Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, Mr. Barrasso's amendment is interesting, when he talks about the Green New Deal. The only problem is what he is talking about has nothing to do with the Green New Deal. Despite what Senator Barrasso says, the Green New Deal would not ship jobs overseas. In fact, it will create millions of good-paying jobs in the United States of America. It will not raise electricity prices. It will not make the United States dependent on dirty sources of energy from other countries. In case the Senator from Wyoming has missed it, Oregon is burning, California is burning, Greece is burning. There is a drought hitting virtually every country on Earth. News flash: Climate change is real and the United States and other countries have got to address it. Madam President, as a supporter of the Green New Deal, I have no problem voting for this amendment because it has nothing to do with the Green New Deal. Vote on Amendment No. 3055

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Cortez Masto amendment the following amendments be in order and that the amendments be reported by number with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Lummis, No. 3104; Hassan- Young, No. 3278, Crapo, No. 3099; Wyden, No. 3365; Cramer, No. 3105; Scott, No. 3073; and Rubio, No. 3097

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes for debate, equally divided, prior to each vote during consideration of S. Con. Res. 14.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking President Biden and Majority Leader Schumer for their leadership in the arduous process which has gotten us to where we are right now. I do understand that many of my Republican colleagues are in a bit of shock. They are in a bit of shock now. They are finding it hard to believe that the President and the Democratic Caucus are prepared to go forward in addressing the long, neglected needs of working families and not just the 1 percent and wealthy campaign contributors. That is not the way things usually happen around here. Usually, it is the big money interests, the campaign contributors, and the lobbyists who call the tunes. But not today. Today, we move this country in a very different direction. The American people are sick and tired of growing income and wealth inequality in our country, where two people now own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent, where the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 percent, and where 45 percent of all new income has gone to the top 1 percent since 2009. In other words, the people on top are doing phenomenally well. Meanwhile, while the very rich have become much richer, the gross unfairness of our current tax system has allowed, in a given year, some of the wealthiest people in our country and some of the largest and most profitable corporations to not pay a nickel in a given year in Federal income tax--not one penny. Well, that is about to change. The American people want a government which represents all of us and not just the few. And this legislation is going to ask the wealthiest people in our country to start paying their fair share of taxes so that we can address the needs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. And despite what some of my Republican colleagues may be saying, no one in America who makes less than $400,000 a year will pay a nickel more in Federal taxes. In fact, what we are looking at in this budget proposal is a historic tax cut for working families and the middle class. Further, and importantly, at a time when California is on fire, when Oregon is on fire, when Greece is burning, and when countries throughout the world are experiencing unprecedented drought, which will clearly impact food production, this legislation begins the process of combating climate change so that our kids and grandchildren can live in a country and on a planet which is healthy and habitable. It would be immoral and an absolute dereliction of our responsibilities as elected officials to do anything less. We cannot ignore climate change any longer. Now is the time for our great country to lead the world out of this existential crisis. And, by the way, as we address the long neglected needs of working families and as we combat climate change, we are going to create millions of good-paying jobs, many of them union jobs. Let me very briefly take this opportunity to describe some of what is in this budget proposal. First, we are going to address the disgrace of the United States having the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. This is the wealthiest country on Earth, and we should not have millions of our children living in poverty. This budget is going to provide the long-awaited-for help that working parents all over this country desperately need, and when we do that, we will substantially reduce childhood poverty in America. And we are going to do that by extending the child tax credit so that families continue to receive monthly direct payments of up to $300 per child. We began that process in the American Rescue Plan. It has been enormously successful in Vermont and all over this country as parents finally get the help that they need to raise their kids, and, in fact, it has helped reduce childhood poverty in our country by 61 percent. And we are going to extend those child tax credits. Further, we are going to help working parents by addressing the crisis in childcare by making sure that no working family in our country pays more than 7 percent of their income for childcare. And all over this country, in talking to parents in Vermont and elsewhere, people are paying 20 percent, 25 percent of their income for childcare so that they can go to work. That makes no sense at all. Under our proposal, no working family will pay more than 7 percent. And when we do that, when we make childcare more affordable and accessible, it will allow over a million women who are now home with their kids to reenter the workforce and improve our economy. Further, in terms of addressing the needs of our working parents and their kids, we will expand public education by providing universal pre- K to every 3- and 4-year-old in the country. This budget proposal is going to end the international disgrace of the United States being the only major country on Earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave as a right. Somebody who is sick today should not be forced to go to work and maybe, by expanding their illness by contagion, make other people sick. Parents should be able to stay home with their sick children. When a woman has a baby, she should not be forced back into work a week after giving birth simply because she has no income to stay home. Yes, in America, we will join every other major country and guarantee paid family and medical leave. We will begin to address the crisis in higher education by making community colleges in America tuition-free, and this will give millions of young people and working people the opportunity to get the education they need to acquire the skills so they can go out and get the good- paying jobs that are out there. It will also give people the opportunity to transfer the 2 years of credits earned at a community college to a 4-year school. Now, I hope in years to come we will go further, but 2 years of free community college is no small thing. This budget proposal begins the process of taking on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars by requiring that Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. It is not acceptable to me and to the American people that we continue to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Medicare must negotiate prescription drug prices, and this budget sets the stage for that to happen. And we will use the savings acquired by negotiating prescription drug prices in Medicare by expanding Medicare. We are going to use those savings to expand Medicare to cover the dental care, the hearing aids, and the eyeglasses that seniors desperately need. This is the wealthiest country on Earth, and yet we have millions of senior citizens who lack teeth in their mouth. They need dentures; they can't afford to get them. They need hearing aids in order to communicate with their grandkids; can't afford to do that. They need a decent pair of glasses; can't afford that. And in terms of healthcare, we will also substantially increase the number of doctors, nurses, and dentists who practice in underserved areas and expand the Community Health Centers Program into new areas as well. This budget proposal will combat homelessness in America and address the reality that nearly 18 million households are paying over 50 percent of their limited incomes for housing through an unprecedented investment in affordable housing. We will ensure, further, that people in an aging society--we are getting older as a society, and we will ensure that those people can receive the healthcare they need in their own homes instead of being forced into expensive and inadequate nursing homes and that the workers who provide that important care to the elderly and the disabled are not forced to exist on starvation wages. This is such important work and such emotionally draining work; those folks deserve a decent paycheck. We will bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship, including those very brave workers who have courageously kept our economy going in the middle of a deadly pandemic. As I mentioned earlier, we will take on the existential threat of climate change by transforming our energy system toward renewable energy and energy efficiency. Among many other provisions in terms of climate change, we will establish a Civilian Climate Corps which will give hundreds of thousands of young people good-paying jobs and educational benefits as they roll up their sleeves and get to work to help us save the planet. This budget proposal will make it easier, not harder, for workers to join unions in America. My Republican colleagues are upset that we are using the reconciliation process and only 50 votes to pass this budget. They are very upset about that. But let us be clear. This idea of using reconciliation is certainly not a new idea. When Republicans controlled the Senate, they used reconciliation to pass trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent and large corporations. When Republicans controlled the Senate, they used reconciliation to make climate change worse by opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. When Republicans controlled the Senate, they tried to use reconciliation to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw 32 million Americans off of the healthcare they had. Well, today, it is true we will also use reconciliation, but we will do it in a different way. We will use it to help the working families of our country and not just the wealthy and the powerful. It is no great secret that millions of Americans are giving up on democracy, are moving toward authoritarianism, and are losing faith in their government. Many of those people are working longer hours for lower wages; they can't afford healthcare; they can't afford to send their kids to college; and they worry very much about the future of their kids and the future of this country. This legislation will not only provide enormous support-- unprecedented in recent American history--to the children in our country, to the parents in our country, to the elderly people in our country, to the working families of our country, but it will also, I hope, restore the faith of the American people in the belief that we can have a government that works for all of us and not just the few. Thank you.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to call up the following amendments, that they be reported by number, and that the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed with no amendments in order prior to a vote: Barrasso No. 3055, Carper No. 3330, Thune No. 3106, and Cortez Masto No. 3317.

Mr. SANDERS. I yield the majority's remaining time on the resolution.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I would urge my Republican colleagues to read the recent IPCC report. And if they did, they would find that it is now unequivocal that climate change is caused by human activity. We are seeing what climate change is doing with our own eyes. We can no longer be blind to this reality. We are seeing the intensity and the increase in forest fires. We are seeing more extreme weather disturbances. We are seeing rising sea levels that will soon threaten the habitability of great American cities like Miami, New York, and Charleston. We are seeing the acidification of the oceans that threaten fishing and marine life. And we are seeing an increase in disease. We have got to move away from fossil fuel. We have got to end fracking. I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 3105

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Cruz amendment, the following amendments be in order, that the amendments be reported by number with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Hawley 2734; Booker 3823; Hoeven 3243; Marshall 3797; Kennedy 3758.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment that makes it more difficult for Congress to respond to an emergency when one occurs. Let us be clear. There is no reason to hold up Federal dollars to help people recover from a natural disaster while Congress searches for revenue or spending cuts to pay for emergency assistance. This amendment would create a supermajority hurdle for the Senate to declare something an emergency. When people are suffering after a hurricane or a wildfire, we should not be creating additional barriers to them getting the help they need. Congress has provided exemptions for emergency spending ever since the budget process started a pay-as-you-go system. This helps Federal dollars respond to emergencies in a more timely manner. Importantly, the 60-vote threshold still exists for emergency legislation, meaning any bill that includes emergency spending will still face a 60-vote hurdle. There is simply no need to make getting urgently needed money out of the door one step harder. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, this amendment is a poison pill that would defeat everything that many of us are trying to accomplish tonight in this historic budget: no reduction in childhood poverty; no expansion in childcare, pre-K, or Medicare; no investment in affordable housing or home healthcare; no paid family and medical leave; no effort to combat the existential threat of climate change; no creation of millions of good-paying jobs. Using an arbitrary inflation number, it would end all of that. This amendment must be defeated. Vote on Amendment No. 3815

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be in order; that the amendments be reported by number, with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Cotton, No. 3680; Blackburn, No. 3062; Cruz, No. 3781.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Sullivan amendment, the following amendments be in order; that the amendments be reported by number, with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendments: Wyden, No. 3805; Paul, No. 3150.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Paul amendment, the following amendments be in order, the amendments be reported by number with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Baldwin 3648, Romney 3652, Moran 3795.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, Senator Paul's amendment would slash Federal spending by trillions of dollars. It would mean massive cuts to Medicare, to Medicaid, to food stamps, to virtually every Federal program that impacts working people and low-income people. It would cause massive suffering. I urge a ``no'' vote. Vote on Amendment No. 3150

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that, following the Braun amendment, the following amendments be in order, that the amendments be reported by number, with no amendments in order, prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Fischer 3128, Ernst 3115, Scott of Florida 3383, Young 3444, and Lankford 3792.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Lankford amendment, the following amendments be in order; that the amendments be reported by number, with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Sullivan, No. 3627; Paul, No. 3150.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Rubio amendment, the following amendments be in order; that the amendments be reported by number, with no amendments in order prior to a vote in relation to the amendment: Shelby, No. 3293; Grassley, No. 3251; Wyden, No. 3569; Mr. Tuberville, No. 3113; Ms. Klobuchar, No. 3731.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff members from my staff and from Senator Graham's staff be given all-access floor passes for consideration of the resolution: majority staff, Michael Jones, Joshua Smith, Melissa Kaplan-Pistiner, Billy Gendell, and Liam Fagan; Republican staff, Nick Myers, Matthew Giroux, Matthew Joe Keeley, Becky Cole, and Krisann Pearce.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as I understand it, the Senator from Alabama is interested in increasing military spending by some $50 billion. You know, there is a headline in the New York Times today. It doesn't talk about the fact that the United States now spends more than the next 10 nations on the military. It doesn't talk about the fact that the Pentagon is the only major Agency of government that has not submitted successfully to an independent audit. It doesn't talk about the fact of huge profits among defense contractors. What it does talk about is that a hotter future is now inevitable, a U.N. report says. Scientists urge immediate switch from fossil fuels to avert greater peril. So I would say to my friend from Alabama, if we are going to invest $50 billion, let us, in fact, invest in transforming our energy system so that we can save this planet for future generations and prevent the kind of unhealthy deterioration that we will inevitably see if we do not act. So, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me thank Senator Durbin for his leadership in so many areas, including the understanding, as he just indicated, that the time is long overdue for comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship for millions of undocumented workers and families in this country. Thank you very much, Senator Durbin. As a former mayor, I do understand how important physical infrastructure is--roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants-- and I am delighted that finally we are beginning to address our long neglected physical infrastructure. Frankly, it is rather incredible that, year after year, we ignore crumbling bridges and roads. And as we address our physical infrastructure, we can create a whole lot of good- paying jobs. So that bill that we are discussing right now is enormously important. I will tell you what is even more important, and that is to address the long neglected needs of the working families of our country, of the children, of the elderly, of the sick, of the poor, whether they are Black or White or Latino, Native American, Asian American. These are needs that Congress has ignored for much, much too long. Now, I understand that Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, and others are really shocked by this bill. They cannot believe it. Imagine--just imagine--that the U.S. Senate is addressing the needs of working families and is going to stand up for ordinary Americans rather than just the wealthy and powerful? What is this world coming to? Don't we understand that here in the Senate we are supposed to take campaign contributions from the drug companies and the insurance companies and the fossil fuel industry and from the 1 percent and do their bidding? Isn't that the way it has always been done here in the U.S. Senate? Well, Senator McConnell, things are changing. For once in a very long time, the U.S. Congress is going to stand with working families and not just the rich and the powerful. Further, above and beyond the economic crisis facing working families, Congress has ignored the great existential threat of our time, and that is climate change. You don't have to believe me. Maybe some of my Republican colleagues might want to take a look at the IPCC report, which came out today, which said that if we do not act boldly and immediately all over this planet, the world that we will be leaving our children and grandchildren will be increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable. But you don't have to just read the IPCC report. Open up your eyes. Look at what is going on in California, the fires in Oregon, the fires in Greece, and the drought that is impacting countries all over the world, which will mean a decrease in food production and water supply. We have to act now in order to save the planet. There is no choice. We cannot go home and look our children and grandchildren in the eye if we do not act now and lead the world. We can't do it alone. We are going to have to work with China and India and Europe, but we cannot continue to ignore this existential threat. The gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is wider today than it has been in 100 years. People on top are doing phenomenally well. In fact, we have two people in America today who own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 percent, and since 2009--the Wall Street collapse--45 percent of all new income has gone to the top 1 percent. And, incredibly, during the pandemic that we are experiencing now, billionaires in America have seen their wealth increase by $1.8 trillion during this pandemic, while at the same time, thousands of essential workers died providing the goods and services we needed. Billionaires become richer. Ordinary people have to go to work-- public transit, grocery stores, hospitals--and thousands die. While some of our multi-multibillionaires are spending some of their enormous amounts of money flying off into outer space, today and in the coming days we are going to address the crises facing working families right here on the ground, on planet Earth. And that is why, as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, I am proud to introduce a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that we will soon be considering--I expect tomorrow. This is a budget resolution that will allow the Senate to move forward on a reconciliation bill that, in my view, will be the most consequential and comprehensive piece of legislation for working people, for the elderly, for the children, for the sick, and for the poor, that this body has addressed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal, in the 1930s. This is a budget resolution that will address the needs of working families because we understand, if our Republican colleagues do not, that there is something fundamentally wrong when real inflation accounted-for wages for working people has not gone up for almost 50 years. We have seen in recent years, as everybody knows, an explosion in technology, an explosion in worker productivity. And yet, in real inflation accounted-for dollars, where the very, very rich become much richer, real inflation accounted-for wages for workers has not gone up in almost 50 years. What does that mean? It means the cost of healthcare has soared. The cost of education has soared. The cost of housing has soared. And yet real workers, real working families of this country are earning in real dollars the same wages that they did decades ago, which means that many of them are struggling right now to keep their heads above water economically. In the richest country in the history of the world, half of our people should not be living paycheck to paycheck, worried about how they are going to pay their rent or provide food for their kids. This legislation, in so many ways, begins to address the working families of our country. But one important way--maybe the most important--is, as we address the needs of our people in healthcare, in education, in climate, we are going to create many millions of good- paying--good-paying--jobs that the American people desperately need. I want to say a few words today about the budget resolution that we are introducing and what is going to be in the reconciliation package that we will soon be undertaking. For a start, one of the questions that everybody is going to ask is: Well, how is this going to be paid for? Expensive bill, $3\1/2\ trillion. You know, that is a lot of money. It is. Well, I happen to think, and I know that you do as well--I say to the Presiding Officer that maybe, just maybe, the time is now for the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations who are doing phenomenally well, but in a given year, many of them have not paid a nickel in Federal income tax--ah, the average Joe, the average Mary out there, they are working. They are paying their fair share of taxes. But if you are an Amazon, if you are a Jeff Bezos, if you are one of these multibillionaires, you have lobbyists, you have accountants, you have lawyers, and you can avoid paying your fair share of taxes. So what some of us are saying is that maybe, just maybe, even if you are a billionaire, even if you are a large, profitable corporation with all kinds of lobbyists and accountants, maybe you should start paying your fair share of taxes. My Republican friends say we are going to be raising taxes. Well, you are right, we are. But we are going to be raising taxes on the wealthiest people in this country--something which is long overdue--and yet nobody in America earning less than $400,000 a year will pay a nickel in taxes, and many, many, will actually be paying less in taxes. So my Republican friends can complain all that they want, but I do believe, and the American people do believe, that the time is now for the wealthy, the powerful, the large, profitable corporations to start paying their fair share so that, in fact, we can lower taxes for working families in this country. I think the American people have already begun to see what good public policy for working families can mean. In Vermont, in Massachusetts, and all over this country, working families--the vast majority of our families--are now receiving a $300-per-month check per child, and this is long, long overdue. Some say this is a radical idea. It is not. It is exactly what countries all over the world do because they understand, and we understand, how difficult it is today for working families to raise children. And I am enormously proud of the fact--and everybody in this Chamber should be proud of the fact--that at a time when the United States has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth, as a result of the work in the American Rescue Plan, which must be extended in the reconciliation bill, we have reduced childhood poverty in America by 61 percent--61 percent--because we are now getting the resources out to moms and dads that they need in order to adequately and decently raise their kids. You know, I hear a lot of talk about how we love our kids or the future of our country. Well, if we love our kids, we have to love their parents as well, and we have to make it easier for parents to raise their kids. But it is not just the child tax credit. I suspect that there are very few people in this country who do not understand how dysfunctional our childcare system is. We are not living in the 1950s, where dad goes out to work and mom stays home with the kids. That is not the case anymore. It has not been the case for a very long time. Dad is out working and mom is out working because families all across this country need two breadwinners in order to pay the bills. While mom is working and dad is working, who is taking care of the kids? And that is, in fact, a major, major crisis in this country, and the current system just is not working. In my State, the State of Vermont, it costs $15,000 a year, which is about the national average, to send your child into childcare. What does that mean? It means that if you are making $60,000 a year, you are spending a quarter of your income just to make sure that your child is well taken care of while you go to work. If you have two kids, forget about it. It doesn't pay to go to work because you are spending so much on childcare. Everybody understands that. That is not a debate. So the time is long overdue not only to protect the needs of working families, but also to provide well for our children. Psychologists after psychologists have told us that the most important years of human development are 0 through 4. And yet so many of our kids all over this country--little kids--are sitting in front of TV sets, not getting the kind of nurturing, emotionally and intellectually, that they need. This legislation begins to change that. Under our proposal, no working family in this country should be paying more than 7 percent of their income for childcare. Working parents, do you hear what I just said? No more than 7 percent--not 30 percent, not 25 percent. That is what we should be doing. And we have so much work to do in childcare. I know the Presiding Officer understands that. We got to build new facilities for kids because once we open the door for affordable childcare, the truth is we don't have enough space to accommodate the children. And we have got to start paying childcare workers the wages they are due for the enormously important work they are providing. We got childcare workers in America today making less than McDonald's workers. What an insult. How wrong is that? So this legislation is going to provide increased subsidies for working families to afford childcare. We are going to pay workers in childcare living wages and benefits, and we are going to build the new facilities that we need to accommodate the families who will now have the opportunity to take advantage of childcare. But in terms of our children, who we have ignored for so, so long, we are going to do even more than that. We are going to make pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds free. God didn't create an education system that begins in kindergarten. It is created by human beings, and the world has changed. And what we have got to understand now, with so many of our parents working, that we have got to make pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds free, and that is what we do in this legislation. And, by the way, not widely reported, but when we revolutionize childcare and pre-K so that moms and dads know that their kids are in quality and affordable facilities, we are going to see more than a million women able to go into the workforce because they no longer have to stay home to take care of the kids. If they want to work, we will give them the opportunity to pursue their careers. The Presiding Officer knows, and I know, that there is something a little bit absurd that the United States of America is literally one of two nations in the entire world--and I am talking about poor nations-- that does not guarantee paid family and medical leave. What does that mean? What it means: That there are workers today who are at work when they are sick. Maybe they are spreading the virus or some other illness. There are working families who have to make a choice: Does mom go to work and leave her sick child at home alone, or does she stay home and maybe lose her job? I have talked--and I am sure the Presiding Officer has spoken--to women who gave birth to a baby and a week later--a week later--was forced to go back to work because they had no income coming in. I know this may shock some of my Republican colleagues, but there are countries all over this world that understand that it is enormously important that parents be able to bond with their babies. And in countries around the world, women get 4 months, 5 months, 8 months off with full pay or with a significant part of their paycheck in order to stay home with their newborn babies. So, finally, finally, we are beginning--beginning; more to do; beginning--to end the international embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on Earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. I know the Presiding Officer has been involved in this issue--I have and a number of my colleagues have--in the understanding that in the contemporary global economy, if our young people are going to go out and get decent-paying jobs, a shock of all shocks, they actually need to have the skills and the education in order to perform those jobs. So you have a situation now where there are jobs all over this country that are lying vacant, not being taken, because people don't have the skills. Now, I personally believe we should do what other countries are doing and we should make all public colleges and universities tuition-free and should forgive all student debt. That is not in this bill. But what is in this bill is a beginning--a beginning--and that says that we will make community colleges in this country tuition-free. Now, what does that mean? It means a couple of things. It means that if I go to community college, I can learn a skill--whether it is nursing, whether it is construction trades, whatever it may be. I can learn the skills that I need to go out and get a job that pays me a living wage. And that is enormously important because--especially as we rebuild this country--as we begin to pay attention to healthcare and to childcare and to taking care of our parents and the disabled people, we need skilled workers, and making community colleges tuition-free for 2 years is an important step forward in allowing people to gain those skills. But, also, for those people who want to go to a 4-year college, those 2 years of community college credits are transferrable. So your tuition is paid for the first 2 years. My hope is that we will soon be able to pay for the next 2 years as well, but this is a real start in allowing millions of young people to get an education today that previously they could not afford. Two blocks away from where we are in the Nation's capital there is an encampment of homeless people. All over this city, you can't drive down the Nation's capital and not see people sleeping out on the street, and that is true in virtually every major city in America. Once again, the richest country in the history of the world, and some 600,000 Americans are homeless. Then, on top of that, you have got about 18 million households where people are spending 50 percent or more of their limited incomes to put a roof over their heads. Now, how do you survive economically if you are spending 50 percent of your income on housing? This legislation will create a huge number of good-paying jobs by the largest investment in American history in low-income and affordable housing. And I see the chairman of the Banking Committee here, and I want to thank Senator Brown for his important work in that area. Just a few days ago, I had a chat with a gentleman whose wife is seriously ill. He works and he pays for the home healthcare that she needs, and it is an expensive proposition. What we understand is that, in an aging society and at a time when we have so many people with disabilities whose needs are not being met, it makes eminent sense to bring skilled home-healthcare workers into the home rather than to force people to go into a nursing home, which, by the way, is more expensive. And this legislation, the reconciliation bill that we will soon be working on, will make historic investments in home healthcare and make sure that those workers--like childcare workers, who do such important work--are adequately compensated. IPCC today reported what all of us know, and that is, if we do not begin in an extremely aggressive way transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, the planet that we will be leaving our children will be increasingly unhealthy. It really does take your breath away to look at those photos--whether it is Oregon, whether it is California, whether it is Greece right now--and see flames consuming entire communities. And if anybody out there thinks that, gee, isn't this too bad that it is happening this year, you have got it wrong. It is only going to get worse if we do not act and act boldly, which is why this legislation will pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the fight to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, including a civilian Climate Corps, which will give the young people of this country the opportunity to roll up their sleeves, get decent pay, and get educational benefits in order to do what is so much in their hearts, and that is to combat climate change. I wish that I could tell you that my Republican colleagues understand the crises facing working families and that they understand the moral imperative of us having to address climate change and that we are working together to do, in fact, what the American people want: create millions of good-paying jobs, addressing the needs of working families and climate change. I wish I could tell you that, but I can't. As we go forward, in all likelihood, we will not get one Republican vote. We are going to have to do it on our own with 50 Democratic votes here in the Senate, plus the Vice President of the United States. Now, some of my Republican friends will say: Well, that is such a bad idea. Why aren't you more bipartisan in terms of reconciliation? Well, I would remind my Republican colleagues that they didn't have a problem with reconciliation when they gave almost $2 trillion in tax breaks to the very richest people in this country and the largest corporations. No problem doing that. They didn't have a problem with reconciliation when they tried to throw 30 million people off of the healthcare they had by abolishing the Affordable Care Act. So that is where we are. We are facing a crisis facing working families. We need to create millions of good-paying jobs. We need to tackle the existential threat of climate change. We need to expand healthcare and Medicare so that elderly people have dental care, eyeglasses, and hearing aids. We need to lower the cost of prescription drugs and have Medicare negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry. We need to make sure that we get doctors and nurses and dentists into underserved areas. So, Madam President, tomorrow begins one of the very important debates that we have ever had. And the question is not complicated. Do we have the courage to stand up to powerful special interests and tell the corporate world and the 1 percent: Yeah, you are finally going to have to pay your fair share of taxes so that we can create millions of good-paying jobs for working families, so we can protect our children, protect the elderly, and address the threat of climate change? That is the issue. And I have absolute confidence that we will, in fact, rise to the occasion and do what the American people want and that we will pass the budget resolution tomorrow With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as a former mayor, I have a sense as to how important physical infrastructure--roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants--are, and I am delighted that we are finally beginning to address our long-neglected physical infrastructure. That is enormously important. But I will tell you what is even more important, and that is to address the human infrastructure, the needs of the working class of this country, the middle class of this country, the low-income people of our country, whether they are Black or White or Latino or Native American, Asian American--needs that have been neglected for decades. It is no secret to the American people that, for a very long time, the U.S. Congress has paid keen attention to the needs of the people on top. Yet we have turned our backs on millions of people who are struggling to put food on the table, to take care of their kids, to take care of their parents. And on top of that, obviously, we have ignored the great existential crisis of our time, and that is climate change. And the result of all of that is that, today, the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is wider than it has been in 100 years. Today, you have two people--two people--who have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. And for many of our billionaire friends, apparently they are increasingly unconcerned about what happens here on Earth because they are off in outer space. But some of us who go home every weekend to our States and our districts, we kind of are worried about what is going on down on Earth and the needs of working families. So, Mr. President, as you know, as soon as we address this bipartisan physical infrastructure bill, we are going to move toward what I consider to be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation for working families since FDR, the New Deal, and the Great Depression. And we are going there and addressing the needs of working families because we understand that real wages for workers have not gone up in 50 years. An explosion of technology, an explosion of worker productivity, and yet, in real inflation accounted-for dollars, many workers today are not making a nickel more than they did 50 years ago. We are going forward on the reconciliation bill to address the needs of the working class because, in the richest country in the history of the world, it is unacceptable that half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. They go to work, and at the end of the week they have got nothing in the bank, and maybe they are even further behind because they can't afford their healthcare needs, the rent, and the educational costs of their children. We are going to go forward and pass this legislation because the time is long overdue for the U.S. Congress to begin to make sure the American people understand that our job is not just to represent the corporate elites and wealthy campaign contributors but to address the needs of the struggling men and women of our country. On top of all of that, it would be incomprehensible to the people of our country who turn on the TV and they see the west coast burning; they see the drought in the Midwest; they see the floods all over Europe; Australia on fire--it would be incomprehensible and a real crime against future generations if we did not finally address, in a significant way, the existential threat not only to our country but to the world in terms of climate. And I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the work that the Budget Committee has done and what is going to be in that reconciliation package because my friends here in the media are very concerned about process, which is fine, but the American people want to know: Hey, what is the Congress going to do for me? What is it going to do to improve my life, my children's lives, my parents' lives? What are we going to do to save the planet? For a start, we understand that it is absolutely imperative to end the obscenity of some of the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations, in a given year, not paying a nickel in Federal income taxes. So what we have seen in the pandemic, what we have seen in recent years is the very, very wealthiest people becoming phenomenally richer. And then there are studies that are coming out that show that, in a given year, some of the very wealthiest people in this country--multi, multibillionaires--are not paying a nickel in Federal income tax. At a time when corporate profits are soaring, we are seeing many major corporations, making billions a year, also not paying a nickel in Federal income tax. And we are also seeing the pharmaceutical industry, which is enormously profitable, which charges our people the highest prices in the world for the prescription drugs that we desperately need--we are seeing a situation where they can charge us anything they want because of the power of their lobbyists and their campaign contributions. And we are going to put an end to that as well because we are going to demand that Medicare start negotiating prescription drug costs with the pharmaceutical industry. So my Republican colleagues say: Well, they are going to be raising taxes. Yes, we are going to be raising taxes on billionaires and on large, profitable corporations, and we are going to demand that the pharmaceutical industry stop ripping us off. But we are adhering to President Biden's belief, which I share, that nobody earning less than $400,000 a year should pay a nickel more in taxes. We are going to do exactly what the American people want us to do and tell the billionaire class that they are going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes. What else are we going to do, and what are we going to use that money for? We are going to use that money to start protecting the needs of our children, working families, and the elderly. I think many Americans now see what public policy can mean in their lives because we are providing a $300-a-month check per child. The United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. That is a disgrace, and it should be unacceptable to every Member of the Senate. Well, we are going to end that. I am very proud to say, Mr. President, as I know you know, that as a result of the 1-year child tax credit extension, $300 per child, we have reduced childhood poverty in America by 61 percent. Parents all over--in Vermont, California--now have the ability to start taking care of their children. Our job in reconciliation is either to make that $300 a month permanent, which I would like to see, or at the very least extend it for a number of years. Furthermore, in the United States of America, every person in this Chamber should be disgusted by the dysfunctionality of our childcare system. This is not 1950. Mom is going out to work. Dad is going out to work. And they demand quality, affordable childcare, which does not exist today. What we say and what our goal is, is that no working family in this country should be paying more than 7 percent of their income for childcare. On top of that, we are going to make pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds free. Yes, that is right--free. We are going to do what other industrialized countries do and understand that the most important investment we can make is in the little children. By the way, when we do that, we are going to allow well over a million women to go back to work because they no longer have to stay home because of lack of affordable childcare. It is a bit embarrassing that our great country is the only major country on Earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Imagine that. Every other country in the world, virtually, does that. In America, I have met with women, low-income women, who give birth, and then they have to go back to work in a week or two because they don't have the money to stay home. We are going to end that. We are going to have, as a nation, guaranteed paid family and medical leave. We are going to address the reality that many of our younger people are unable to obtain the good-paying jobs that are out there because they lack the higher education. Now, I myself will go further than this bill is going to go. I think time is long overdue to make public colleges and universities tuition- free and cancel all student debt. That is not what is in this bill. But what is in this bill says that, at the very least, every American will have the right to get 2 years of community college, and they can use that to get the training they need, to get the good jobs. Maybe it is nursing. Maybe it is something else. But they will also get the credits they need so they can transfer into a 4-year school, making a big step forward in getting young people the ability to get the training they need and the education they need to obtain the good-paying jobs that are out there. Mr. President, I know that you are aware that right here in this country, right here on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, you have people sleeping out on the street, and they are sleeping out on the street in every State in this country. In fact, we have almost 600,000 people sleeping out on the streets of the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Well, this legislation will create millions of jobs in housing and in other areas because we are going to build the lower income and affordable housing that we need. It is not only homelessness. You have 18 million households spending 50 percent of their limited incomes on housing. We need to build low- income and affordable housing, and when we do that, we will create a heck of a lot of good-paying jobs. Just today, I talked to a gentleman whose wife is very, very ill and who is having a hard time affording the home healthcare that he is paying for. We are an aging society, and whether people have severe disabilities or whether they are just getting old, people would rather stay at home in many cases rather than be forced into nursing homes. What our legislation will do is significantly improve home healthcare in this country and make sure that those people who provide that important service, difficult service, are adequately compensated. I know that many of my Republican colleagues don't believe that climate change is real, don't believe that we should do anything about it, but they are dead wrong. And we cannot go home and look our children and grandchildren in the eye knowing what we know, knowing that in many ways, the climate crisis turns out to be worse than what scientists predicted it would be. Climate ordinarily changes over thousands of years, hundreds of years. We are seeing the change in climate with our own eyes year by year. It is frightening. And if people think that the forest fires in Oregon, California, Montana, and elsewhere are an aberration, that they are once-in-a-lifetime, you are wrong. Everything being equal, we will see worse in years to come. The truth is, what makes this crisis so difficult, we can't solve it alone. We are going to have to work with China and India and Europe. We have to bring the world together to save this planet for our kids and future generations. This legislation takes an important step forward. It doesn't go as far as it should, but it is a major step forward in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. I know we will be hearing from my Republican colleagues who are very upset that this will be a partisan bill, which it will be, but let me remind them that they use the so-called reconciliation process recently in two areas--two areas. No. 1, they thought it important to go forward in a partisan way, without Democratic support, for the enormously important goal of giving massive tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations. That is how they used the reconciliation process. Well, we have a little different idea. We are going to use the reconciliation process and the 50 votes we have with the Vice President to protect the working families of this country, not the billionaire class. The other effort that they made in terms of reconciliation was to try--and they came within one vote of doing it; the late John McCain-- they would have thrown up to 30 million Americans off of healthcare by ending the Affordable Care Act. So they have used reconciliation, and we will use it, except we are going to use it to protect ordinary Americans--the children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor--rather than just the very wealthy or the pharmaceutical industry. We are now in the midst of a debate over the physical infrastructure, the bipartisan bill--very important. We need to rebuild our roads and bridges, but more important is the need to address the crises facing working families all over this country. When we go forward and do that, when we protect our children and the elderly and the environment, we are going to create millions of good-paying jobs, put people to work rebuilding this country in a way that is long, long overdue. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I did know that.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I want to rise to say a few words about the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which we are debating today. I think that the thrust of that act and what we are trying to accomplish is enormously important. Right now, as I think most people know, we have a crisis in terms of microchip production here in the United States, and we are becoming increasingly dependent upon countries all over the world. For our own manufacturing sector--the automobile sector, the electronics sector-- that is a very bad position to be in, and also, obviously, being dependent on other countries for microchips is a dangerous place to be in terms of national security. I especially like provisions in this legislation which will increase funding for research and development, increase funding for science and technology, and invest in more Ph.D.s. We need more Ph.D.s in our country in science, technology, engineering, and math. I think those are very important steps in the right direction. But I do have some very serious concerns about two provisions in this bill. No. 1, I am deeply concerned about the provisions which will provide $52 billion in emergency appropriations for the microchip industry, with no strings attached. Let me repeat that. We are talking about $52 billion in Federal funds--and, by the way, I suspect there will be more taxpayer money coming to these corporations from State and local government--with no strings attached. And, second of all, there is a provision in this bill, not an appropriation but an authorization, to provide some $10 billion to the Blue Origin space company, which is owned by the wealthiest person in the world, Mr. Bezos. When we talk about the microchip industry, we are talking about an industry that is not a poor, struggling industry. In fact, it is an extremely successful and wealthy industry that is worth now more than half a trillion dollars--more than $500 billion. We are talking about an industry, interestingly enough, that, at the same time we are now trying to provide corporate welfare to them, is an industry that has shut down over 780 manufacturing plants in the United States over the past several decades and laid off 150,000 American workers. So what you have is a situation that, over the last two decades, these very large corporations said: Why do I want to stay in the United States of America, pay workers here a living wage, protect environmental standards? I can go to companies in Asia and elsewhere and buy my products from them. The result, again, is 780 manufacturing plants in the last several decades have shut down in America, and 150,000 American workers were laid off. Now, let's talk about how we don't know exactly--nobody does--where this $52 billion in corporate welfare is going to go. But, obviously, it will go to some of the larger microchip companies, and one of the very largest is Intel. Let me say a word about Intel. Last year, Intel made nearly $21 billion in profits. So we are proposing to provide many billions of dollars to a company that, last year, made $21 billion in profits. They spent $14.2 billion on stock buybacks--$14.2 billion on stock buybacks. And, by the way, this company which is in line for a major infusion of U.S. taxpayer money, provided $110 million signing bonus to its CEO, Patrick Gelsinger. Since 2015, this very same company, Intel, has shipped over 1,000 jobs overseas. Now, interestingly enough, Intel's CEO has admitted recently that it does not need corporate welfare. Let's give them credit for that. The CEO recently said his investment in America ``does not depend on a penny of government support or state support or any other investments to make it successful and never will.'' They are prepared to do it on their own, which is what we hope most private corporations would do. Now, among the other very large, leading microchip companies is the well-known Texas Instruments. They may well be in line to receive billions of dollars in corporate welfare as well under this piece of legislation. Last year, Texas Instruments made $5.6 billion in profits and spent $2.5 billion buying back its own stock, while it has outsourced thousands of jobs to low-wage countries. The CEO of Texas Instruments made over $30 million in total compensation last year--more than 400 times what the median worker at that company made. And this is also another company in line to receive billions and billions of dollars in Federal corporate welfare. Who else might receive corporate welfare under this bill? Well, how about the major semiconductor company from Taiwan called the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or what is often referred to as ``TSMC,'' which is a very, very, very large microchip company. It is interesting to note who is the largest shareholder in that company. Well, it should not surprise anybody because this is how countries around the world do industrial policy, but the largest shareholder in TSMC is the Government of Taiwan. So when you give TSMC money, you are giving that money directly to the Government of Taiwan. Samsung, another very large corporate entity, South Korean, it owns several plants in Texas. So what we are looking at here is a reality where taxpayer money from working people in this country will be going to large, profitable corporations, and several of them are owned literally by other entities. In total, the top five semiconductor companies that may well receive grants under this legislation made nearly $35 billion in profits and spent more than $18 billion buying back its own stock last year. So here is the bottom line. I believe that we do want to grow the microchip industry here in the United States of America for reasons that everybody is familiar with. That is the industry that we need if we are going to grow the automobile industry, the electronics industry, and every other industry in this country. And we need to not be dependent upon China and other countries for the microchips that are used in these products. So I am sympathetic to the goal of this bill, but I am not sympathetic with the idea of simply laying out $52 billion of taxpayers' money with no strings attached. That is why I have introduced Senate amendment No. 2016. This amendment would prevent microchip companies from receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants to the Federal Government. If private companies are going to benefit from over $52 billion in taxpayer subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders. In other words, all this amendment says is that if these companies want taxpayer assistance, we are not going to socialize all of the risks and privatize all of the profits. And let me be very clear; this is not a radical idea. This is not something that I made up or any other Senator made up. These exact conditions were imposed on corporations that received taxpayer assistance in the bipartisan CARES Act, which passed the Senate 96 to 0. In other words, every Member of the U.S. Senate has already voted for the conditions that are in the amendment that I cosponsored by Senator Warren, by the way. They are in the amendment that we are offering. Further, this amendment will also require companies--again, all of this was in the CARES Act. Every Member or at least 96 Members of the Senate voted for these conditions--not a new idea. So in addition to making sure that companies allow for warrants, it would be demanded that they could not buy back their own stock, not outsource American jobs overseas, not repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and remain neutral in any union organizing effort. Again, these are not new ideas, not radical ideas. All of these conditions are identical to the conditions that were placed in the CARES Act, which passed 96 to nothing. I also want to say a word about the provision in there that authorizes $10 billion for Blue Origin, a company owned by Mr. Bezos. You know, when we were younger and Neil Armstrong made it to the Moon, there was incredible joy and pride in this country that the United States of America did something that people forever had thought was impossible. We sent a man to the Moon, an extraordinary accomplishment. And the entire world watched that event with bated breath. It was just an extraordinary accomplishment for all of humanity, not just the United States, but we have a special pride because that was our project. I worry very much that what we are seeing now are two of the wealthiest people in this country--Mr. Musk, Elon Musk, and Mr. Bezos-- deciding that they are going to take control over our space efforts to get to the Moon and maybe even the extraordinary accomplishment of getting to Mars. What an accomplishment that would be. But I have to tell you that I have a real problem that, to a significant degree, we are privatizing that effort. So that as a nation, we will not sit with pride in saying we did it but instead saying, well, maybe Mr. Bezos or maybe Mr. Musk sent somebody to the Moon or maybe even to Mars. This is something that should be an American effort, that all of us should be part of and not simply be a private corporation undertaking. So I have a real problem with the authorization of $10 billion going to somebody who, among other things, is the wealthiest person in this country. So what I hope very much is that my amendment will be a part of the managers' amendments. I suspect there are Republicans who often tell us about wanting to save taxpayer dollars and not just throw them about who would be sympathetic to this effort, and I know there are a number of Democrats who are as well. So I would hope very much that my amendment No. 2016, which will be modified to just include provisions that were in the CARES bill, that it will be included in the managers' amendments that we will be voting on shortly. With that, I leave the microphone.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 225, submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.