you want a bill to become a law, stage a massive fund-raising event and contribute to the President of the United States. That is step number one. I know it is not in the local textbooks, but that is really how it goes on. Step number two, ignore the will of the Nation's elected representatives. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that on July 25, 2003, the House of Representatives, and frankly in a bipartisan way, had the courage to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and the Republican leadership and they passed strong reimportation legislation which says that pharmacists, prescription drug distributors and Americans should be able to purchase safe, affordable, FDA-approved medicine in any one of 26 industrialized countries, thereby lowering the cost of prescription drugs in the United States by 25 to 50 percent. But if you are serious about making a bill into a law, you have got to ignore that. You ignore what the House did, you ignore the votes that are in the Senate, and you say good-bye to that. But the gentleman from New Jersey just told us what you do. You suddenly put into the bill in conference committee language that says, amazingly, that the United States Government and Medicare cannot negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry to lower the cost of prescription drugs. That is step number two in how a bill becomes a law in the year 2004 in the Republican Congress. Step number three, and this is a beauty. I do not think the textbooks in high schools or elementary schools have this one. Ram your bill through even if you do not have the votes. What does that mean? How do you do that? On November 22, 2003, at 5:53 a.m., the House Republicans passed their Medicare bill. By all accounts, it was an historic night in the Capitol. Under House rules, as we all know, votes are supposed to last for 17 minutes; and then the Speaker gavels the rollcall to an end. Amazingly enough, that particular vote lasted a record-breaking 3 hours. Three hours. That is part of the process of how a bill becomes a law: Ignore the rules of the House.

Mr. SANDERS. I want to thank my friend from New Jersey for his consistent leadership on an issue that is so important to tens and tens of millions of Americans. I think the first point to be made and that many American seniors are wondering about is, hey, what is in this benefit for me? Is it good? We hear from the President, we hear from some of our Republican friends that this bill is going to go a long way to solve the problems of seniors paying very, very high prices for their prescription drugs and a whole lot of money out of their own pockets. So let us get the facts straight. Let us put it right out there on the table. If you spend $500 a year out of pocket, what are you going to pay out of the President's new plan? You are going to pay $733. What? For $500 worth of prescription drugs? Yes, that is the case. Because there is a premium of $35, a deductible of $250 and coinsurance, copayment of 25 percent from the first $251 to $2,250. If you spend $1,000 out of pocket, you are going to pay 85 percent out of your own pocket. If you spend $3,000 a year, you pay 64 percent. If you spend $4,000 a year, you pay 73 percent. Does that sound like a very good deal? What is even worse, as the gentleman from New Jersey has indicated, because there is no cost containment in this bill, the Consumers Union of America has estimated that one year after the implementation of this legislation, seniors will be paying more out of their own pockets for prescription drugs than they pay today. Why? Because when there is no cost containment, prescription drug costs will go up 15 percent, 15 percent, 15 percent. Three years from now, prescription drug costs will be 40 or 50 percent higher, nullifying the minimum benefits in this bill. This is a bad, bad bill providing minimal benefits to our seniors. I was reminded in the process of how this bill became a law, and the gentleman from New Jersey will remember how when we were kids we went to school and they say this is how a bill becomes a law. I am afraid they are going to have to rewrite those textbooks because let me tell the listeners and my friends how a bill becomes a law in the United States Congress in 2004. First of all, of course, you have to contribute a whole lot of money to get your voice heard. On June 19, 2002, 2 days after Republicans unveiled their new Medicare bill, surprise, surprise, the pharmaceutical industry staged a fund-raiser for President Bush and the Republican Party in which it raised a record-breaking $30 million in one night. It goes on from there.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 2169.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend Subcommittee Chairman Istook, Subcommittee Ranking Member Olver, Chairman Young and Ranking Member Obey for including a provision I have been fighting for during the last several years to protect workers negatively impacted by illegal, age discriminatory cash balance pension plans. Mr. Speaker, as you know, on September 9, 2003, this House overwhelmingly passed by a vote of 258 to 160 an amendment I offered to the Fiscal Year 2004 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill barring the Treasury Department from helping to overturn the court decision in the Southern District of Illinois brought by IBM employees against IBM's cash balance pension plan. The Federal court in that case has determined that, as many of us in this House have argued, IBM's cash balance plan and indeed all cash balance plans inherently violate current Federal anti-age discrimination law. By its terms, my amendment barred Treasury from opposing the IBM employees in that case. One of the intended effects of my amendment was also to bar Treasury from finalizing the proposed regulations on cash balance plans--regulations that were improper because they are contrary to the requirements of Federal age discrimination statutes. On October 23, 2003, the Senate passed a similar amendment by Senator Harkin barring Treasury from finalizing these illegal regulations. These two amendments served as the foundation for the final legislative language which requires the Secretary to submit to the Congress proposed legislation to remedy the harm that these cash balance plans do to older workers. This legislative language also bars the Treasury Department from finalizing its illegal regulations on cash balance pension plans. Now, I understand that report language has been added that attempts to rewrite the legislative history of this provision by stating that the intent of this legislative language is not to call into question the validity of cash balance plans. Well, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the intent of this provision. There is no doubt. This legislative provision is included in the final bill before the House because Members of this body and the other body have grave doubts about the legality of cash balance pension plans. While this report language in no way dilutes the effect of the legislative ban on Treasury finalizing its cash balance regulations, it is a cynical attempt to hoodwink the courts considering the validity of these cash balance plans into believing that Congress has not spoken on this issue. It was no doubt carefully crafted by lobbyists with the express intent of using it in a legal brief. Mr. Speaker, the debate on my amendment and Senator Harkin's are clear. None of us in this Chamber are fooled by this non-binding report language and I trust that the esteemed courts of this country will not be either.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this bill has a number of important and positive provisions. The idea that consumers will receive free credit reports is important. The provision strengthening identity theft is also very important. But basically, the positive provisions in this bill do not outweigh the negative. And, in my view, this bill should be defeated. It should be defeated because it preempts States throughout this country from going forward with stronger consumer protections. And to my mind, States, in fact, are the laboratories of democracy; and it is a bad idea, especially from our conservative friends, who year after year have told us how bad it was for the Federal Government to have all this power, to now give power to the Federal Government and tell the State of Vermont, the State of California, that if you have specific needs dealing with consumer issues, you may not go forward. That is wrong. And for that reason alone, this legislation should be defeated, sent back, and strengthened in terms of consumer needs. I would point out that virtually every consumer organization in America, the Consumer Federation of America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, et cetera, oppose the preemption aspects of this legislation. Second of all, Mr. Speaker, one of the great rip-offs that is taking place in America now deals with credit cards which, at a time of very, very low interest rates, are charging people up to 25 or 29 percent interest. And one way they do it, Mr. Speaker, is they send out notices and they say, come in and sign up: zero interest rate. What they forget to tell the consumer is that for any reason whatsoever, through a bait- and-switch scam, they can raise interest rates. So 5 years before, you were late on a student loan, you were late on an automobile payment, suddenly, you are going to be paying 15, 20 percent interest, and you do not know it. This legislation rejected any effort to protect consumers in that way, not only outlawing this bait-and-switch scam, but even preventing strong disclosure. This legislation should be defeated, sent back, and improved.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to focus on some very important issues which impact the middle class of our country, and I do that as the only Independent in the U.S. House of Representatives. And as an Independent, the views that I am going to express are somewhat different than the views of many of my colleagues. The first point that I want to make is in a sense an obvious point to most people in this country, especially perhaps the 50 or 60 percent of the American people who have given up on the political process and no longer vote, and that is that in Washington, D.C., in the White House and in the United States Congress, money, big money plays an enormous role. There is a reason, and I am going to get into this in greater length in a moment, why we are hemorrhaging decent-paying manufacturing jobs and those jobs are going to China where workers there are paid 50 cents an hour and why corporate America is laying off millions of American workers to take jobs abroad. And one of the reasons that we have a disastrous trade policy is the huge amounts of money that come into Congress, that go into the White House, which have opened up access so that these corporations can go a long way toward destroying decent-paying jobs in America. Money talks. There is a reason why in the United States of America our people pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. I border in Vermont, the State that I represent, Canada, the Canadian Nation. And in Canada people pay in some cases one-fifth, one-third, one-half of the prices that people in the United States pay for the same exact medicine made by the same company. There is a reason for the fact that in the United States we are the only country in the industrialized world that does not in one form or another regulate the drug industry and prevent them from charging Americans any prices they want, and that reason is big money. The pharmaceutical industry contributes huge amounts of money to Members of Congress. They have lobbyists running all over this place. Several years ago when the President of the United States had a major fund raiser, there was the pharmaceutical industry up there on the dais with him. There is a reason why the United States today is the only Nation in the industrialized world which does not have a national health care program guaranteeing health care to all people, and that reason is money coming into Washington, D.C. from the insurance companies and other people who profit off of a health care system which is disintegrating before our eyes. There is a reason why pollution all over America is rampant, and that has to do with the money that utilities and other large corporations contribute to political parties and to the White House. Front page, New York Times today: ``Lawyers at EPA Say it will Drop Pollution Cases,'' and the article goes on to point out, of course, that ``Representatives of the utility industry have been among President Bush's biggest campaign donors, and a change in the enforcement policies has been a top priority of the industry's lobbyists.'' In other words, they have now been given permission to pollute because they are major campaign contributors. There is a reason why this Congress and this President have passed legislation which provides enormous tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks that will go to millionaires and billionaires, while at the same time we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world for our children, where we have working people living in their cars because they cannot afford the housing that is available to them. That has everything to do with the money that the wealthy and large corporations contribute into the political process. Mr. Speaker, the corporate media, which, of course, is owned by big money interests, does not talk about what is happening in our country too much in terms of what is going on in the lives of ordinary people, but in my view, in many respects the United States is rapidly becoming three separate nations. On one hand we have an increasingly wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with unbelievable wealth and power. That is one group. Small numbers but incredible wealth, incredible power. And then we have the vast majority of the people who are in the middle class, and the middle class in our country today is, as most Americans know, shrinking. The average American today is working longer hours for lower wages than he or she used to. People are going bankrupt at frightening numbers. It is extremely rare when we can see one breadwinner in the family earning enough money to pay the bills in almost every instance in the middle class. Now, two people are needed to work, and sometimes these folks are working unbelievable hours and are becoming stressed out. That is the middle class, shrinking, people working longer hours for lower wages, wondering how they are going to be able to send their kids to college. And at the bottom, at the bottom of the ladder, we have a growing number of Americans who are living in abject poverty, people who are barely able to keep their heads above water, people who are in many instances working for $5.15 an hour, the minimum wage, and those people, after 40 hours of work, 50 hours of work, are falling further behind. They cannot afford to get their cars fixed to get the work. They cannot afford child care for their children, and that is what is happening to our low-income people, and poverty in America, as we all know, is increasing. What we very rarely hear discussed in the House of Representatives, in the corporate media, is the growing gap between the rich and the poor and the fact that in our country we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income. The fact that there have been rich and poor is not new. That has always gone on. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in our country today have not been seen since the 1920's. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian country, a country in which the middle class is growing, where fewer people are living in poverty, what we are seeing is more and more inequality in terms of the distribution of wealth and income. Today, Mr. Speaker, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. That is right. The richest 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. Some people may think that is okay. Let me be frank. I do not think that that is right, that that is moral, that that is what this country should be about. The CEOs of our largest corporations today earn more than 500 times what their employees are making, 500 times. While workers are being squeezed, being forced to pay more for health insurance, while their pensions are being cut back, the CEOs of large corporations in many instances make out like bandits. And I am not just talking here about the crooks, the dishonest people, the illegal people who ran companies like Enron and WorldCom and Arthur Andersen and those companies. I am not talking about them. I am talking about the highly-respected CEOs like the retired head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 2000, received $123 million in compensation and $10 million a year in pension benefits for the rest of his life, and he did that after throwing tens and tens of thousands of American workers out on the streets as he moved his plants abroad to China, Mexico, and other countries. Good job, Jack. He is sure worth $123 million now that he has laid off tens of thousands of American workers. I am talking about people like Lou Gerstner of IBM, who, from 1997 to 2002, received $366 million in compensation while slashing the pensions of his employees and the health care benefits of IBM retirees. Right on, Lou. $366 million for him; cuts in pensions and health care benefits for his retirees. A great American. I am talking about C.A. Heimbold Jr., Bristol-Myers Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make it impossible for many seniors in this country to purchase prescription drugs because they are priced so high. Today the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families who constitute 1/100 of 1 percent of the population receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States. That to my mind is not what America is supposed to be. New data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to 2000. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. The richest 2.8 million Americans had $950 billion after taxes, while the poorest 110 million had less, 14.4 percent. Mr. Speaker, it is increasingly common to see in my State of Vermont, and all over this Nation, working people working not at one job, not at two jobs in order to pay the bills, but in more instance than we can imagine, working three jobs, working incredible hours, not 40 hours but 50 hours, 60 hours. Is this what the new global economy is all about, seeing men and women all over America working one, two, three jobs with minimal benefits? When I was growing up, the expectation of being in the middle class, and I know this is a very radical concept that some young people might find difficult to understand, but the concept then before computers, before the explosion of technology, concept of being in the middle class in those days was that one person in a family could work 40 hours a week and earn enough money to pay the bills and take care of his or her family. Imagine what a radical idea that was, one person. The reality now is that we find very few families in the middle class where one person works 40 hours and earns enough money to pay the bills. In terms of what is happening to the middle-class, we have lost over 3 million jobs in the last 3 years, and, with 9 million workers unemployed, unemployment is over 6 percent. That is a serious problem. But in truth, the unemployment situation is far worse than that, because official unemployment statistics do not include those workers who are no longer actively searching for work. So if you are in a high unemployment area, if there are no jobs and you are not actively working, you are not included. Those figures do not include workers who are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work. Those figures do not include Ph.D.s who are driving cabs and skilled workers who are doing unskilled labor because there are no jobs around that fit their skills. But, nonetheless, we have 9 million people who are unemployed. Importantly, of the 3 million jobs that we have lost over the last 3 years, 2.7 million were in the manufacturing sector. This is an issue that I want to spend a moment on, because what is happening in our manufacturing sector today is a disaster for this country and bodes very, very poorly for the future of our Nation. The bottom line is, and Congress must finally recognize this, our trade policies are failing. NAFTA has failed. Our membership in the WTO has failed. Perhaps, above all, permanent normal trade relations with China, PNTR, has failed. The time is now, and, in fact, it is long overdue, for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to editorial writers all over America, all of whom have told us, year after year, how great unfettered free trade would be. Well, the evidence is in. They were wrong. They were horrendously wrong. They told us that unfettered free trade would create new jobs. Instead, we have lost jobs. They told us that unfettered free trade would improve the standard of living of the middle-class. Instead, real wages have gone down. Let us be very clear: The decline of manufacturing is one of the reasons why our middle-class is shrinking and why wages for middle- class workers have declined. When we talk about the loss of 3 million jobs in the last 3 years, we should appreciate that 90 percent of those jobs were lost in manufacturing, and, with the loss of manufacturing jobs, we have seen a decline in real inflation-accounted-for wages over the last 30 years. Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent less than they were in 1973; 8 percent less. Now, just think about that for a moment. In the last 30 years there has been a revolution in technology. We all know that. We all know what computers have done, what e-mail has done, what faxes have done, what cell phones and satellite communications have done. We know what robotics in factories have done. In other words, we are a much more productive Nation than we were 30 years ago. Almost every worker is producing more. Given that reality, that we have new tools that make us more productive, why is it that the average worker in the private sector today is earning 8 percent less than he or she was earning in 1973? This is a major issue that we have got to put up there on the radar screen, and an issue that needs to be discussed all over our country. Let us be honest about it: Manufacturing in this country today is in a state of collapse. In the last 3 years, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, which comprise 16 percent of the total; 16 percent of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last 3 years. In my own small State of Vermont, the third smallest State in the country, we have lost some 8,700 manufacturing jobs between January 2001 and August 2003. And here is the tragedy: When we talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs, we are talking about the loss of decent- paying jobs, often with decent benefits. In Vermont, for example, on average, someone working in manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent income. When that employee loses his or her job, when that job goes to China, in almost every instance the new job that is acquired by that worker pays less and provides lower benefits. Mr. Speaker, in 2002, the United States had a $435 billion trade deficit; a $435 billion trade deficit. This year, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, China, is expected to be $120 billion, and that number is projected to go up and up and up in future years. In recent years we have seen the trade deficit rise from $11.5 billion in 1990 to $49 billion in 1997 to $120 billion this year. And here is what is scary; the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will go up to $330 billion in 5 years. Now, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. It is lowering the wages for the average person. Many employers are making it very clear that if workers do not take cuts in their health care coverage or do not take cuts in wages, that they will move operations to China, to Mexico, or elsewhere. One of the areas where people are most severely hurt is among the young entry level workers, people without a college education. Mr. Speaker, for entry level workers without a college level education, the real wages, that is, inflation-accounted-for wages, that they receive have dropped by over 28 percent from 1979 to 1997, which are the latest figures that I have seen. The drop for women during that period was only 18 percent. How did that happen? Why did that happen? Well, the answer is fairly obvious. Twenty-five years ago, 30 years ago, if you graduated high school you had, as often as not, the opportunity to go to work in manufacturing. You did not get rich, but you were able to make a living, you were able to have decent health care and other benefits. But with the decline of manufacturing, what job opportunities are now open to young workers who do not have a college degree? Well, everybody knows what is open. They can go to work at McDonald's for the minimum wage, or a little bit more than that, or they can go to work at Wal- Mart. But the sad truth is that those jobs do not pay anything close to a living wage. What I think can best show what is happening in our economy today is that not so many years ago the largest employer in the United States was General Motors, and workers who work at General Motors today and worked at General Motors 20 years ago earned a living wage with decent benefits. Today, Mr. Speaker, our largest employer is Wal-Mart. And that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy, where people earn low wages and miserable benefits. Today, Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 per hour, or $13,800 annually, wages which are below the poverty level. In other words, the largest employer in America, Wal-Mart, now pays workers wages that are below the poverty level. Many of these workers qualify for Federal food stamp programs, which means that Wal-Mart is being directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. They pay inadequate wages, workers cannot make it, the Federal Government subsidizes Wal-Mart and allows those workers to get food stamps. Wal-Mart, as you know, has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their workers are entitled to, and, recently, on the front pages of our newspapers, Federal agents raided their headquarters and 60 of their stores across the country, arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. That is the largest employer in the United States of America. That is what the transformation of the American economy is all about. We have gone from an economy where workers used to work producing real products, making middle-class wages with good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy, where our largest employer now pays workers poverty wages with minimal benefits and has a huge turnover. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight, it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster. Many of us have been saying that right here on this floor for years. With educated, hard-working Chinese workers available at 30, 40, 50 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff-free, why would American multinational corporations not shut down? Why would they not shut down their plants in this country and move to China? It does not take a genius to figure out that that is what they would do, and that is what they are doing. Should anyone be surprised that Motorola eliminated 42,000 American jobs in 2001 while investing $3.4 billion in China, or that it plans to invest $10 billion there by 2006? Who is shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of thousands of American workers out on the street in the last 30 years, while investing $1.5 billion in China? From 1978 to 1995, GE eliminated 269,000 jobs in the United States. Meanwhile, of course, its former CEO, Jack Welch, managed to put together an estimated fortune of some $900 million for himself. Boeing has laid off 135,000 American workers. In the last 30 years, General Motors has shrunk their U.S. workforce by 250,000. IBM, another major corporation, has signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over a 3-year period. Honeywell has built 13 factories in China. Ethan Allen Furniture, which does business in my State, has cut jobs at three sawmills and 17 U.S. manufacturing plants. Nobody, nobody, should be surprised at those developments. China, for American multinational corporations, is a great place to do business, if by ``doing business'' we mean making products for export back into the United States that companies previously made here. Not only are wages extremely low in China, 30, 40, 50 cents an hour, but if workers attempt to stand up for their rights and they try to form a union, they get arrested. They go to jail. That is a great place to do business. In the United States we have environmental standards. Factories, plants cannot throw their garbage into the air and into our waterways. Not in China, which is rapidly becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world. It is a great place to do business: Low wages, people go to jail when they form unions. If people stand up and protest against their former government, they go to jail. Massive pollution. What a wonderful place to go and support the authoritarian government in China. Mr. Speaker, I want to read a quote, and I think some of our Members and Americans will really be quite surprised by this quote, but I think it needs to be brought out, and it needs to be discussed, because this is what is going on in America today. This is a quote from Jeffrey Immelt, who is the chairman and CEO of General Electric, obviously one of the largest corporations not only in America, but in the world, and this is what he said at an investor meeting on December 6, 2002, a little less than a year ago. This is the chairman of General Electric: ``When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there. You need to change the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive. You can take an 18 cubic foot refrigerator, make it in China, land it in the United States, and land it for less than we can make an 18 cubic foot refrigerator today, ourselves.'' Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman, CEO of General Electric. There it is. This is not an American company; this is a company prepared to sell out every American worker and run to China where they can exploit people there and bring that product back into this country tariff-free. And it is not just General Electric. I quoted GE. I could have quoted a dozen other corporations. Mr. Speaker, the trade problem with China is now so severe that it is not only a question of companies located in the United States moving to China, but it is companies located in Mexico moving to China. Everyone knows that Mexican wages are a fraction of the wages in the United States, but for many American corporations and international corporations, wages in Mexico are too high, which is why hundreds of factories have shut down there and have gone to China, causing major problems for Mexico. Mexico cannot compete with China, and we signed a trade agreement with them which says that American workers are supposed to compete against the desperate people of that country. Over the years, advocates of unfettered free trade have tried to gloss over the bad news about the decline in factory employment by promising that a new high-tech economy was in the making. It would be a new economy in which millions of workers, young people, would be able to be sitting in clean offices, working behind their computers, earning $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year. We do not have to worry about those old factory jobs, let them go to China and Mexico, because we have all of these high-tech jobs that are going to pay people really good wages. That is what they told us. Do not worry about blue collar jobs, we have the white collar jobs. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the advocates of free trade are wrong again. We now know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only casualty of unfettered free trade. Estimates are that some 50,000 to 60,000 high-tech, white collar jobs have been lost in this country in the last 2 years, and that many of them have ended up in India. When Americans argue with the phone company about whether their phone bill is right or wrong, they are not going to be talking to somebody in Boston, New York City or Los Angeles; more often than not, they are going to be talking to somebody in India. That is who we are going to be talking to, more and more. And that whole phenomenon of outsourcing information technology jobs is happening more and more. According to Forester Research, a major consultant on this issue, they say, ``Over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will move offshore. The information technology industry will lead the initial overseas exodus.'' That is from Forester Research. According to Booz Allen Hamilton, companies can lower their costs by as much as 80 percent by shifting tasks such as computer programming, accounting, and procurement to China. That is your job going abroad. Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development and outsourcing in China. Recently, Intel Corporation Chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China. In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has unfettered free trade cost us much of our textile industry, our footwear industry, our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronics industry, our furniture industry, as well as many, many other industries, it is now going to cost us, unless we change it, millions of high-tech information technology jobs as well. Mr. Speaker, I want to place into the Record a recent press release from the University of California at Berkeley. Its headline is, ``UC Berkeley Study Assesses Potential Impacts of Second Wave of Outsourcing Jobs From the U.S.,'' and this is the way it begins: ``A ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs is sweeping the United States. According to a new study published by the University of California Berkeley, researchers say the trend could leave as many as 14 million service jobs in the United States vulnerable. Study authors, who are both researchers at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics housed at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, say that not all of the jobs are likely to be lost, but they note that jobs remaining in the United States could be subject to pressure to lower wages, and that the jobs that leave may slow the Nation's job growth or generate losses in related activities. What are those jobs? Well, if you are a telephone operator, watch out. If you deal with health records, if you are a payroll clerk, if you are a legal assistant or a paralegal, if you are an accountant, if you are a financial research analyst, if you work behind a computer, there are folks in India, there are folks in China who can do that job for a fraction of the pay that you are being paid, and your boss is interested in taking that job there. Now, let me be very clear, Mr. Speaker. The United States needs to have a strong and positive relationship with China. I very much respect the Chinese people, and I am not here attacking China. I am here saying that the President of the United States, corporate America, and the United States Congress have sold out the American worker. China is doing fine. We do not have to criticize them. They are doing very, very well. They just sent a man into space. Their economy is exploding. The problem is not China. The problem is that corporate America, and all of their money, have influenced the United States Congress and the President of the United States. And not just this President, but Mr. Clinton, but Bush the first, but Ronald Reagan before him, into a trade policy which is a disaster. The bottom line is that American workers should not and cannot be asked to compete against desperate people who make 30 cents or 40 cents an hour. That is wrong. Now, trade in itself is a good thing. I am not anti-trade. But we need a trade policy, and I know how heretical it is to say this, but we actually need a trade policy that works for America and not just large multinational corporations. We need a trade policy that is fair for the American workers. We want to export our products that are manufactured by American workers, not export the jobs that American workers have. When the New York Yankees are engaged in trade, they do not engage in free trade by which they trade their best ball player for a third- string, minor leaguer, they do not do that. The United States has the most lucrative market in the world, and we are giving it away. Let us engage in trade that works for us, that works for the other side; not engage in trade which is decimating American manufacturing and increasingly, high-tech jobs. Now is not the time to engage in an accelerated race to the bottom. We should be talking about how wages go up, not down; how poverty is eliminated, not increased. And that is why we need to change our trade policies, and that is why, Mr. Speaker, I have introduced H.R. 3228, which would repeal permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. Let us get it out in the open. Let us not be talking about currency. It is important, but it is not the major issue. The major issue is that our trade agreement with China, permanent normalized trade relations is a disaster. We have to repeal it, and then we can engage in a fair trade agreement with China and with other countries. I am very happy, Mr. Speaker, to tell my colleagues that since we have introduced that legislation just a few weeks ago, we have garnered 54 cosponsors and it is strongly bipartisan, 14 Republicans are on board that legislation right now, and I appreciate that. We have a tripartisan piece of legislation, and it is something that I know the American people support. If any person in the House of Representatives or elsewhere wants to learn more about that legislation, we have written it up on our Web site which is www.bernie.house.gov. We have a lot of information there about trade and many other important information about what is going on in Congress. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of the middle class, when we talk about unemployment going up, wages going down, the loss of decent-paying jobs, we should also talk about what is happening to the quality of life of so many people in our country. We should recognize that the average American today is working incredibly long hours in order to pay the bills. Today, in fact, the average American employee works, by far, the longest hours of any worker in the industrialized world, and that situation is getting worse. According to statistics from the International Labor Organization, the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That is an increase of almost 1 week of work. Since 1990, the average American is now working an additional week a year. Now, I see those workers in the State of Vermont and I see them all over the country. They are stressed out. They do not have enough vacation time. They are working day and night just to pay the bills. Again, we want to ask ourselves this simple question: What is going on in our country when we have increased productivity, more technology and, yet, more and more workers earning lower real, inflation-accounted for wages, and they are working incredibly long hours? What is going on in our economy? The bottom line there is that we have got to begin to create an economy that works for the middle class and not just for the very, very rich. We have to create an economy where people are earning more income so they can work fewer hours, so they have more time to spend in leisure and with their kids and with their families. I have talked, Mr. Speaker, about what is going on with the middle class. I have talked a little bit about the conversion from a manufacturing society, a General Motors society to a service industry economy, a Wall Street economy. But let us look for a moment at those people who are not even in the middle class. They have not made it into the middle class, those people who are living in poverty. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, while the rich become richer, 1.3 million more Americans became poor and entered poverty just in the last year. We now have 34.8 million people who now live in poverty. In the midst of those people, Mr. Speaker, and what is happening, people we have got to ask about the 11 million Americans who are trying to survive on the pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. And I wonder how it is that in this great institution we can lower taxes for billionaires, but I have not heard one word from the President of the United States about the need to raise the minimum wage above the pathetic level of $5.15 an hour. Now, how does somebody survive who makes $5.15 an hour or $6 an hour. Does anybody care? Well, I will tell you how some of them do it. After working 40 hours a week, some of these workers, full-time employees, go to sleep, not in their houses, not in their apartments, but in their automobiles because they cannot afford the housing units that are available in their region. And what, Mr. Speaker, about the 43.6 million Americans who lack any health insurance at all? What happens to those people? That is over 15 percent of our population. And what about the 3\1/2\ million people who will experience homelessness this year, 1.3 million of them children? And what about our elderly citizens who cannot afford their prescription drugs, who shrug their shoulders and nod their heads when doctors write out a prescription because they do not have the money to fill those prescriptions? How many of them die? How many of them see a deterioration in their health? And what about the veterans, the veterans who have put their lives on the line defending this country and then try to get into a VA hospital that they are entitled to get into but they find out that they have to be placed on a waiting list? They were not placed on a waiting list when they were going off to fight, but now to get the health benefits they are entitled to, they are placed on a waiting list. And just last year the President of the United States, after giving huge tax breaks to the richest 1 percent, threw over 150,000 veterans off of VA health care. Tax breaks for billionaires, inadequate funding for our veterans. In the last several years we have seen huge increases in health insurance costs. And with the increase of unemployment, we have seen more and more working people lose their health insurance. And what happens to those people? What happens if you have no health insurance and you have an automobile accident and you end up in the hospital? Well, I tell you what happens. You go bankrupt. And the largest single cause of bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy in this country are for people who cannot pay the medical costs that have been generated because of an accident or an illness. Mr. Speaker, our health care system today is a disgrace and is in a state of disintegration. More and more people are uninsured and more and more people are underinsured, that is, they have to pay higher and higher copayments, higher and higher deductibles, higher and higher premiums. There are millions of Americans today who have insurance, but who hesitate to go to the doctor when they should be going because they cannot afford the deductible and the copayment. And doctors will tell you that the patients they are seeing today are far sicker than the patients they used to see because people simply cannot afford payments out of their own pocket. In my mind, the only solution to our health care crisis, the only right thing to do to really address the disintegration of our health care system is to do what every other major industrialized nation on Earth has done, and that is to move toward a national health care system which guarantees health care to every man, woman, and child as a right of citizenship. The reality of our health care nonsystem is not only that 43 million Americans are uninsured, not only that more and more are underinsured, not only that we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs; but the reality is that this system is the most wasteful and bureaucratic system in the world. Many people do not know this, but in the United States we spends twice as much as the Canadians, three times as much per person as the United Kingdom spends. And those countries provide health care to all of their people. And study after study shows that if we moved toward a single-pay national health care system, we can guarantee health care to all of our people, quality health care, freedom of choice for the doctor that you want to go to and not spend one penny more than we are currently spending on our disintegrating nonsystem. And, Mr. Speaker, that is what we have got to do. We can no longer tolerate the disgrace of tens of millions of people being uninsured, people going bankrupt because they get ill, people delaying going to the doctor. In areas of this country dental care is a disaster. Children have rotting teeth in their mouths because there are no dentists who will treat them or dentists available in the area. We need to finally move toward a national health care system and make health care a right of all people. Now, Mr. Speaker, those are some of the problems facing our country. Poverty is increasing. Middle class is shrinking. Rich are growing richer. Large corporations and their CEOs, while they hide behind the American flag and they tell us how much they love America, they are prepared to throw millions of American workers out on the street and move to an authoritarian China because they can make more money there. Now, I wish I could say, Mr. Speaker, that the Bush administration is in any rational way responding to these problems. But I think it really would be impossible to say that. Instead of addressing the very serious problems facing our veterans, facing our children, facing public education, facing the fact that middle-class families are finding it harder and harder to send their kids to college, instead of addressing the crisis of the high cost of prescription drugs, the proudest achievement of the Bush administration is huge tax breaks, 40 percent of which went to the wealthiest 1 percent. And in the midst of all of this, in the midst of workers working longer hours for lower wages, the decline of manufacturing, the Bush administration, if one can believe it, is now attacking overtime pay for American workers. Can you imagine that? Attacking overtime pay for American workers and trying to undo laws that have been on the books for decades which say that if you work over 40 hours a week you will get time and a half. I am very proud that a number of Republicans joined many of us Democrats, Independents, on the floor of this House to say that that is wrong and that in fact we were not going to cut back on the overtime pay that workers earn and deserve. Now, when we talk about the Bush administration, we should also point out a very strange irony. The President considers himself a conservative. That is fine. But, generally speaking, conservatives have told us over and over again, year after year after year, what a terrible thing it is to grow the deficit and grow the national debt because when you do that they have told us, and they were right, you are simply passing on today's problems to our children and our grandchildren. Over and over again I have heard from these podiums right here how terrible it is to grow the deficit. Well, guess what? We now have the largest deficit this year in modern American history and the largest national debt that we have ever had. In the midst of that and accelerating that deficit and accelerating that national debt are the huge tax breaks that the President and the Republican leadership have given to the wealthy. Now some people, many conservatives, they say why would a conservative President grow the deficit and grow the national debt. That is not conservative. Let me suggest my view as to why they are doing that. We can all understand that if the wealthy contribute large amounts of money, you are going to give them a tax break. I think that is obscene, but that is nothing new; that is politics. But there is something more cynical going on here. That is, I believe, by driving up the national debt and the deficit, what the President is saying is that we will be so deeply in debt that we have got to tear apart many of the important social programs that have protected tens and tens and millions of Americans. It is my opinion that in many respects this President wants to undue many of the major gains that were won by working people over the last 100 years and bring us back to the 19th century where workers had no guarantees, and when trouble struck them and their families, they were dependent on charity and the largess of the wealthy. I think that is one of the reasons why this national debt is going up, so the President and future Presidents will be able to say we can no longer afford to maintain Social Security; let us privatize it. We can no longer afford to protect Medicare; let us privatize it. Let us do away with Medicaid. Let us do away with the Veterans Administration. Let us do away with Pell grants. We cannot afford it. I think what this administration is doing, and this is the most right-wing administration in modern history, is essentially trying to remove all of the protections that the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the young have and were won over the last 100 years. That is what I think is going on, and I think that is a very, very dangerous trend. Mr. Speaker, let me conclude my remarks by mentioning that this weekend I am going to be going to Madison, Wisconsin, to participate in a major media conference where we expect some 1,500 people from all over the country. I want to congratulate some of the organizers of that conference, Bob McChesney, John Nichols and many others for putting it together. The issue that they are going to be talking about and I will be talking about is the danger that faces our country when a handful of huge media conglomerates increasingly own and control what we see, hear, and read. On June 2, the FCC by a 3-2 vote voted to make a bad situation worse and to allow even fewer large media conglomerates to control more and more media. That certainly will be one of the many issues that that conference will be dealing with. I believe it is a very frightening day for democracy when so few large corporations control so much of the flow of information in this country. And if we are not able to overturn that FCC decision, and I and many of us are working hard on that, the day could come in the not- too-distant future where in a community like Burlington, Vermont, you can have one company owning the major television station, the major newspaper, and a number of radio stations. That is one of the rules that was undone; the prevention of that was one of the rules that the FCC just eliminated. Now the good news is that the United States Senate, the other body, voted for a resolution of disapproval against that by a 55-40 vote. Liberals and conservatives came together, Republicans and Democrats came together and said that is not what media should become in America. Mr. Speaker, I have a letter which has 205 signatures on it for the Speaker of the House, and it says to the Speaker, let the U.S. House of Representatives have a vote on doing what the other body did. Let us also have the opportunity to vote for a resolution of disapproval regarding the FCC decision. Three million Americans have contacted the FCC, and I think we should listen to those Americans, and I think the Speaker should give us a vote.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to recognize the contributions of Ron Pickering, an individual of great importance to the working people of America, and particularly my state of Vermont. For the past ten years he served with distinction as the President of the Vermont AFL-CIO. Ron was a remarkably effective and dedicated leader of Vermont's most important labor council. He has also served most capably as the international representative for PACE [the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union], in which capacity he serviced many contracts in New England. I have known Ron for many years, both as a personal friend and as colleague in the struggle for workers' rights. It is with a sense of deep respect that I say that Ron Pickering reinvigorated the trade union movement in the state of Vermont and laid the groundwork for some of the most important labor victories in the state's history. Ron has been one of the best and most influential advocates for working people the state of Vermont has ever seen. His effectiveness in the State House in Montpelier has meant that working men and woman have had a voice, and a most eloquent voice, in the deliberations of state government. Together with his wife Gloria, who has time and again been at his side while he traveled throughout the state of Vermont, Ron Pickering has stood up for the labor movement, for the needs of working Americans, and for the rights of those who put in a hard day's work-- every day--to see that America remains productive and strong.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to share with you the attached letter, which I recently received from the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems in support of my and my colleagues' legislative efforts to enable Americans to access prescription drugs from Canada. I would like this letter included in the Congressional Record. Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Montpelier, VT, September 29, 2003 The Honorable Bernard Sanders, House of Representatives, Rayburn Building, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Sanders: On behalf of the hospitals in Vermont, I am writing to extend our support for your efforts to allow for the re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada. As you well know, access to safe, affordable medication is an issue for many Americans. In our rural state, patients of all ages travel to Canada to purchase FDA- approved, less expensive medications. That option should be available to all patients seeking more affordable prescription drug coverage. Our hospitals are committed to ensuring that our patients have access to affordable, quality healthcare. We applaud your efforts and the efforts of your colleagues on this very important issue. Sincerely, Thomas Huebner, Board Chair. M. Betrice Grause, President & CEO.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend very much. My friend talks about the importance of economic reform in China, and I agree with him. But do you not think we also should be talking about the loss of millions of decent paying jobs?