Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, my friend ignores the fact that all of the projections are that the trade deficit with China is going to grow wider and wider, which means more and more job loss in the United States. I ask my friend, what do you say to your corporate buddies, who throw American workers out on the street, move to China and hire people there, for 30 cents an hour?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about the advantages of free trade. Does he think American workers can and should compete against people who make 40 cents an hour and go to jail when they try to form a union?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANDERS. I thank my friend from Michigan for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation, but I have to say that I think it will not do much good and that I think in many ways it deflects attention from the most important issue, which is not asking the Chinese to make changes in their currency but in fact asking the United States Congress and the President of the United States to make changes in our disastrous trade policies. The bottom line is that right now in America, manufacturing is in a state of collapse. We have lost almost 3 million manufacturing jobs in the last 3 years. We are seeing our economy move from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy where workers are now earning poverty wages with minimal benefits. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the reasons is that our trade policy with China, with Mexico and other countries has failed. It is time to understand that and it is time to redo that. The bottom line is that American workers should not and cannot be asked to compete against desperate people in China who work for pennies an hour. Does anyone here think that it makes sense to tell a manufacturing worker in America who earns $16 an hour, who has decent benefits, that he has got to compete against someone in China who makes 30 or 40 cents an hour, who if that person stands up and tries to form a union might get thrown in jail? Is it fair to ask American manufacturers to compete against companies in China where there are virtually no environmental regulations and in a country which is becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world? The reality now is that in the midst of a $435 billion overall trade deficit, we have a $120 billion trade deficit with China alone. The National Association of Manufacturers tells us that in the next 5 years that trade deficit could well grow to over $300 billion. Yes, we make exports to China but for every $1 that we export, we import $6. The reality now is that we are hemorrhaging decent-paying jobs because, to a large degree, of a failed trade policy. The Republican leadership and many Democrats are going to have to own up to it. You have got to come forward and say to the American people, yeah, you think it is great for American workers to compete against people who make 30 cents an hour. You are going to have to tell small American manufacturers who want to do business in this country, who are patriotic, who want to employ American workers, that they are no longer going to have to compete against those companies who sell their products back in this country for a fraction of the price that American manufacturers can produce that product for. So I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, your idea has some merit, but you are not getting to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that one of the reasons that we are hemorrhaging decent- paying jobs is because of a failed trade policy, and that is why I have introduced legislation, H.R. 3228, which is winning bipartisan support, which says once and for all let us repeal permanent normal trade relations with China, let us develop a new trade relationship with that country which works not just for the large multinationals but works for the average American workers. I very well remember the debate, as many of you do, about all of the advantages that PNTR with China would bring. We are going to bring some of those quotes back onto the floor of the House, because they were wrong. All of those people who told us about the jobs that were created were wrong. We are losing jobs. We have got to repeal PNTR with China.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, the corporate media does not talk about it too much, and we do not discuss it terribly much here in the Congress, but the United States of America is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate nations: An increasingly wealthy elite, a small number of people who have incredible wealth and incredible power; a middle class, the vast majority of our people, which is shrinking, where the average person is working longer hours for lower wages; and, at the bottom we have a growing number of Americans who are living in abject poverty, barely keeping their heads above water. 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 have not been seen since the 1920s. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian country, with a stronger middle-class, we are becoming a Nation in which the rich have more wealth and power, the middle-class is shrinking, and poverty is growing. Mr. Speaker, today the wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. One percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The CEOs of large corporations today earn more than 500 times what their employees are making. 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 make out like bandits. Mr. Speaker, the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, which constitute one one-hundredth of one percent of the population, receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States. One one-hundredth of one percent, more income than the bottom 20 million families. 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, or 15.5 percent of the economic pie, while the poorest 110 million had less, 14.4 percent of all after-tax income. Once again, that is not what America is supposed to be. While the rich get richer and receive huge tax breaks from the White House, the middle-class is struggling desperately, in my State of Vermont and all over this country. It is increasingly common to see people work at not one job, but two jobs, and occasionally three jobs. When I was 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 bills. Well, in the State of Vermont, and all over this country, it is becoming increasingly uncommon when that happens. Much more often than not, wives are forced to work alongside husbands in order to bring in the necessary income, and kids, in many instances, do not get the care that they need. Unemployment in our country is now at a 9-year high. We are over 6 percent, and there are now over 9 million people who are unemployed. But in truth the real number is higher than that, because there are a lot of people who are working part-time because they cannot find full- time jobs, and there are a lot of people who are not part of the statistics because they have given up and are not actively seeking employment. Mr. Speaker, of the 3.3 million private sector jobs that have been lost over the last 3 years, 2.7 million were in the manufacturing sector. This is an issue I want to spend a moment on, because what is happening in manufacturing today is a disaster for this country and bodes very poorly for the future of our Nation. Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is, and this Congress must finally recognize it, our trade policies are failing. Permanent, normal trade relations with China has been a disaster. NAFTA has been a disaster. Our membership in the World Trade Organization has not worked for the middle-class and working families, for this country, and the time 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 all of the editorial pages all over America who have told us year after year after year how great unfettered free trade would be. They were wrong. Their policies have led to enormous economic problems for the middle-class in this country. 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. Many people understand the pain involved when we have lost 3 million jobs in the last few years. But we also have got to point out that our trade policies and our overall economic policies have been a disaster for the wages that American workers receive. Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent less than they were in 1973. Now, just think for a moment. Think 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. We know what robotics in factories have done. In other words, we are a much more productive Nation than we used to be. Every worker is producing more. Given that reality, why is it that the average worker in the private sector today is earning 8 percent less? That is an issue we have to put right up there on the radar screen, and we need to debate. Mr. Speaker, manufacturing in this country is currently in a state of collapse. Let us be honest about it. In the last 3 years, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, which comprise 16 percent of the total. That is right. You heard that right. In the last 3 years, we have lost 16 percent of our manufacturing jobs. At 14.7 million, we are at the lowest number of factory jobs since 1958. In my own State of Vermont, my small State of Vermont, we have lost some 8,700 manufacturing jobs between January 2001 and August 2003, and the pity of that is that in Vermont, manufacturing jobs pay workers middle-class wages. In Vermont, on average, a worker working in manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent wage. We are losing those jobs, and the new jobs that we are creating are paying only a fraction of what manufacturing jobs are paying, and almost always provide much, much weaker 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 increase in future years. It has gone up and up and up. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 billion in 5 years. But our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent paying jobs; it is squeezing wages. It is squeezing wages. Because many employers are saying if you do not take the cuts in health care, if you do not take the cuts in wages, we are going to move to China, we are going to move to Mexico. One of the areas where people are being most severely hurt is among young workers without a college education. For entry-level workers without a college level education, the real wages that they have received, that they are now receiving, have dropped by over 20 percent in the last 25 years. And the answer and the reason for that is quite obvious. 25 years ago, 30 years ago if somebody did not go to college, as most people did not, what they would be able to do is go out and get a job in manufacturing. And millions and millions of workers did that. And with those wages and those benefits they were able to lead a middle-class existence and raise their kids with a decent standard of living. But the reality now is that the new jobs that are being created, the jobs at McDonald's and the jobs in Wal-Mart are not paying people a living wage. What is happening to our economy today is best illustrated by the fact that some 20 years ago our largest employer was General Motors. And workers in General Motors earned, and still earn today, a living wage. Today, Mr. Speaker, our largest private employer is Wal-Mart. And that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a General Motors economy where workers earned decent wages and decent benefits to a Wal-Mart economy where people earn low wages and poor benefits. Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 per hour or $13,861 annually. And that, Mr. Speaker, is an income which is below the poverty level. And that is what the transformation of the American economy is about, an economy where workers used to work, produced real products, made middle-class wages, had good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy where our largest employer now pays workers poverty wages, minimal benefits, huge turn-over. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight 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. With educated, hardworking Chinese workers available at 40 or 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 their plants in this country and move to China? It did not take a genius, frankly, to think that that would happen. Should anyone be surprised that Motorola eliminated 42,900 American jobs in 2001 and invested $3.4 billion in China or that IBM has signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years? Who is shocked that General Electric has thrown tens of thousands of American workers out on the streets while investing $1.5 billion in China. Honeywell is a sophisticated corporation. Should anybody be really surprised that they have built 13 factories in China or that Ethan Allen furniture has cut jobs at three sawmills and 17 U.S. manufacturing plants, including some in my State of Vermont, as they import more medium-priced furniture from China into the United States? Nobody should be surprised at these developments. China, for American multinational corporations, is a great place to do business, if by ``doing business'' we mean making products for export to the United States that companies previously made here. Not only are wages extremely low in China, but if workers attempt to stand up for their rights in China and form unions, those workers go to jail. Now, what a great place to do business where when workers try to organize, they go to jail. What more could a company ask for? In China today environmental regulations are almost nonexistent. And while China becomes one of the most polluted countries on Earth, companies that invest in China, they do not have to ``waste money on environmental safeguards.'' In our country we said many years ago to companies you just cannot willy-nilly throw your garbage into our lakes and into our streams. You cannot pollute the air any way you want. You have got to have some environmental safeguards. Those safeguards are expensive. But in China, no problem, you can do whatever you want. Great place to do business. Mr. Speaker, 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 economy was in the making. A new economy was in the making, one in which Americans would be working at good wages in the high-tech field. We have all heard it. Hey, you do not have to worry about them factory jobs anymore. We are the United States of America. We all have new clean, high-tech computer jobs. All of our young people will go out there, make $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year. That is the future for the United States. That is what they told us. Unfortunately, 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. Estimates are that some 50 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. If any of the listeners sometimes want to argue with the phone company that your phone bill was wrong, you get on the phone and you are calling up and arguing, well you may end up going not to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, you may be talking to somebody in India. And that is happening more and more. According to Forest Research, a major consultant on this issue, they say, and I quote, ``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 Forest 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. 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. Just the other day, just last week, 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 our textile industry, cost us our shoe industry, our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronic industry, much of 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 jobs as well. Now, let me be very clear. The United States needs to have a strong and positive relationship with China. I am not anti-Chinese. I am an internationalist. China is the largest country on Earth, and this country must have a good and positive relationship with China; and there are a number of ways that we can do that. But doing that, having a positive relationship with China, does not mean allowing corporate America and their supporters in the White House, in Congress, to destroy the American middle class by making jobs America's number 1 export. We want our exports to be products manufactured by American workers, not the jobs that American workers have. If we continue to force American workers to, quote unquote, compete against desperate people from China and other developing countries, both in manufacturing and high tech, the United States will be the loser. By definition a sensible and fair trade agreement works well for both parties, not just for one. Trade is a good thing. Trade is a good thing when both sides benefit. The New York Yankees do not engage in free trade by exchanging their top ball player for a third string minor leaguer. The United States is the most lucrative market in the world. We need to leverage the value of that market to achieve trade agreements that result in fairness for the American worker. And we can do that. Trade is a good thing. But our current trade policies are not working for American workers. When we talk about trade with China, Mr. Speaker, we should also understand that today 60 percent, 60 percent of Dell Computer parts are made in China. Boeing recently said that it expected to purchase $1 billion worth of aviation equipment annually in China by 2009 and $1.3 billion by 2010, up from $500 million this year. North Carolina's Pillowcase Corporation filed for bankruptcy on July 20, 2003, laying off 6,450 of its 7,650 workers and made plans to sell its textile-producing machinery to several nations, including China. Over the past year, Intel has added 1,000 software engineers in China and India. And on and on it goes. The bottom line is that American workers cannot and must not be forced to compete against workers in China who are paid extremely low wages. Two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion citizens live on less than a dollar a day. The average factory wage in China is 40 cents an hour, \1/40\th of what U.S. factory workers are paid. The average annual salary for an information technology programmer in the U.S. is $75,000; in China it is $8,952. Mr. Speaker, for all of these reasons and more, I have introduced H.R. 3228, which would repeal permanent normal trade relations with China. My legislation, once again, would repeal permanent normal trade relations with China. It will acknowledge that our current trade policies with that country are a failure. And we have got to begin negotiating trade policies not only with China but with other countries that work well for the American worker and the American middle class. I am happy to say that in just over 3 weeks, this tripartisan legislation has garnered 52 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. So we are moving forward in that area, Mr. Speaker, in a tripartisan way. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of the middle class, we are talking about high unemployment; we are talking about the conversion of the United States from a manufacturing economy to a service economy whereby wages and benefits are much lower. We are also talking about the fact that in the United States, workers today are now working the longest hours of the workers in any major country on earth. There should be little wonder why the average American family is so stressed out. And one of the reasons that they are so stressed out is that people are working incredibly long hours in order to make enough money to pay the bills. Today, the average American employee works by far the longest hours of any worker in the industrialized world, and the 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 one week of work. Since 1990, the average American is now working an additional week a year of work. We are now, as Americans, putting more hours into our work than at any time since the 1920s. Just think about that. Huge increases in productivity and an explosion of technology, logically, would lead one to believe that people would be working fewer hours for higher wages, but the converse is true. People are working longer hours for lower wages. Americans are now putting in more hours at our work than at any time since the 1920s, 65 years after the formal establishment of the 40-hour workweek under the Fair Labor Standards Act, almost 40 percent of Americans now work more than 50 hours a week; and we should do a lot of thinking about that. An explosion of productivity and technology, people working longer and longer hours; and in almost every instance in the middle class, two bread winners are needed to pay the bills. Real wages for workers in the private sector have declined since 1973. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks and poverty increases. Mr. Speaker, I have talked a moment 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 Wal-Mart economy, but let us look for a moment at the people who are not even in the middle class. People who have not made it into the middle class. People who are at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder in our country, the 34.8 million people in America who live in poverty. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, while the rich get richer, 1.3 million more Americans became poor and entered poverty, the group of poor people in America. In the midst of those people, Mr. Speaker, 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 which exists here, and I think it is morally repugnant that this Congress voted to provide huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, but somehow the President of the United States and the Republican leadership, not for one moment have thought about raising the minimum wage, which today is at a pathetic $5.15 cents an hour. How do people earning those wages survive? And I will tell you how some of them do it. After working 40 hours a week, they live in their automobiles because they cannot afford housing units in order to survive. They just cannot afford the housing because their wages cannot pay the rent. And what, Mr. Speaker, about the 43.6 million Americans who lack any health insurance? That is 15.2 percent of our population. What about the 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness in this year, 1.3 million of them children? What about our elderly citizens who cannot afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs? And the many of them who cut their pills in half or do not even bother trying to fill the prescriptions that their doctors write for them? What about those people? What about the veterans who have put their lives on the line defending this country and then try to get into a VA hospital but find out that they are on a waiting list? Mr. Speaker, one of the clear crises being faced by the American middle class is the crisis in health care and the cost of prescription drugs. In the last several years, we have seen huge increases in health insurance and with the increase of unemployment, we have seen more and more working people lose their health insurance. In terms of losing health insurance, people then are open to bankruptcy, because if they end up with an accident or a serious illness, they go to the hospital, but they are unable to pay those bills. And the highest amount of people who are bankrupt are the people who cannot pay their health expenses that have been generated as a result of an accident or illness. Mr. Speaker, our health care system today is in a state of collapse. More and more people are uninsured and more and more people are underinsured. That is, people have higher and higher copayments, higher and higher deductibles, higher and higher premiums. To my mind, the only solution, the only serious solution to our health care crisis is for this country 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. A hundred years ago, the United States of America said that every young person, regardless of income, could get a quality public education. Well, the rest of the world has said that every person in their country, regardless of income, is entitled to health care. But we lag behind what countries throughout Europe, Scandinavia and Canada are doing. To my mind, health care is a right, not a privilege. It is wrong that more and more Americans delay and hesitate going to the doctors because they do not have health insurance or because they cannot pay the deductible or the copayments. When people in America get sick, they have a right to go to the doctor, to go to the hospital and get the health care that they need. The irony with regard to our collapsing health care system is that it is an extremely costly and wasteful system. The fact of the matter is that we spend more than twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation, and yet we end up with 43 million people with no insurance and many more who are underinsured. For the sake of our children, for the sake of our parents, for the sake of the middle class of this country, we have got to adopt a national health care system which finally says with no ifs, ands, or buts about it that in America, all of our people will receive the care that they need as a right of citizenship. Now, Mr. Speaker, given the very, very serious problems facing the American people and especially our middle class, it is appropriate, I believe, to ask what President Bush and his administration have done to begin addressing some of these problems. What are their priorities? What are they doing to reach out to the middle class and say we are going to expand the middle class; we are going to lower poverty; we are going to improve health care? What are they doing in that direction? Well, let me tell you a little bit about what they have done. They have given hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very richest people in our country while cutting back on the basic needs of working families. Now, at a time when the middle class is shrinking, when poverty is increasing, when the number of people without health insurance is going up, when unemployment is far too high, who are the people that the Bush administration are reaching out to? Well, needless to say, it is their campaign contributors and the very wealthiest people in this country who have received hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks. Through legislative and administration efforts, the Bush administration is making it more and more difficult for workers to form unions and to protect their jobs and incomes. When a worker is a member of a union, by and large that worker will earn 30 percent more than a worker doing a similar job who is nonunion. That is why many workers want to join unions, and yet it is getting harder and harder for workers to do that because the law very clearly sides with the employer and the large corporation and not with the worker. The Bush administration, if you can believe it, is now attacking overtime for American workers and trying to undo laws that have been on the books for decades which say that if you worked over 40 hours a week, you will get time and a half. And I am proud that a number of Republicans join many of us on this floor of the House to say that when the middle class is shrinking, when real wages are declining, we are not going to cut back on the overtime pay that workers need. Now, when we talk about the achievements of the Bush administration, and we understand that our deficit is now at an all-time high, that our national debt is going higher, that in the midst of all of this, our conservative friends who year after year told us how terrible deficits were and what kind of terrible obligations we were leaving to our kids and our grandchildren, well, these are the folks that are driving up the deficit, and they are driving up the national debt. Now, why are they doing that? Why are conservatives doing that? Well, I think there are two reasons. Number one, obviously, the tax breaks for the rich are not hard to understand. Here in Washington, D.C. there are fund-raising dinners in which individuals have contributed $25,000 a plate, large corporations and their executives make huge contributions and that is payback time. Nothing new. The rich make contributions. They get paid back in tax breaks. They get paid back in corporate welfare. They get paid back with their trade policy which makes it easier for them to throw American workers out on the street and move out to China. That we can understand. That is obscene, but easily understood. But, Mr. Speaker, let me suggest to you that there is another even more cynical reason for driving up this deficit and driving up the national debt. And I believe that that reason is that as the debt and the deficit become higher and higher, this President, or any other President, may be forced to come before the American people and say our deficit and our debt is so very high that we have no choice but to privatize Social Security, privatize Medicare, privatize Medicaid, privatize public education. We have got to do it. We have a huge deficit. Oh, yeah, we did give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the rich; but nonetheless, the deficit is so high that we are going to have to do away with all of the benefits, all of the guarantees that the American people have fought for over the last 100 years; and it is my belief that this administration really does want to take us back to the 19th century, where working people and the middle class had no protections whatsoever, where workers and poor people were dependent upon the largess of the wealthy for charity, but there were no guarantees. Social Security has its problems; and in my view, Social Security must be strengthened. Seniors must be receiving larger COLAs, but the solution to the problems that we may have are not to privatize Social Security and bring us back to the 1920s when elderly people were the poorest segment of our society; but that is the direction that these folks are moving us towards, and they are moving us toward the privatization of Medicare. Think about how many private insurance companies are really going to provide insurance for elderly, low-income sick people. The function of an insurance company is to make money, not to provide health care; and if a person is old and sick and poor, who is going to insure them? They are on their own. In terms of prescription drugs, an issue that I have worked very hard on for a number of years, the Bush administration is working hand-in- glove with the pharmaceutical industry, the most powerful lobby here on Capitol Hill. While Americans pay by far the highest prices in the world for their prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry year after year after year is the most profitable industry in this country. In order to maintain their status as the most profitable industry, they have hired over 600, 600 paid lobbyists right here in Washington, D.C., to descend on the Congress, on the House and the Senate, to make sure that we do not pass any legislation which will lower the cost of prescription drugs. Nonetheless, despite all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that they have spent on all of their lobbying efforts, all of their campaign contributions, I am happy to tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that 6 weeks ago, longer than that, the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan way, had the courage to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and pass legislation that would allow our pharmacists, prescription drug distributors, and individuals to buy FDA-approved medicine in 26 countries including Canada; and if we can get that bill through the Senate, we will be able to lower prescription drug costs in this country by between 30 to 50 percent. Unfortunately, on this issue, we are fighting not only the pharmaceutical industry but the Bush administration and the Bush campaign, which has received substantial support from the drug companies. Mr. Speaker, on another area that is of enormous importance to the American people and more and more Americans are getting involved in it, the Bush administration is moving in precisely the wrong direction in terms of media consolidation. In my view, one of the crises that we face in our country today is fewer and fewer large media conglomerates own and control what we see, what we hear, and what we read. I know the average person says, well, man, I have got 100 channels on my cable. Check out who owns those 100 channels. Check out who owns NBC, which is General Electric; who owns CBS, which is Viacomm; who owns ABC, which is Disney; who owns Fox Television, which is Rupert Murdoch, an extreme right-wing billionaire. What we are seeing in terms of media is fewer and fewer large corporations controlling the flow of information in America. Clear Channel Radio now owns 1,200 radio stations all over this country. In America, what our freedom is about is debating different points of view. No one has all the right answers, but we cannot flourish as a democracy unless we hear different points of view; and that is becoming harder and harder to achieve, as fewer and fewer companies own what we see, hear, and read. Instead of acknowledging that problem and moving us to a more diversified media, where we will have local media reporting on local issues, where it will be different points of view being heard, where there will be more diversity in our media, the Bush administration is moving in exactly the wrong direction. Michael Powell, who is chairman of the FCC, with the strong backing of the Bush administration, passed with a three to two vote on June 2 more media deregulation, which will allow for even fewer companies to own what we see, hear, and read; and one of the manifestations of that decision, if it is allowed to stand, is there will be cities in America where one company will own the local newspaper, will own the largest television station, will own many of the radio stations, and will own the local cable TV system. Mr. Speaker, that is not what America is supposed to be; and I am happy to tell my colleagues that all over this country, in a grassroots fashion, millions of Americans have written and communicated to the FCC, some of them conservatives, the National Rifle Association, some right-wing organizations, some of them progressives, some left-wing organizations, some in the middle, different points of view philosophically on almost every issue, but they have come together to say that in America we need to have a diverse ownership of media and different points of view to be heard. The Senate, listening to the demands of the American people, had the courage in a bipartisan way, Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Trent Lott helping to lead the effort, had the courage to pass a resolution of disapproval with regard to what the FCC did. In other words, they said we want to junk it. That bill is now here in the House of Representatives; and working with some of my colleagues again in a tripartisan way, we have now garnered 190 signatures on a letter to the Speaker of the House, because the bill is now on the Speaker's desk, and we have said, Mr. Speaker, let the American people have the debate and a vote about whether or not we want more media consolidation. I sincerely hope that the Speaker will allow that debate because if that debate takes place, I believe that the American people will win and that Republicans, Democrats, and Independent on the floor of this House will vote to junk what the FCC has done. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about America, we often pride ourselves upon being a free country, a free country; and it is easier to stand in front of the American flag and give great speeches about freedom than it is to really fight for freedom, because one of the elements of freedom is to understand, among other things, that not everything, not everything that somebody says or does is something that we agree with, but what freedom is about is tolerating and respecting other points of view, of understanding that people have the right to read whatever they want to read, have the right to an attorney when they need an attorney. I was one of the relatively few people in the House who voted 6 weeks after the horror of 9/11 against the USA PATRIOT Act, and I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act not because I am not concerned about terrorism. I happen to believe that terrorism is a very serious issue and that the United States Government must do everything that it can to protect the American people and fight terrorism, but I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act because I believe we can fight terrorism without undermining basic constitutional rights, which is what the USA PATRIOT Act is doing. Again, on this issue, we have seen some very interesting nonideological coming-together. We have seen some really very conservative people who are honest conservatives who say because they do not believe in Big Government they do not want the United States Government monitoring the reading habits of the American people in their libraries or their bookstores. Unfortunately, again, on this issue, the Bush administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft are on the wrong side. They are, in many respects, working to undermine the basic constitutional rights that are given, that have made this country a free country. So, Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by stating that it is high time that the Congress of the United States begin to focus on the needs of the middle class, the vast majority of our people, the middle class of which is shrinking, the middle class in which the average person is working longer hours and for lower wages. America will grow when the middle class grows; and to do that, we need some fundamental changes in our policies. We need a national health care system which guarantees health care to all Americans. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. We need to fundamentally change our trade policies so that we do not continue to see the collapse of manufacturing. We need to make sure that every American, regardless of income, has a right to go to college. We need to rescind the tax breaks that have been given to the wealthiest people and the largest corporations and create a tax structure which works for the middle class and not just for the wealthy and the powerful. There is a lot of work that must be done, and I look forward to participating in that effort.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, if we were to believe the television and radio and even the newspapers, we would think that the most important figures in America are professional athletes, movie stars, rock performers, and financial tycoons. But we all know that this is not true. There are millions of Americans who do heroic work every day. Some are teachers, some nurses, some work in day care. Some prepare meals for the elderly; others take care of their elderly parents or of spouses or children who are ill or disabled. Men and women all over America go off to work each day, sometimes at two or even three jobs, to make sure that there is food on the table for their families, and money to send their children to college. Today, I want to recognize five citizens of Vermont who are heroes: Mary Jean Inglee, Emma Katherine Ely, Bev Priest, Theresa Emmons, and Christina Crawford. They come from every corner of Vermont, and each has been tireless in advocating for the needs of the low-income citizens of our state. Mary Jean Inglee was born in Whitehall, New York and raised in an Irish Catholic Democratic family. She graduated from Whitehall High School, Class of 1968, and married Harold Inglee in November of that same year. She and her husband now live in Rutland; they have two daughters and three granddaughters. Mary Jean Inglee's interest in low-income issues started when she was a child, when a poor family lived in a shack on the rocky area above her house. To Mary Jean's own family, it was a natural thing to share what they had with that family. Her parents provided them with rides to doctors and food and clothing whenever they could. Mary Jean at times got in trouble at school because she believed it was her duty to advocate for classmates that were being treated unfairly. She remembers those classmates as the kids who experienced the cruel realities of poverty. Mary Jean worked in the public school system for 10 years in a special education classroom. She had a first-hand look at how state systems worked--and how they didn't work for kids that had the least going for them. Once again some saw her as a troublemaker, for she took advocacy for families who needed extra consideration, very seriously. She says this kind of work brought her to know BROC (the community action agency in southern Vermont), which was a worksite for some of the students she worked with. Going there on a weekly basis, she was able to observe the difficult situation facing clients and workers. Mary Jean has worked for the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for the past 15 years, an agency charged with removing barriers to employment for people with disabilities. Most of the people she works with have no income or the minimal benefits of Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability payments. This translates into poverty. She advocates every day for programs, training, and dollars to help people improve their lives. A new opportunity to help came in 1992 when she was asked to join the BROC Board of Directors as a low-income representative. The timing was perfect for Mary Jean to be called into service. Her husband was ill and not able to work. This gave her an instant ``reminder course'' in what it was like to owe rent and wonder how it would be paid. In their 35 years together, they have been there a few times, but unlike many of the people BROC serves, there was usually someone in the family who could help out. Mary Jean has worked tirelessly for others, but she has also pursued a path of learning for herself. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Services from Springfield College in 2002. She is currently a Masters Candidate and expects to receive her Masters in Human Services with a concentration in Community Psychology in the spring of 2004. Emma Katherine Ely is another outstanding advocate for low-income people. During the past 15 years (and probably longer than that!) Ms. Ely has served the low-income community of northeastern Vermont. While being a parent in the program--she is the mother of ten children--Ms. Ely served on the Champlain Valley OEO Head Start Policy Council. That interest in parent advocacy led to seats on the New England Regional Head Start Board and also on the Vermont State Head Start Parents Association. For the past 10 years, Ms. Ely has played a central role organizing the Vermont Early Childhood Conference. In addition to this work, Ms. Ely has been active in many roles at the King Street Youth Center in Burlington. She currently organizes the Holiday Program at that Center. She represents the needs and interests of the whole community, not just of children. Ms. Ely has also been a member of the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf Advisory Board for the past 14 years. She is currently a low-income representative on the Champlain Valley OEO Board of Directors, and is at the present moment serving in her second term. She does all of these things as a dedicated, spirited advocate. Bev Priest is another dedicated advocate for low-income people. A resident of Jay, Vermont for over 25 years, she served as a low-income representative on the Northeast Kingdom Community Action Board of Directors for 10 years. During that time, she regularly attended the Low-Income Association meetings, Physically Disabled Association meetings, and other meetings in the state capital of Montpelier: at all of them she unstintingly shared with everyone her knowledge of what she learned. Bev Priest opened a food shelf and clothing center in the Jay Town Clerk's building and provided many holiday baskets to the local families. During the Christmas season she often played Santa at the low-income children's Christmas parties; she herself acquired many of the gifts that were distributed. She has been a consistent advocate for people in crisis; she has assisted in any way she could in helping people in crisis locate the resources they needed. Bev would many times call the NEKCA office stating, ``If I had transportation I would be on your desk right now.'' As one Vermonter in her community stated, ``Bev promoted the continual awareness of others of the struggles that low- income families face by `pointing out the squeaks in the wheel'.'' Theresa Emmons has been involved with the Central Vermont Community Action Council for over 20 years. It is safe to say that without her influence, CVCAC would not have accomplished as much as it has. Theresa served on the Board of Directors as a representative of the town of Washington in Orange County. She also has the distinction of having the longest tenure on the CVCAC Board, which she has served in every possible way: as President, as Vice President, as Treasurer and as Secretary. As if this weren't enough, she has also served on the Head Start Policy Council and has been a leader in the Vermont Head Start Parent's Association. She has been a long time volunteer for the USDA Commodity food distribution program and local food shelves; she was also involved in the conception and growth of the Vermont Food Bank. As far as Theresa is concerned, if people are in need they deserve to receive help. If there is a cause that will help someone in need, that cause deserves to be supported--and Theresa is always first in line to volunteer and to recruit others to volunteer. Christina Crawford of Springfield, Vermont has been an outstanding example of persevering in the face of difficulties, and of triumphing over many of them. It was seven years ago that Chris left an abusive relationship. She left with a broken foot, no transportation, four children and the clothes on her back. After three months of being homeless, she found a place to live. She studied for the GED and passed. She then began taking administrative classes at the local high school as well as taking on a part-time job at an agency where she was given the opportunity to use the skills she was learning, although the job at the agency was temporary. At the age of 30 Chris took driving lessons and eventually got her driver's license and a vehicle for the first time in her life. She then went to the Employment & Training agency in search of part-time, entry level work in the clerical field. She was offered an opportunity to enroll in an on-the-job training program and was placed at Southeastern Vermont Community Action. Chris has worked at SEVCA for nearly four years now as receptionist. Three years ago, one of Chris's children was diagnosed as having an autistic disorder. She has since spent much of her time researching her daughter's disability and working tirelessly to put the needed supports in place for her daughter to be able to attend school. Chris is now in the process of trying to form a local support group for parents of special needs children. Chris currently represents SEVCA and the southeastern part of Vermont on the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council. She attended her first meeting in September and looks forward to attending as many as she can to use the opportunity to speak out about the struggles she has overcome and the struggles she has yet to face. She hopes to inspire other low-income people to speak out and create change. In spite of the heavy load Chris continues to carry, she hopes that one day she will be able to go to college and obtain a degree in Human Services.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Unfortunately, I rise in opposition to this legislation. While this bill does include important consumer protection provisions, such as the provision that I and other members of the committee fought for, which would provide free annual credit reports to consumers who request them, and would also allow consumers to receive more information about their credit scores identical to a very good law in the State of California, there are major flaws in this legislation. For a start, even in terms of that pro-consumer provision, we are not quite sure when that will go into effect, and I fear it will not go into effect as soon as it should. Secondly, I think the major concern that I and consumer organizations all across this country have is that this legislation would permanently preempt the States from passing stronger consumer protection laws in order to aggressively punish identity thieves and to improve the accuracy of consumers' credit reports. I may be the conservative on the committee, but it has long been my belief when we are dealing with an issue of protecting consumer rights, we cannot take away the ability of the States to pass stronger consumer protection laws. I find it very ironic from day one of this discussion that conservatives who have told us over and over again how much they dislike the big bad Federal Government stepping on States' rights, in fact have brought that provision into this legislation. So if the State of Vermont or the State of California or the State of Ohio wants to go further in this area, well, my goodness, that big bad Federal Government, which we have heard so much about, is able to say sorry, you cannot do it. Attorneys general, governors, State legislators, you cannot do that, and I think that is wrong. During the course of the debate on the committee, there was a very interesting discussion over an amendment that I and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) brought forth which deals with the issue of what I call credit card switch and bait, and I will be bringing forth an amendment to win support of it. It is not included in this bill, and it should be. Mr. Chairman, what is going on in this country is that people who pay off their credit card debts on time every single month nonetheless are seeing huge increases in the interest rates that they are paying. How does that happen? It happens because maybe 3 years ago they took out a loan which is still outstanding, or maybe they had an emergency medical bill and they had to borrow money, and arbitrarily the credit card company has determined they are a greater financial risk and their rates can double or triple. I think that is wrong. This bill has some positive provisions, but we can do much better, and I would urge a ``no'' vote on it.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. California may have one-sixth of the Members in this body, Vermont does not. I am it and I rise in strong support of the Waters amendment. The issue of preemption was hotly debated in the Committee on Financial Services, and on one side of that issue was virtually every consumer organization in America. Groups like the Consumer Federation of America, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union, and many others. And some of us in the committee supported these consumer organizations, making the point that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) just made. That in the nature of our government, we are the United States of America, there are 50 States in our country. And sometimes one State does something really good and a whole lot of other States learn from that State. And that is one of the reasons that we have a creative form of government with a lot of ideas that are flowing. On the other side of that debate, of course, were the credit card companies and the banks. And let us be clear, they do not want strong consumer protection. They are the people who are charging individuals in this country 25 percent interest rates on their credit cards. They do not want to see governors and legislatures and attorneys general stand up strongly and protect consumers. So what ends up happening is that we have a national bill which has admittedly some good provisions in it, but at the same time, it takes away the ability of 50 States to go further. So the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), and I and many others were fighting for higher Federal standards, more consumer protection, but at the same time, give California the right to go forward. It is inconvenient. Well, democracy is inconvenient. Alabama does some things. Vermont does some things. We live together. We learn from each other. We argue with each other, but we do not take away, we should not take away the rights of the States to go further. I support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment offered by Congresswoman Waters. This amendment would simply allow the 7 Fair Credit Reporting Act preemptions to expire, as Congress intended, on January 1, 2004 in order to allow the 50 states of this country to pass stronger consumer protection laws to improve the accuracy of credit reports and to aggressively fight identity theft. I should note right off the bat that every major national consumer group in this country including the Consumer Federation of America, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union, and the National Consumer Law Center all vigorously oppose state pre-emption. I would also like to tell you that the National Association of Attorneys General, representing all 50 States of this country, unanimously passed a resolution opposing the 7 FCRA state preemptions. Mr. Chairman, you know my views on this subject. If my State of Vermont or your State of Ohio wants to pass laws that are stronger than the Federal Government's, we should give States that right. The States are the laboratories of Democracy. You know what happens here. If there is a particular identity theft crisis in Colorado and the Colorado State Legislature passes a law to correct this problem, and it works, what happens? Pretty soon, California may pass the same law. Then Nebraska. Then Maryland. And, eventually it filters up to the federal government and we have a good national law on the books. But, if this legislation is signed into law, we would permanently prevent the States from taking this action. We hear a lot of talk from conservatives about protecting the States and the American people against the big, bad and instrusive Federal Government. Well, call me a conservative on this issue because I believe that the 50 States in this country should be able to pass their own laws and should not be pre- empted by the Federal Government from passing stronger laws that protect consumers. So, I would say to my conservative friends on the other side of the aisle, vote for my amendment. It is consistent with your philosophy on the role of the government. And to my Democratic friends on this side of the aisle, I ask all of you to vote for this amendment as well. Let us not forget that just last week, during a recent mark-up of the Securities Fraud Deterrence and Investor Restitution Act (H.R. 2179) in the Capital Markets Subcommittee, virtually every Democrat voted against preempting the states from taking strong enforcement actions against Wall Street firms that defraud investors. I agree. The 50 States of this country should not be prohibited from aggressively punishing corporate wrongdoing. Today, we are dealing with the exact same issue: state preemption. But, this time it deals with consumer protection. Just like we should not prohibit States from aggressively punishing corporate wrongdoers, to my mind, we should also not permanently bar the states from aggressively punishing identity thieves and improving the accuracy of consumers' credit reports. Therefore, I hope my Democratic friends will vote for this amendment as well. Mr. Chairman, as we all know, the newspapers are filled with horror stories about the harm being done to consumers by identity thieves. This problem is compounded by the shabby job done by the credit reporting system in ensuring that consumers' credit reports are accurate and up-to-date. States have been at the forefront of the effort to stop identity thieves and to clean up the credit reporting industry. The federal government should be a partner in that effort but should not pull the rug out from under the states. There is no greater impediment to consumer credit than a credit report full of errors. There is no reason to tie the states' hands. We have heard from the financial services industry and the major credit bureaus that if we don't extend these state preemptions, the entire credit system will collapse. But, let us not forget, we had a national credit system before the 1996 state preemptions were inserted, and it worked well. For example, one of the witnesses that we heard from on this issue from Juniper Bank who supports preemption cited a study that showed ``in 1990, more than 70 percent of credit card balances were being charged more than an 18 percent annual interest rate. By 1993, only 34 percent of credit card balances were being charged more than 18 percent interest.'' Great study. All of the benefits to consumers just happened to be 3 years before the 1996 preemptions were enacted. Another supporter of state preemption who testified at our first hearing from the Information Policy Institute pointed to another study that showed that credit card prices ``declined by almost 35 percent between the first quarter of 1984, and the fourth quarter of 1996,'' saving consumers ``about $30 billion per year.'' Again, great study. All of the benefits to consumers happended to occur before the 1996 state preemptions were enacted. In addition, the 1996 FCRA amendments specifically grandfathered stronger consumer protection statutes in California, Massachusetts and Vermont from pre-emption. What have we seen in these 3 states that have stronger consumer protection laws in regards to credit reporting? We have seen that my State of Vermont now has the lowest rate of consumer bankruptcies in this country; the State of Massachusetts has the second lowest consumer bankruptcies in the United States; and California comes in ahead of the median. At a time when the United States as a whole experienced the highest rate of bankruptcy cases in history, increasing by 23 percent since 2000, I would say that these three examples gives us proof that stronger State consumer protection laws work. What about mortgage rates? Well, the most recent data indicate that the State of California has the lowest effective rate for a conventional mortgage in the nation, and Vermont and Massachusetts were well below the median. Sounds pretty good to me. In addition, let us not forget why the 1996 FCRA amendments were enacted. While identity theft complaints have been the number one complaint to the FTC each year since 2000, and in fact doubled from 2001 to 2002, it was credit bureau mistakes which were the number one complaint to the FTC 10 years earlier. And it was credit bureau mistakes, and complaints about them, that led Congress to the 1996 FCRA amendments. From 1990-92, according to a study by U.S. PIRG, mistakes in credit reports were the number one complaint to the FTC. What will the new crisis be? We don't know for sure. But, if we permanently preempt the States from acting on future problems, we will do this country a great disservice. Moreover, if some of the new members don't believe Congress intended these preemptions to sunset, I would refer them to the floor statement of the former Ranking Member of the Banking Committee and former Republican Congressman from California Al McCandless who had this to say during the floor debate on this bill: ``The issue over whether the Fair Credit Reporting Act should preempt more stringent State laws or whether it should permit States to enact tougher credit reporting statutes has been one of the single toughest issues for the Banking Committee to tackle. On the one hand, many of our Members like the idea of a national uniform standard. On the other, we do not want to tie the hands of State legislatures. I think that this compromise bill resolves the issue of preemption to most everyone's satisfaction. The Fair Credit Reporting Act as amended by this compromise bill, will be the law of the land for the next 8 years. It will provide consumers across the country with greater protection than is currently offered by any existing State statute. A uniform national standard will make compliance more straightforward and will facilitate the extension of credit to consumers. States will be able to enact more stringent legislation if necessary after 8 years.'' Let me repeat, ``States will be able to enact more stringent legislation if necessary after 8 years.'' That's what was said by the top Republican on the Banking Committee on the floor of the House when a compromise was reached on this bill. Let's stick to that compromise and support this amendment.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is cosponsored by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee). It is also strongly supported by the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center, the New York Public Interest Research Group, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the Privacy Times, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In other words, almost every major consumer organization in America is supporting this amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals with an issue which is of growing concern to millions of credit card holders, and that is that, increasingly, credit card companies are engaging in an outrageous bait and switch practice which is costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. This, Mr. Chairman, is how the scam works: In our country today, credit card companies are sending out over 5 billion solicitations a year. Yes, that is right, 5 billion pieces of mail are being sent to Americans every year in order to purchase this or that credit card. Sometimes I think about half of those solicitations come to my kids. Nonetheless, we are all receiving them. As we all know, these mailings very often have bold headlines stating zero percent interests rates for 6 months, or 2.5 percent interest rates for a year, or whatever. We all receive them. Now, here, Mr. Chairman, is the scam and the bait and the switch. An individual fills out the form and purchases the credit card, and month after month after month, he or she pays the amount owed to the credit card company faithfully and on time. In other words, the individual consumer has fulfilled his or her end of the contract. But in the midst of this, something strange happens. People are paying up on time, but suddenly the interest rate skyrockets, despite the individual making their payment on time. Now, how can this happen? How can interest rates double or triple when the individual has fulfilled the obligations of the credit card company and made payments on time and never has gone over the credit card limit? Well, it happens because the credit card issuers, companies like Chase Manhattan, Citigroup or Bank One, have decided all on their own that the consumer has become a greater financial risk, even when that consumer has in every instance paid their credit card bill on time. What happens is the company obtains information from their customer's credit report which indicates a late payment on another financial transaction, another transaction. Perhaps the consumer might have been late in paying a student loan or a mortgage payment or a medical bill, and because the individual was late paying off another financial transaction, having nothing to do with the credit card they have from this company, the credit card company raises interest rates on their transaction with that individual. Even more outrageous, credit card companies are raising interest rates when the consumer has never been late on any payment, and here is the crime there: There is an illness in the family. Somebody borrows money to pay off a medical bill; and, because they have committed that terrible crime of borrowing money for a medical reason, interest rates will go on the credit card, although they have never been late on any payment. That is absurd, that is unfair, and that is a rip-off of the American people. At a time when the Federal Reserve has lowered short-term interest rates 13 times, why do we have consumers in this country paying 16 percent, 26 percent, even 29 percent APR on their credit cards? Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, the Committee on Financial Services and my Subcommittee of Financial Institutions, of which I am the ranking member on, have heard from a number of witnesses about the inaccuracies of credit reports. According to freecreditinsight.com, over 70 percent of credit reports contain errors, so the credit reporting agency makes a mistake and your interest rates go zooming up. By charging higher interest rates, the profits of credit card companies skyrocket and consumers grow deeper and deeper into debt. Is it any wonder why bankruptcies in the U.S. are now at an all time high, increasing by 23 percent since 2000? Mr. Chairman, this is the issue. This is a very simple issue. It is an issue of fairness. If I take out a credit card and the credit card company says to me you have to pay up at a certain time and your interest rates are such-and-such, and I do that every single month, that is what the deal should be. And, if I am late, if I go above the amount of credit that I agreed to, well, I agree, they have a right to penalize me. They do not have a right to double or triple my interest rates when I pay my bills on time and because I took out a loan because my wife might have been ill. Mr. Chairman, Congress has a responsibility to stop the credit card industry from ripping off consumers by this deceptive and unfair practice. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment to restrict the credit card interest rate bait and switch. Specifically, this amendment would prohibit credit card issuers from using negative information contained in their customers' credit reports, such as a late payment on a student loan, a lower credit score, a new mortgage or new loan to pay for medical emergency or an error in a credit report, as a reason to double or triple credit card interests rates. Importantly, as part of a compromise worked out at the committee level, this amendment has been crafted so that if a consumer is at least 60 days delinquent on any other credit card or debt, the credit card company could still use that information to increase the interest rates of their customers. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my friend from Ohio just said why should people who pay their bill on time every month be penalized? I agree with him. But as the gentleman knows, right now people pay their bills on time every single month and, despite that, they can see a doubling or tripling of their interest rates, and that is precisely what we are trying to prevent. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the famous author of the Maloney amendment.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The sides on this debate are very clear. One side are the credit card companies and the very large banks who are making huge profits from their consumers and, in some cases in our low-interest moment, right now, who are charging 25 or 29 percent a year interest rates. In other words, they are ripping off the American people. On the other side of this debate and supporting this amendment, are virtually every major consumer organization in America that is saying enough is enough. If people pay their bills on time every month, they should not see their interest rates double or triple. The chairman mentioned that there was bipartisan opposition to my amendment. He was right. But as he knows, there was bipartisan support for this amendment, including the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), who was very articulate and supportive of this amendment as chairman of the relevant subcommittee. Let me simply conclude by saying this: the American people are sick and tired of being ripped off by credit card companies. When they pay their bills every month on time, they should not see their interest rates soar. I would urge the Members of this body, in a bipartisan way, to support the American consumer and pass the Sanders amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), who has played a very active role in this issue.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just tell my colleagues how I came into this issue in the State of Vermont. I came into this issue when, several years ago, my phone lines bounced off the hook because large numbers of workers at the Vermont IBM plant in Essex Junction, Vermont, suddenly learned for the first time that the pensions that had been promised to them were going to be cut substantially and in some cases by up to 50 percent. I became involved with these workers who stood up and said to the company, you made us a promise and when times were bad, we stayed with you, we didn't go someplace else. One of the reasons that we stayed with you is because you had promised us a certain pension that we were basing our family retirement on. That is the promise that had been made. What these workers did is stood up, talked to their fellow IBM workers all over America and they fought back and they won some partial benefits as IBM made some rescissions in what they did, but they continued the fight. What they have said, and workers all over America have said, is we cannot discriminate against workers simply because they are old and move to cash balance. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this tripartisan amendment is cosponsored by the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) who is the ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht). This amendment also has the strong support of the AARP, the largest senior citizen group in this country representing over 35 million Americans, it has the support of the Pension Right Centers, and the IBM Employees Benefit Action Coalition. This amendment is simple and straightforward. Five weeks ago, the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Illinois ruled that IBM's cash balance pension conversion violates Federal age discrimination law. The conversion, Judge Murphy found, violated the age discrimination provisions of ERISA because it discriminates against older workers. This court decision confirms what millions of American workers have been saying for years and what hundreds of Members of Congress have also gone on record as stating. Conversions to cash balance pension plans discriminate against older workers, are illegal and must not be allowed to happen. This amendment would simply prevent the Federal Government from using any funding to assist in overturning the Federal district court ruling. That is what this amendment does. By passing this amendment, we would not only be upholding the law, which is the least we can do, but we will also be standing with millions of workers who have lost, and are in danger of losing, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent of the pensions that they have been promised by their employers. Mr. Chairman, why did Judge Murphy rule against the company and decide in favor of IBM employees? Let me just read a brief excerpt of what he wrote: ``In 1999, IBM opted for a `cash balance formula.' The plan's actuaries projected that this would produce annual savings of almost $500 million by 2009. These savings would result from reductions of up to 47 percent in future benefits that would be earned by older IBM employees. The 1999 cash balance formula violates the literal terms of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, that is, ERISA. IBM's own age discrimination analysis illustrates the problem.'' That is from Judge Murphy. Mr. Chairman, I became involved in this issue several years ago when many hundreds of IBM employees in Vermont contacted my office and told me that the pensions they had been promised by the company had been cut by 30 to 50 percent. Imagine that. Workers staying at a company through good times and bad times, providing loyalty to their employers, and then one day the company sends out a message which says, in so many words, thank you for your years of dedicated service, but forget about the promises that we made to you regarding the retirement that you and your family were anticipating. Thank you very much, but we've changed our minds, we've pulled the rug out from underneath you, we're cutting your pensions by up to 50 percent. Yes, IBM had enough money to pay out a $260 million compensation package to former CEO Lou Gerstner, $260 million to one man, but they just could not keep their word to their long-term, dedicated employees. And, of course, it is not just IBM that we are talking about today. It is hundreds of companies that have done exactly the same thing. It is companies that have broken the law, discriminated against older American workers and slashed the pensions that those workers were promised. Mr. Chairman, it is no secret that the middle class in this country is hurting. Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. Their health benefits are being cut. Corporate America has thrown millions of American workers out on the street as they move our manufacturing sector to China, to Mexico and anyplace that they can find where they hire people for pennies an hour. Meanwhile, in many instances, the CEOs of these very same companies make out like bandits. Mr. Chairman, a segment of corporate America have destroyed American jobs, destroyed health care benefits and now they want to destroy the pension benefits that were promised to their workers. We must not allow that to happen. Even corporate America, even major campaign contributors, even folks who can spend huge sums of money by placing full-page ads in the New York Times and elsewhere, even those people have got to obey the law. That is what this amendment is about. It is about obeying the law and not engaging in actions that violate Federal age discrimination statutes. In our country, we have come a long way by ending discrimination based on race, gender and disabilities. And today we have got to make it crystal clear that we will not allow discrimination against older American workers. We will not allow the Treasury Department to use taxpayer dollars to support age discrimination. Mr. Chairman, let us not forget that companies with defined benefit pension plans receive $89 billion a year in tax breaks to set up pension plans for their workers. Out of all of the tax breaks that companies in America receive, the tax break for pension plans is far and away the most generous. Congress and the Federal Government should not be providing taxpayer dollars for companies to commit age discrimination against its workers. Mr. Chairman, it is very important for the House to support this amendment today. It is important, Mr. Chairman, because despite the fact that cash balance conversions have been found to be illegal in the courts, the Treasury Department is still pushing proposed regulations that, if enacted, would give the green light to these very same cash balance pension plans that the Federal court has ruled are illegal. Clearly, the Treasury Department is intent on pushing these illegal conversions by all means at its disposal, and we must not allow that to happen. Mr. Chairman, just last year, over 300 Members of the House voted to require the Treasury Department to protect older workers in cash balance pension conversions. I thank all of them for their support for older American workers. In addition, over 200 Members of Congress recently wrote a letter to urge President Bush to withdraw the proposed cash balance regulations that are at issue here. Today we have the opportunity to once again show our support for American workers and oppose a plan which is unfair, immoral and illegal. I urge strong support for this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), who has been a very active leader on this issue.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his comments. The bottom line is, it is not acceptable that the veterans of this country not know the benefits to which they are entitled.