Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I am delighted to yield to my good friend from Oregon, one of the outstanding Congressmen in this institution.

Mr. SANDERS. If we could perhaps wrap it up, I think, in conclusion, the point that we are trying to make, we as three or four members of the Progressive caucus, and there are 36 other members, is that we think to a large degree the Congress of the United States is out of touch with the needs of working people, middle income people, and is here to a large degree to represent the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. We think that much of what is in the Contract With America benefits the people who go to the $1,000 a plate fund-raising dinners. We think there are sensible public policies we can develop--we brought forth some of them this afternoon--that in fact we can raise the standard of living for American people, give people hope for the future, where today there is no hope. I want to thank both the gentleman from New York, Mr. Owens and Mr. Hinchey, for joining me. We will do this again.

Mr. SANDERS. The gentleman makes an extremely important point. When you hear somebody get up, and give a speech, and say that we have got to be competitive in the global economy, hang on to your wallets and start worrying very much because what the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hinchey] is saying is that in south China the wages are approximately 20 cents an hour. Well, American workers, are you ready to compete? Do you think maybe we can get down to 18 cents an hour? We can get those jobs back. What about 15 cents an hour? To a large degree much of the discussion of the global economy is just that. It is asking American workers to lower their wages, give up their benefits, sacrifice our environmental standards in order to compete with desperate Third World countries where people are working for starvation wages. I think, as Mr. Hinchey indicates, that should not be the paradigm under which we operate. Rather, we should be asking the question, why, in this great country, do we not develop policies which create decent paying jobs for all of our workers, a national health care system guaranteeing health care to all of our people, a fair tax system which takes the burden of taxes off the middle class and asks the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes, educational opportunity for all. Is that Utopia? I do not think so. I want to ask Mr. Owens a question: Recently, all over America, in my district, you have middle class people, husbands and wives, working 40, 50, 60 hours a week to afford to send their kids to college, because they understand that without a college education the kids are not going to make it to the middle class. That is simply the truth. Without a college education you cannot make it to the middle class. Mr. Owens, the Republicans recently have brought forth a proposal which would cut back on college loans, college financial grants. What impact does that have on the aspirations and dreams of the people in your district?

Mr. SANDERS. In other words what the gentleman is saying is what everybody knows to be true in virtually every city, every town in America. There is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done. We need new environmentally sound sewer systems. We need better landfills. We need to clean up the pollution that exists all around us. We need to rebuild our mass transportation system. What an absurdity that when in terms of mass rail, our railroads, we are already behind Europe and Japan. Amtrak has laid off 5,000 workers rather than adding more workers to give us the best rail system in the entire world. So, as Progressives, let us summarize some of what we are talking about. For a start, No. 1, the American people are angry and have a right to be angry, but for many reasons that anger has been deflected all over the place. Working people are becoming poorer in America. The gap between the rich and the poor is becoming wider. Twenty years ago the United States led the world in the wages and benefits we provide in our workers. Today we are in 10th place, behind many of the European countries. The hours that those workers in Germany, in France work are going down. They have more leisure time. In America the hours that our people are working are going up an extra month a year. I say, ``Why shouldn't we be angry? You can't be with your family, you can't be with your kids. You're working an extra month a year in order to make up for the decline in your wages. You're working overtime. You're working two jobs.'' So we believe it is appropriate to raise the minimum wage. Workers should not be working 40 hours a week and falling further and further into poverty. Forty percent of the people in poverty are working full time. So we are concerned about that. The gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] has talked about trade policy. We talk about the Federal deficit. It is important. What about our trade policy? And Mr. DeFazio a number of months ago introduced, I think an extremely important piece of legislation. He introduced legislation to repeal the United States connection with NAFTA, to withdraw from NAFTA. I ask, ``Mr. DeFazio, why did you introduce that legislation?''

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. SANDERS. We have been a little bit facetious about this. I think this deserves analysis and serious look. What we are talking about is some of the largest corporations in America, owned by the wealthiest people in America, making huge profits and paying less in taxes, zero, than the average working stiff who makes $20,000 or $30,000 a year. You mentioned AT&T. What other corporations were involved?

Mr. SANDERS. I would certainly agree. Let me conclude by thanking my friend, Mr. DeFazio from Oregon, for joining me. I think we depart by saying to the American people, please stand up, fight back and take back your country.

Mr. SANDERS. We are running out of time and I just want to conclude by saying this. This is a great country and we are great people, but I think as Mr. DeFazio just demonstrated, time after time what ends up happening in Congress is that the decisions that are made here are not made in the best interests of ordinary Americans. They are made in the best interests of the wealthy and the powerful, very often the same people who contribute heavily to the political parties, who hire lobbyists and lawyers to get things done for those people. In this country, we can, if we put our minds to it and we work together, develop a new trade policy which stops corporate America from taking our jobs to Third World countries. We can have those corporations reinvest in America and create decent paying jobs for our people. That is not utopian. In this country, we can raise the minimum wage. We do not need to continue a minimum wage of $4.25 an hour in which people work long, hard hours and they end up deeper in poverty. We can raise the minimum wage to $5.50 an hour. We have legislation in to do that. In this country, if you had a Congress that represented ordinary people rather than the big money interests, we could joint he rest of the industrialized world and pass a national health care system that guarantees health care to all people. We do not need to continue the most expensive, wasteful bureaucratic system in the world in which 40 million Americans today have no health insurance. We can do better. we can have a tax system which is fair, which asks those people who have the money to pay their fair share of taxes so we can lower taxes for middle income and working people. We can put more money into education so that we do not have so many of our kids dropping out of high school and have a situation where so many of our kids cannot afford to go to college. Throughout Europe, in Canada, in Scandinavia, their governments put more money into higher education, enabling their working people to be better able to send their kids to college. Those things are not magical. They are not utopian. They can happen, but they will not happen until the American people wake up and reclaim this government from the millionaires and the billionaires who today control it.

Mr. SANDERS. So at a time when we continue to have a large deficit, when the government is cutting back in my State, in your State, Oregon, cold weather up there, not as cold as Vermont but it gets cold. We are talking about in the House cutting back and completely eliminating the fuel assistance program by which 5 million low income people get help in the wintertime to heat their homes, including 2 million senior citizens. We cannot afford to do that. We are cutting back on student loans and grants upon which millions of working class kids depend in order to get their college education. We are cutting back on the WIC program, wonderful program for pregnant women, low income children. We are cutting back, now the debate will begin on the new medicaid. There are those who seriously want to dismantle the social security system. We just don't have enough money for all of that, but lo and behold, isn't it amazing, just amazing that we have $20 billion to put at risk bailing out another country, in this case Mexico. Much of that money will accrue and go back to investors who originally made a whole lot of money in Mexico lost money and now they want Uncle Same to bail them out.

Mr. SANDERS. Now, this gentleman, Mr. Salinas, was President of that country. His brother is in jail under arrest for masterminding a political assassination. Furthermore, the former Deputy Attorney General of their country who had the responsibility for cracking down on the very serious drug problem in Mexico and the exporting of drugs from Mexico to the United States. Surprise, surprise. Where is that Deputy Attorney General today, who was their drug czar? My goodness, he is also in jail. He is in jail under charge that he has taken millions and millions of dollars from the Mexican drug cartel.

Mr. SANDERS. Now, on top of all of that, if that is not enough for you, during the debate over NAFTA, some of us were concerned that we were merging our economies with an authoritarian and corrupt government. Mr. DeFazio,Dmaybe you want to share with the public, and I have some of the information here, what has recently taken place in Mexico that I have a feeling some people may have known before the NAFTA debate. What about Mr. Salinas' brother? Where is that gentleman sitting right now? Former President Salinas' brother is now in jail.

Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman will yield, a year and a half ago we were told by every major corporate newspaper in America that NAFTA was a good deal. The multinational corporations put big ads in the newspapers saying, NAFTA is a good deal. Working people and their unions fought back against NAFTA. Environmentalists understood the terrible environmental impact that NAFTA would have. Consumer groups fought against NAFTA. But we could not defeat the enormous amount of power and money that was arrayed against us. Since NAFTA has gone into effect, the figures that I have seen indicate that we have lost some 50,000 American jobs. As the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] just indicated, at a time that historically we have always had a trade surplus with Mexico, we have a terrible trade deficit internationally, but we have always had a surplus with Mexico, for the first time now, we are running a significant trade deficit. The gentleman is right, in January the deficit was $800 million in 1 month, and it is predicted that the trade deficit will mushroom and grow. The standard of living of Mexican workers is plummeting with the devaluation of the peso. And now, atop of all of that, American workers who have lost their jobs because of NAFTA are being asked to bail out American speculators and billionaires in Mexico because the peso was devalued and the L.A. Times appropriately I think correctly indicates that most of our bailout money is going back to Wall Street and to wealthy Mexicans.

Mr. SANDERS. I was being a little facetious. There has never been a vote of course on the floor of the House.

Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman will yield, I am very glad he raised this issue because that in fact is the issue I wanted to get to next. When we talk about why people are cynical about the political process, the gentleman is absolutely right in suggesting that this multi, multibillion-dollar bailout of Mexico is precisely the reason why people shrug their shoulders and they say, ``Government doesn't represent me.'' Let's start off with a couple of facts. You made the right point. Who is supporting the bailout? We have presumably 2 political parties, right? And theoretically they are supposed to be really different, big basic philosophical differences. Well, you have President Clinton and some of the leadership of the Democratic Party are supporting the bailout. One would therefore expect that the opposition in terms of the Republican Party would obviously be strongly opposed, right? That is what one might expect. But lo and behold, surprise of all surprises, there is the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] and the leadership of the Republican Party supporting the bailout. The truth of the matter is there are a number of people in the Democratic party, the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio], the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur], some of the leaders there, a number of people in the Republican Party, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stockman], the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], and others in strong opposition as well. When we talk about cynicism, this really gets to me. We are talking about a bailout which puts at risk the possibility of losing over $20 billion of American taxpayers' money at the same time as we have a $200 billion deficit and at the same time we are cutting back on a wide variety of programs for the most vulnerable people in this country. I ask the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio], help me out, what was the vote on the floor of the House after that vigorous debate on this bailout? issue thoroughly on the House?

Mr. SANDERS. We should ask ourselves why it is in the Scandinavian countries, many of the European countries turnouts are 70, 80, 90 percent; and we just had an election in which 38 percent of the people came out to vote. That turnout is directly related to what we have been talking about in terms of huge tax breaks for large corporations and wealthy people and cutbacks that will be coming in Medicaid, Medicare, student loans for those young people who today are having a hard time getting into college, WIC, Head Start, you name it. Every program that every working person, elderly person and kid in this country needs is on the chopping block. What is going on, and Mr. DeFazio stated it well, if you have only 38 percent of the people who are voting and if the vast majority of low income and working people do not vote, those people are invisible. You don't have any health insurance, so what? Who cares? Your pain is not reflected on the floor of this House. You can't afford to send your kid to college? So what? No one is going to pay attention to you unless you make your concerns known by getting involved politically. What goes on is that the vast majority of poor people and working people don't vote. Therefore, they are politically invisible. But there are some people who understand the political system very well. It is not just that the upper income people vote in very high percentages, but they contribute huge amounts of money to political campaigns. If a corporation like Amway or some other large corporation contributes hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party, don't you think that maybe the leadership of the Republican Party is going to sit down and listen to their concerns? If wealthy people contribute thousands and thousands of dollars to the party of their choice, they have enormous power in shaping the agenda. The gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] was suggesting that on his subcommittee, lobbyists paid a major role in writing the legislation. That is what is going on. The only way to change that situation is when working people and low-income people say, ``Wait a minute. This country belongs to all of us, not just the wealthy and the powerful.'' One person-one vote. It is not how much you contribute. It is not a $10,000 contribution gives me power. That is not what it is supposed to be about. One person-one vote. I absolutely agree with the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] that we are not going to change the priorities and the agenda of the Congress so that it begins to pay attention to ordinary Americans, working people, unless we make radical changes in who participates, who votes. If you are not happy with what is going on, you can ignore everything and not vote. The people who own America are delighted. That is exactly what they want. They want you to think that politics is a joke, that it is irrelevant. They don't think it is irrelevant. They contribute huge amounts of money. They help determine the agenda. So if you want to have some input, you have got to participate politically, you have got to vote, you have got to get involved.

Mr. SANDERS. Now, I have not witnessed this with my own eyes, but I have read and I have heard from other Members that the lobbyists themselves are now writing the legislation and giving it to Members to present. Have you heard that?

Mr. SANDERS. We have been trying to understand in this discussion not just the outrageous nature of the recent Republican tax plan in which half of the benefits go to people earning $100,000, 25 percent of the benefits go to those people earning $200,000 a year or more, where the largest, the wealthiest 1 percent of earners get more benefits than the bottom 60 percent. All of that is important, but it takes place within the context and I think helps us understand why so many people out there shrug their shoulders and say why should I vote, why should I participate. It does not really matter, the game is rigged, the people who have the money call the shots. Nobody cares about me. I am just a plain working person.

Mr. SANDERS. Let me jump in and just pick up on that point. Let's talk for a moment about something which, amazingly enough, I do not know how it happened, but the Contract With America just ignored or I missed it, it must have been by accident, and that is the role of money in politics and campaign finance reform. Now, I find it extremely interesting that within the last several months, and, by the way, as the only independent in the Congress I will say the same things about the Democratic Party here, but within the last couple of months after the Republican victory huge amounts of corporate money has been flowing into the Republican National Committee, campaign contributions. Several months ago, as you will recall, the Republicans had a fundraiser, and on one night, one night, they raised $11 million from some of the wealthiest people in America and large corporations. Furthermore, at about the same time, Speaker Gingrich attended a fundraiser in order to raise money for a conservative television network. And the deductions to that fundraiser, by the way, were tax deductible. Interestingly enough, that fundraiser cost a mere $50,000 a plate, $50,000 a plate. My understanding is that extra coffee was served free of charge, and that included gratuities. In fact, I would have loved to have been the waiter getting a 15 percent tip on that. But $50,000 a plate. Huge amount of money. Mr. DeFazio, it would seem to me that there is a direct correlation between this huge amount of corporate money and money from the wealthy flowing into the Republican party and what happened yesterday. Do you see that relationship?

Mr. SANDERS. What it also means, it seems to me, is that if the major corporations in America are paying nothing in taxes there will be less money available for Federal aid to education, Federal aid for environmental protection, Federal aid for the handicapped, Federal aid for Head Start, and so forth and so on. So, in essence, what will happen is the tax burden will be passed on back to the State and local level. Now, I do not know about Oregon. I am not familiar with Oregon's local tax situation. But in my State of Vermont we are highly dependent for education and municipal services on the property tax, which is an extremely regressive tax. To the degree that the Federal Government cuts back on Federal aid to education because corporations are not paying any taxes, who is going to make up the difference? In the State of Vermont it will be family farmers, it will be senior citizens, it will be working people who are not making a lot of money who will have to pay higher and higher property taxes, higher and higher State taxes because the AT&T's and the GE's primarily owned by wealthy people are not paying their fair share of taxes.

Mr. SANDERS. Let us back up a little bit. What Mr. DeFazio is talking about is that in the early 1980s, if my memory is correct, a majority of the major corporations in America paid zero, not a penny in taxes, and, as Mr. DeFazio indicates, some of them actually got a credit. That is how absurd and corrupt the tax system was. Well, both the Democrats and the Republicans became a little bit embarassed by this scandalous situation where we have working people making $20- or $30,000 a year paying more in taxes than all of AT&T and General Electric and the other large corporations. So what they passed in 1986 was called the minimum corporate tax. Basically, what that said, it said large multinational corporations with all of your fancy lawyers and your tax accountants and everybody else, after you go through all of the tax loopholes and after you avoid paying taxes on this, that and the other thing and you end up with zero, well, guess what, we think you should at least pay a minimal tax, a minimal tax. And that is what was passed in 1986, mandating the corporations at least paid something. What Mr. DeFazio is describing is that yesterday, as part of the Republican tax bill, that minimal corporate tax was repealed, and we are rapidly moving back to the time when the largest corporations in America will pay zero in taxes. Now, some people will say, well, so what? So what does it matter that AT&T and General Electric and duPont and all these corporations do not pay anything in taxes? What does it have to do with me? Mr. DeFazio, what does it have to do with the average working person? Mr. DeFazio. Well, if it gets as bad as it did in the 1980', working people will pay taxes in order to give tax credits to corporations that did not pay any taxes at all, which they then passed through to their shareholders who are also hiring the same accountants to avoid taxes and now will be allowed with the new 14-percent tax bracket for capital gains or 18 percent established by the Republican bill, will be able to pay a lower rate of taxes than someone earning $25,000 or $30,000 a year through the capital gains loophole. So what we are doing is asking people who are struggling to make ends meet, people who are struggling to figure out desperately some way to save a few bucks for their kids' education or just for their clothes are going to be asked to send money to the Federal Government so it can be handed back to large, profitable corporations so they can distribute it to shareholders who will not pay very much tax on it.

Mr. SANDERS. Well, 4 billion maybe 4. Am I wrong again?

Mr. SANDERS. Six billion dollars? I would guess that would be a fair----

Mr. SANDERS. These must be small businesses with marginal profits, I would suspect. Is that the case?

Mr. SANDERS. Let me jump in, if I might. Some Americans, Mr. Speaker, will remember, as I am sure my colleague from Oregon will remember, that in the early 1980s, after Reagan was elected president, there was an enormous scandal that many people were discussing in America. What they were discussing is that at the time when middle-income people were paying more and more in Federal, State and local taxes, lo and behold, as a result of a variety of loopholes, it appeared that some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America, primarily owned by the wealthiest people in America, were paying what in taxes, Mr. DeFazio?

Mr. SANDERS

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