Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to say a few words about family values. ``Family values'' is an expression that has been used for many years by my Republican colleagues. Generally speaking, what they mean by ``family values'' is opposition to a woman's right to choose, opposition to contraception, opposition to gay rights. I happen to strongly disagree with many of my Republican colleagues on those issues. Let me take the opportunity to briefly give a somewhat different perspective on family values--on real family values, on the values that really matter to millions of families in this country. When a mother gives birth to a baby and is unable to spend time with that newborn child during the first weeks and months of that baby's life because she does not have the money to stay home and is forced to go back to work, which is the case for millions of mothers in this country, that is not a family value. Separating a mother from a newborn baby for economic reasons is not a family value. In fact, that is an attack on everything that a family is supposed to stand for. When a wife is diagnosed with cancer and her husband cannot get time off of work to take care of her because he does not have any family or medical leave time or sick leave time, that is not a family value. That is an attack on everything that a family is supposed to stand for. When a husband, wife, and kids, during the course of an entire year, are unable to spend any time on a vacation, when they cannot get together in leisure activity, when they cannot relax and spend quality time with each other, that is not a family value. Let us be very clear in understanding that, in fact, in terms of protecting the needs of our families, in terms of real family values, in many, many respects the United States of America lags behind virtually every other major country on earth. When you look at other major countries, what you find is that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers some form of paid family leave, some form of paid sick time, some form of paid vacation time. In other words, when it comes to basic workplace protections and family benefits, workers in every other major industrialized country in the world get a better deal than our workers here in the United States. That is wrong. That is a travesty, and that has got to change. Last place is no place for America. It is time for us to join the rest of the industrialized world by showing the people of this country that we are not just a nation that talks about family values but that we are a nation that is prepared to live up to these ideals by making sure that workers in this country have access to paid family leave, paid sick time, and paid vacations, just like workers in virtually every other major country on earth. Simply stated, it is unacceptable that millions of women in this country give birth and are forced back to work because they do not have the income to stay home with their newborn babies. When we talk about family values, what is more important than for mothers and fathers to bond with their babies at a time when almost every psychologist will tell you those are the most important weeks and months of a human being's life? What kind of family value is it when you tell a woman who has just had a baby that she cannot spend time with her child because she has to go back to work? This is not a family value. That is an insult to every mother, every father, and every newborn child in this country, and we have to change that. The reality is that the Family and Medical Leave Act that was signed into law in 1993 is totally inadequate. Today, nearly 8 out of 10 workers in this country who are eligible to take time off under this law cannot do so because they cannot afford to do so, according to the Department of Labor. Even worse, 40 percent of American workers are not even eligible to receive this unpaid leave because they work for a company with fewer than 50 employees. In my view, every worker in this country should be guaranteed at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, and that is why I am a proud cosponsor of the FAMILY Act, introduced by Kirsten Gillibrand. The FAMILY Act would guarantee employees 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to take care of a baby, to help a family member who is diagnosed with cancer or has some other serious medical condition or to take care of themselves if they become seriously ill. Just like Social Security retirement and disability, it is an insurance program that workers would pay into at a price of about one cup of coffee a week. That is not all. We have to make certain that in this country workers have paid sick time. It is absurd that low-wage workers in McDonald's and Burger King and low-wage employees all over this country who get sick are forced to work because they cannot afford to take time off. Not only is this unfair to the workers, it is also a public health issue. I do not know about you, but I am not crazy about the idea of somebody who is sick coming to work and preparing the food that I eat in a restaurant. That is why I am supporting the Healthy Families Act, introduced by Senator Patty Murray, which guarantees 7 days of paid sick leave to American workers. This bill would benefit 43 million Americans who today do not have access to paid sick leave, and it would create a permanent floor in workplaces where employers already provide some paid sick leave. Last but not least, when we talk about the disappearing American middle class, we are talking about millions of American workers working longer hours for lower wages. We are talking about Americans who are overworked, underpaid and, in many cases, living under enormous stress. In my State of Vermont, I see it every week I am home. You talk to people who work not one job but who are working two jobs or sometimes three jobs in order to cobble together some income and some health care. Here is an amazing irony. Many of us can remember in school reading about workers protesting, taking to the streets 100 years ago, and they held up large banners. Do you know what those banners said 100 years ago? They said: We want a 40-hour workweek. A 40-hour workweek was the demand 100 years ago. Today, we still have not achieved that goal. In fact, today 85 percent of men who are working and 66 percent of working women are working more than 40 hours a week. In fact, in America today--not widely known but true--our people are working the longest hours of any major country on Earth, because as real wages go down, people have to work 50 hours or they have to work 60 hours. Husbands are working here, and wives are working there--all to cobble together some income in order to provide for the family. Today Americans are working 137 hours a year more than workers in Japan--and the Japanese are very hard workers. We are working 260 hours more than the British and almost 500 hours a year more than French workers. That is why I am introducing legislation today to require employers to provide at least 10 days of paid vacation to workers in this country. This is already done in almost every other major country on Earth. It is one more way to demonstrate our commitment to real family values. What we are saying is that if families are overworked and if husbands and wives do not even have the time to spend together with their kids, what family values are about is that at least for 2 weeks a year, people can come together under a relaxed environment and enjoy the family. That is a family value that I want to see happen in this country. The time is long overdue for us to start talking about real family values, not about abortion, not about gay rights but the values the American people want to see inscribed in law to protect their families. Let us make sure every American worker is entitled to paid family and medical leave, paid sick time, and guaranteed at least some vacation time. Those are real family values. Let's go forward and make that happen.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, it sometimes happens that issues of enormous consequence seem to be ignored and do not get anywhere near the discussion it requires. One such issue which needs to be put on the table that needs to be dealt with and needs to be resolved is the crisis of youth unemployment in America, in general, and specifically among Black and Hispanic youth. Let me provide you with some new information that I recently received from the Economic Policy Institute, one of the important nonpartisan economic think tanks in our country. What this information tells us is that the level of youth unemployment in this country has reached tragic dimensions, and it is especially tragic for the African-American and Hispanic communities. The Economic Policy Institute recently analyzed census data on unemployment among young people--those people who are either jobless, those people who have given up looking for work or those people who are working part time when they want to work full time; in other words, what real unemployment is about. This is what they found. They found that during April of 2014 to March of 2015, the average real unemployment rate for Black high school graduates, ages 17 to 20, was 51.3 percent. Let me repeat. Over the last year, from April 2014 to March of 2015, the average real unemployment rate for Black high school graduates was 51.3 percent. The jobless figure for Hispanics in the same age group was 36.1 percent, and for young White high school graduates the number was 33.8 percent. This is an issue which cannot be ignored. An entire generation of young people who are trying to get their lives together, trying to earn some money, and trying to become independent are unable to find work. This is an issue which must be dealt with. Even young Americans with a college degree are finding it increasingly difficult to get a job. The real unemployment rate for young Black college graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 was 23 percent, the figure for Hispanics was 22.4 percent, and the figure for Whites was 12.9 percent. Today in America, over 5\1/2\ million young people have either dropped out of high school or have graduated high school and do not have jobs. It is no great secret that without work, without education, and without hope, people get into trouble, and the result is--and this is not unrelated--that tragically in America today we have more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China, an authoritarian, Communist country with a population four times our size. How does that happen? How is it that this great Nation has more people in jail than any other country and far more than a Communist, authoritarian society in China, a country that is four times our size? Today, the United States is 5 percent of the world's population; yet, we have 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Incredibly, over 3 percent of our country's population is under some form of correctional control. According to the NAACP, from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled from roughly half a million to 2.3 million people. If current trends continue, the estimate is that one in three Black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. This is an unspeakable tragedy. This is an issue which has to be put on the table and has to be discussed. And this crisis is not just a destruction of human life, it is also a very costly issue to the taxpayers of our country. In America, we now spend nearly $200 billion a year on public safety, including $70 billion on correctional facilities each and every year. It is beyond comprehension that we as a nation have not focused attention on the fact that millions of our young people are unable to find work or begin their careers in a productive economy. This is an issue which we must deal with--and I know I speak for the Senator from Michigan--and we will make sure this country pays attention to and deals with this issue. Let me just say that it makes a lot more sense to invest in jobs and education for our young people than to spend incredible amounts of money on jails and incarceration. Let's give these kids a shot at life. Let's give them a chance. Let's not lock them up. The time is long overdue for us to start investing in our young people, to help them get the jobs they need, the education they need, and the job training they need so they can be part of the American middle class. The answer to unemployment and poverty is not and cannot be the mass incarceration of young Americans of all races. It is time to bring hope and economic opportunity to communities throughout this country. Last week, I introduced legislation with Congressman John Conyers and Senator Debbie Stabenow to provide $5\1/2\ billion to immediately begin funding States and localities throughout this country to employ 1 million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 and provide job training to hundreds of thousands of young Americans. Some people may say: Well, this is an expensive proposition. I guarantee that this investment will save money because it costs a heck of a lot more money to put people in jail than to provide them with jobs and education. We will save lives and create taxpayers and a middle class rather than having more and more people in jail. I just wanted to mention that this is an issue which has to be discussed. I look forward to working with the cosponsor of this legislation, Senator Stabenow, and we will bring attention to this issue. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, at some point soon, I presume, the Senate is going to adjourn for the Memorial Day week break, and I want to say a few words on some of the important issues we are now confronting. I suspect later today there will be a vote on the TPP. I suspect that those who are for the TPP have the 60 votes necessary to pass it. I know there are a number of amendments that will be offered, and I will support the strongest of those amendments. But the bottom line is, in my view, that the TPP is a continuation of failed trade policy which has resulted in the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs in this country, which has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities as corporations have shut down in America and moved to China, Mexico, and to other low-wage countries. In my view, it is wrong to ask American workers to compete against people in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is 56 cents an hour, to compete against people in Malaysia where, in some cases, you literally have indentured servitude, people who have lost their ability to leave the country and are working for incredibly low wages in horrendous working conditions. That is not what a trade policy should be. I hope our colleagues in the House have more resolve than we have had in the Senate, and I hope they stand up and say enough is enough. Current trade policies have failed. We need trade policies that work for the average American and not just for the multinational corporations. Free College For All Act Mr. President, I also want to say a word on another issue that I know is of deep concern in the State of Vermont and I am quite confident is of concern in 49 other States as well. We are in a competitive global economy right now, and we have hundreds of thousands of bright, young people who want to go to college, get a higher education but today are unable to afford that higher education. Here we are desperately needing to have the best educated workforce in the world so we can compete effectively, and what we are saying to our bright, young people is, sorry, you are not going to be able to get the education you need in order to get the high-quality jobs that are available in this country. What we are saying to hundreds of thousands of those young people is, no, you are not going to be doctors, you are not going to be nurses, you are not going to be scientists, you are not going to become teachers, you are not going to be able to become employees in high-tech companies because you just don't have the education. Frankly, I think that is absolutely absurd not only for the dreams of low- and moderate-income young people who want to make it into the middle class, but also it is absurd if we are talking about the future of this country having a strong economy. Thirty years ago, the United States led the world in terms of the percentage of our young people who had a college degree. Today, we are in 12th place. We are in 12th place, and we are competing against countries all over the world that understand the importance of their young people getting the education that is needed in this day and age. We are also facing a related problem in that we have millions of people--many of whom are no longer young--who are dealing with incredibly oppressive and large student debt. The average graduate now of a 4-year college is approximately $29,000 in debt. That is the average. So there are many more who are graduating $30,000 or $40,000 in debt. If a person goes to graduate school, that number goes much higher. I recall speaking some months ago to a young woman in Burlington, VT, whose crime was that she went to medical school and is now practicing primary health care among low-income people, which is exactly what we need to see happening in this country. Yet she is saddled with a $300,000 debt. I talked to dentists who are also practicing in community health centers, where we need them. We have a major dental crisis in this country. They are saddled with a $250,000 debt. Now, what is absurd about the current student debt situation is that at a time when a person can go out and get an auto loan for 1 percent or 2 percent, millions of our young and middle-aged people are paying interest rates on their student debt of 4, 5, 6, 7 percent, and even higher than that. So how does it happen that a person can go out and get an auto loan for 1 or 2 percent, how does it happen that a person can refinance their home mortgage to take advantage of low interest rates, yet people are stuck with 5, 6, 7 percent in interest rates on their student loans? It makes no sense to me at all. The other part of that is that over a 10-year period, the Federal Government now makes over $80 billion in profits from student loans. Frankly, I would rather see the Federal Government make that money than the private banks. But, in fact, the Federal Government should not be profiting off of the loans that were needed by low- and moderate-income students and their families. That is not a way to make money. So I have introduced legislation called the Free College For All Act, and it is a very simple piece of legislation. What it says is that, No. 1, we are going to make in this country tuition-free college for all public colleges and public universities in America--tuition-free. We are going to do that by establishing a matching grant program of 2 to 1 from the Federal Government--$1 for the State. When we do that, it will mean that every qualified young person in this country who wants to get a higher education will be able to go to their State colleges, their State University and do it tuition-free. Now, is that an expensive proposition? It is an expensive proposition. But I think long term, by having a well-educated society, by allowing young people today who cannot afford to go to college to get that education, from an economic point of view, we will gain significantly by this legislation. This legislation is also paid for in a fair and progressive way. It says to the people on Wall Street who have made huge, huge sums of money by speculating in a whole lot of arcane and dangerous financial tools that we are going to establish in this country a tax on stock transfer--a transfer-stock fee--of one-half of 1 percent. That will raise more than enough money to provide a tuition-free education in our public colleges and universities. So this is an issue that I am going to pursue. I think it is important, if we want to deal with income inequality and if we want to make sure that everybody in this country gets the education they need, regardless of the income of their families. USA PATRIOT Act Mr. President, there is another issue I wish to very briefly touch on as well today. That issue deals with the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA and civil liberties in this country. Let me make a few basic points. There is nobody in the Senate, there is nobody in the House who does not understand that there are terrorist groups out there that want to attack the United States of America and our allies and that want to do us harm. There is nobody in the Senate or in the House or, I think, in the United States of America who does not believe that as a nation we have to do everything we can to protect the people of our country from terrorist attacks. There is no debate on that. What the debate is about is how we protect the American people without undermining the Constitution of the United States of America or undermining the privacy rights of the American people. I think everybody does understand and should understand that modern technology in all of its forms--from iPhones to a dozen or 100 different ways--has greatly outstripped public policy in terms of protecting privacy rights. By and large, the privacy rights we have on the books now were written years and years before the development of the technologies we see right now. It is absolutely imperative that as a nation we begin a serious conversation, which includes some of the most knowledgeable people in this country--people who know about what technology can do today and what it can do tomorrow, people who are concerned about civil liberties and privacy rights, our law enforcement officials, our national security people, and Members of Congress. What that discussion should be about is pretty simple: How do we protect our country against terrorism at the same time that we protect our privacy rights and our constitutional freedoms. As we consider whether to reauthorize parts of the PATRIOT Act, we must take stock of where we are today. It is no secret that NSA collects vast sums of information and at one point or another has collected information on virtually every person in this country who uses a telephone. That is no great secret. Since June 2013, we have learned that the NSA collects phone call metadata, including the numbers of both parties, location, time, and duration. They collect text messages, email chat, and Internet browsing history; smart phone app data, including Google Maps, which can pinpoint a person's location to within a few yards. They collect maps of people's social networks, bank and credit card transactions. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is undoubtedly much more being done that we simply don't know anything about. Further, local governments and other agencies are also collecting information about the movements and the habits of law-abiding Americans. When we drive down the street, there are cameras that can take pictures of license plates. There are cameras on street corners, cameras in private buildings. The government knows where we are traveling and how long we are gone. Let's be clear. While today we are focusing appropriately on the role of the Federal Government in issues of civil liberties, we must also understand that it is not just the government that is collecting information on law- abiding Americans. In fact, the private sector's collection of information is just as intrusive and equally dangerous. Private companies, private corporations know a whole lot about what we do. Our every move can be tracked by a smart phone. Almost two-thirds of the American people, by the way, have smart phones. Private companies can know what we read, what we are emailing about, what Web sites we visit. They know when we have purchased a ticket, and they know where that trip is taking us. They know whether we are going on a plane or a train or a bus. When we go to a grocery store, our discount card gets scanned and the grocery store knows exactly what we are eating. It is the same situation at the pharmacy. They know what kind of medicine we are buying, enabling people to make judgments about one's health. They know when a woman is pregnant based on her purchases. In the name of fitness, people are wearing watches and Fitbits that record our heart rate and exercise pattern and how much we sleep. In the wrong hands, this information could prevent us from getting health insurance through our jobs. It could even prevent us from getting hired in the first place. In other words, enormous, enormous, undreamed of amounts of information are out there and, in the wrong hands, that could be a real danger to our country and to the lives of millions of innocent people. This is what the attack on privacy looks like. Someone can access our phone calls. They can access our credit card records. They can comb through our purchases. They can analyze our spending habits. They can access our emails and our contacts. They can track our movements. Pretty much anything and everything we do these days can be tracked and recorded. Now, many of my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and talk about America being a free country. Well, if somebody knows everything we are doing, maybe it is time to recognize that we are not quite as free as we think we are. I know that in response to the argument I am raising, people will say: Well, trust these large corporations; trust the government. They are honest people. By and large, many of them are. I am not suggesting otherwise. In terms of government policy, however, let us not forget that 45 years ago we had a President of the United States named Richard Nixon. And what Richard Nixon believed was that anything the President of the United States did, by definition, was legal. The President can break into his or her opponent's political headquarters--not a problem. He is the President. He can spy on people--not a problem. He is the President. So I ask my colleagues and the American people--and I do not suggest for one second that this is true of the Obama administration. But I ask the American people to think about what happens in the future if we have a President who really does believe that he or she is the law, that he or she can or should have access to the kinds of information that are out there. Think about the incredible power the administration has, the potential for blackmail, the political advantages that administration has. People say: Well, it is a pretty crazy idea. It is never going to happen. Well, a lot of things have happened that we never thought could happen. It seems to me that now is the time for us as a nation, for us as elected officials to have a very important conversation about how we balance our need--of which there is no debate--to protect the American people against terrorist attacks while at the same time we respect the privacy rights and the constitutional rights of our people and how we maintain America as a free and open society. I got involved in this issue a number of years ago when I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act. I remember some librarians in the State of Vermont came to me and they said: You know, as a result of section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, law enforcement officials--the FBI can come to a librarian and demand that the librarian provide information about the books people are borrowing from the library. Of course, section 215 goes a lot further than that. Do we want to be a nation in which we are looking over our shoulders and worrying about the books we are reading because somebody may say: Oh, well, you are reading a book about Osama bin Laden; clearly, you must be a terrorist. Is that really the kind of fear we want to see established in this country? So I say to my colleagues, it is great to come to the floor and talk about freedom, but what freedom is about ultimately is the right of people to do what they want to do in a law-abiding way without harming other people. That is called freedom. In my view, people have a right to make a telephone call today without that information being collected by the government. People have a right to go on the Internet and send an email with the absolute assurance that as law-abiding citizens their visits to a Web site or the emails they send will not be tracked by the government. People have a right to go to a grocery store and make purchases without somebody knowing what they are buying. I intend to introduce legislation shortly which will call for a comprehensive review of data collection by public and private entities and the impact that data is having on the American people. I don't know if this is a progressive piece of legislation or a conservative piece of legislation, but I would hope this concept would have broad support across the political spectrum from people who actually do believe in a free society, that our young people should not be worried about the kinds of books they read or the Web sites they visit. We must bring together leaders in the technology world, people who not only know what technology today is doing as far as invading our privacy rights but what the future holds, because I am quite certain that every single day, this technology is growing more and more sophisticated and more and more intrusive, and sitting down with people who are experts on technology--we have to have civil libertarians, people who understand what the First Amendment is, what the Fourth Amendment is, what our Bill of Rights is about, what our Constitution is about, and, of course, involved in that discussion must be law enforcement and our security experts. The goal of all of this must be to create legislation which does everything we can to protect the safety of the American people but also protects our privacy rights and our constitutional rights. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on that legislation. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me respectfully disagree with my friend from Utah. Let me urge all Members to vote against what I believe to be a disastrous trade agreement, a trade agreement based on other trade agreements, which, in fact, have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs and have led to a race to the bottom. Let me just briefly give four reasons--and there are many more. But let me just focus on four objective reasons why we should defeat this fast-track legislation and why we need to develop a whole new approach to trade that benefits American workers rather than just the CEOs of large multinational corporations. Reason No. 1, this unfettered free-trade agreement with Vietnam, Malaysia, and 10 other countries follows in the footsteps of disastrous trade agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, and the South Korea Free Trade Agreement. Any objective look at these trade agreements will tell us that they have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs and have led us to a race to the bottom, where American workers are forced to compete against workers in low-wage countries who are making pennies an hour. Over and over again, supporters of these types of trade agreements have told us about how many jobs they would create, how beneficial it would be for the middle class and working class of this country. But over and over again, virtually everything they told us turned out to be wrong, and they are wrong again in terms of the TPP. In 1993, President Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would create 1 million American jobs in 5 years. Instead, NAFTA has led to the loss of almost 700,000 jobs. In 1999, we were promised that Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China would open the Chinese economy to American- made goods and services. Instead, as everybody who goes shopping knows--when you buy product after product made in China--that trade agreement has cost us some 2.7 million American jobs. I remember hearing all the accolades about free trade with China. They all turned out to be wrong. In 2011, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told us that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would create some 280,000 jobs. Well, wrong again--instead, that agreement has led to the loss of some 75,000 jobs. The reason for all of this is very simple. Why would an American corporation invest in this country, pay American workers 15, 18, 20 bucks an hour, provide health care, have to obey environmental regulations, and deal with trade unions, when they can go abroad, pay people pennies an hour, and not have to worry about the environment. That is, of course, what has happened. These trade agreements have failed. TPP is based on these principles. It will be another failure. We should reject it for that reason. Second point, in politics it is always interesting and important to know whose side different groups are on. You can learn a lot by who is supporting an agreement and by who is opposing the agreement. Well, let's talk about who is supporting the TPP. It turns out that virtually every major multinational corporation, including many that have shut down plants in the United States and moved abroad--all of these multinationals think the TPP is a great idea. I am sure I can understand why it will be a great program for them. It will only accelerate their ability to shut down plants in America and move to low-wage countries abroad. There is another group that is actively pushing for us to vote for the TPP. That is the pharmaceutical industry. As I think every American knows, the drug companies in this country charge our people here the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, but they love this legislation. They just love it because they think as a result of this legislation, they will be able to charge people all over the world, including in very poor countries, higher prices for their products. Wall Street--surprise of all surprises--Wall Street loves this agreement. As we all remember, not so many years ago, the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of Wall Street caused the most significant economic recession since the Great Depression. But Wall Street loves this legislation because it will make it easier for them to sell esoteric, complicated financial products all over the world. So those are some of the groups that think this legislation is wonderful, that we should vote for it. Which are the groups and the organizations that oppose this legislation? Well, it turns out that every trade union in this country, unions representing over 20 million American workers, unions that are fighting every single day to get workers higher wages, better pay, better health care, are in strong opposition to this legislation. This is what the trade union movement has to say about TPP: Fast Track trade deals mean fewer jobs, lower wages, and a declining middle class. Fast Track has been used since the Nixon Administration to advance deals, like NAFTA, that are sold to the American people as job creation measures. But these deals, written largely by and for the world's largest corporations, don't create jobs; their main purpose isn't even related to trade, it's to enshrine rules that make it easier for firms to invest offshore and increase corporate influence over the global economy. That is what the trade union movement in this country believes about this agreement. But it is not only the trade union movement that has opposed the TPP. Virtually every major environmental and scientific group in this country, groups such as the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and 350.org oppose this legislation. This is what the environmental organizations have written about this bill: As leading U.S. environmental and science organizations, we write to express our strong opposition to ``fast track'' trade promotion authority and to urge you to oppose any legislation that would limit the ability of Congress to ensure that trade pacts deliver benefits for communities, workers, public health, and the environment. So we have trade union organizations representing some 20 million American workers that say we should not go forward with this agreement. We have organizations representing millions of people in the environmental community that say we should not go forward with this legislation. Then we have religious groups, such as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church, and the Sisters of Mercy, that also are opposing this legislation. This is what they have written: As people of faith, we call on all nations and government to uphold the dignity of all people. Yet modern trade agreements have harmed people, especially the most vulnerable in the United States and globally. . . . Trade, like the rest of the economy, must be a means of lifting people out of poverty and ensure a country's ability to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of their citizens and the planet. In recognition of your sacred task of stewardship over people and policies, we ask you to oppose fast track trade promotion authority for any trade agreement currently being negotiated. So, on the one hand, you have all of the big-money organizations. You have every major multinational corporation in America. You have Wall Street, and you have the pharmaceutical industry. They say: Vote for this legislation. On the other side, you have unions representing millions of Americans. You have environmental organizations representing millions more Americans, and you have religious organizations who say: Wait a second. This fast-track trade agreement may not be a good idea. Vote no. So on the one hand, you have groups whose motivation is greed and profit, and on the other hand, you have organizations trying to protect working people, trying to protect the environment, trying to uphold basic religious values about human dignity saying no. Well, which side should we be on? I say we stand with those who are concerned about workers' rights, the environment, and moral values. Let me give you another reason why we should oppose this trade agreement--and this is a provision that has gotten far too little attention--and that is the investor-state dispute settlement. That sounds like a highly technical term. What in God's Name does that mean? But let me try to explain what it does mean. What it does mean in English is that it would allow large multinational corporations to sue national, State, and local governments--not only in the United States but all over the world--if those governments pass legislation that hurts their expected future profits. This, to me, is exactly about what this whole agreement stands for. It is not for raising wages or creating jobs. It is to protect corporate profits. And, unbelievably, what this legislation is prepared to do is to undermine basic democracy in terms of what local communities around the world, States in the United States, and national governments do--whether it is the United States or any other government--if that undermines future profits of large multinational corporations. That is really extraordinary. I thought that our job, as Members of the Senate, and the job of people in Australia who represent their government and people democratically elected all over the world--I had the idea that maybe their function was to represent, as best they could, the needs of the people who voted for them. I guess that is a radical and crazy idea. What this bill says is that if legislation is passed by people who are democratically elected, those decisions--that legislation--can be brought to an independent tribunal, and those countries could have to pay huge fines if the legislation, which might protect health care or might protect the environment, undermines future profits of multinational corporations. What an attack--not only on health and the environment--but it is an attack on the fundamental tenets of democracy. Our job is not to worry about future corporate profits. Our job is to worry about the needs of the American people. That is what elected governments all over the world are supposed to do. Let me give you some examples--because we have not talked about this--of what is already going on around the world based on similar language to what will be in the TPP if we vote for it--similar language. This is maybe the most outrageous example that I can give you, but there are many others. Philip Morris, one of the large tobacco companies in the world, is suing both Australia and Uruguay over labeling requirements for cigarettes. Uruguay is this little country, and what they have done is they have been very aggressive in trying to protect their children and their people from the very harmful impacts of smoking. Now, you know what. I happen to think that is a good thing. I think in America and all over the world we should do everything that we can to make sure that our kids are not hooked on nicotine and do not have to suffer heart disease, cancer, emphysema, and all of the other diseases related to smoking. I think our government should be very vigorous. We have done some things in our country. I think we should do more. Uruguay, a little tiny country whose President turns out to be an oncologist, a guy who is worried about cancer, was trying to do everything it could to try to keep the kids in Uruguay from getting hooked on cigarettes. And what happened to Uruguay? Well, they were taken to this independent tribunal, composing, as I understand it, of three corporate lawyers, because Philip Morris said: Hey, Uruguay, you are impacting our future profits. We want to get kids hooked onto nicotine. We want to sell our products to kids and to the people of Uruguay. By fighting us, passing legislation, and doing things that will make it harder for kids to smoke, you are ruining our profits. This case is now resting in an independent tribunal. How insane is that--that a country trying to protect its kids from getting cancer is being sued by Philip Morris because it might cost them profits? So this is not only a health issue--in this case of cancer prevention--but this is an issue of basic democracy. Do the people of Uruguay, do the people of Australia, do the people of any country have a right to be very vigorous in protecting the health of their kids and their citizens without worrying about being sued by a cigarette manufacturer that is trying to poison these kids with deadly products. So this is not only a health issue, it is a basic democratic issue, and if Philip Morris wins this case, it will be sending a message to every government in the world that they can't be aggressive in doing things to protect their kids from cigarettes. That is one example. Let me give another equally outrageous example. Under this investor-state provision, a French waste management firm-- Veolia--is suing for $110 million under the France-Egypt bilateral investment treaty over changes to Egypt's labor laws, including an increase in the minimum wage. Now, let me be honest. I know nothing about Egypt's minimum wage, but I do think Egypt and every other country on Earth has a right to raise its minimum wage, if they think it makes sense, without worrying about being sued by some company that will have to pay higher wages. How crazy is that? So, again, not being terribly knowledgeable about domestic policies in Egypt, the idea that they are being sued for the crime of raising their minimum wage is, to me, beyond comprehension. Again, this is just an example of what is happening now and what will only happen in an accelerated manner if we pass this agreement, but let me give one last example. A Swedish energy company called Vattenfall launched a $5 billion lawsuit over Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power. This initiative was implemented in response to the Fukushima disaster. Germany, last I knew, was an independent country, with an elected government, and they made a decision to phase out nuclear energy. Some people think it is a good idea, some think it is a bad idea, but last I heard that should be a decision of the German Government and the people who elected that government. The elected officials of Germany are not dummies. I presume they do what their people want them to do or they pay the political consequence. But that was the decision of the elected officials of Germany. They said: Let's phase out nuclear power. Yet now they are being sued by a Swedish energy company, Vattenfall, for some $5 billion because they made that decision. Now, that is just what is going on right now. Think about what that means into the future. It means any government around the world or in this trade agreement, it means any State in the United States--if my State of Vermont, which is sensitive to the environment, decides to go forward on an environmental piece of legislation, some large corporation can go to an independent tribunal and say: Look, we are going to sue Vermont for $1 billion because we wanted to do business there and their environmental regulations are impacting our ability to make a profit. That undermines what the State of Vermont or the State of Georgia or any other State chooses to do. To me, it is just beyond comprehension that anybody would vote for that type of legislation. We can disagree with what they do in Egypt or disagree with what they do in Uruguay, we can disagree with what we do here, but to say an independent tribunal can provide billions of dollars in damages to a corporation because of a democratically made decision in the United States or any other country around the world is, to me, just incomprehensible. The last point I would want to make deals with a health issue. Clearly, one of the health crises we face not only in America but around the world is the high cost of prescription drugs. In our country, if my memory is correct, some 25 percent of Americans who receive prescriptions from doctors are unable to afford to fill those prescriptions--someone goes to the doctor who diagnoses that individual and writes out a script, and the person says thank you very much but doesn't have the money to fill that script. It is bad in this country, but obviously it is much worse in very, very poor countries around the world. What this agreement will do, among other things, if it is passed, is allow pharmaceutical companies to fight back against their brand-name products being converted into generics at much lower prices, so poor countries all over the world would have to struggle to come up with very high prices for medicine for people who don't have a whole lot of money. In fact, that is why Doctors Without Borders has said--and Doctors Without Borders, as you may know, is a heroic group of doctors who, whenever there is a health care crisis around the world--whether it is Ebola in Africa or whatever--travel to those places and put their lives on the line. Some have died to provide medical treatment in the most difficult of circumstances to the poorest people around the world. They are really a heroic group of people. But Doctors Without Borders has said: ``The TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.'' So to my mind, the vote we are going to have in a short time is really a no-brainer. Are we dumb enough to continue down the road of failed trade policies? I would hope not. Do we think it is a good idea to be siding with corporate America, which has already used previous trade agreements to outsource millions of our jobs and thinks this agreement is just wonderful? Are we going to stand with Wall Street, whose greed has no limits? Are we going to stand with the pharmaceutical industry, which wants to sell drugs to people all over the world at a higher price or do we stand with unions, environmental groups, religious groups? Do we get involved in a trade agreement which allows corporations to undermine the democratic rights of countries that stand up for their environment, stand up for the health and well- being of their kids? Do we make it harder for poor people around the world to get the medicines they need? This is a no-brainer. I would hope Members of the Senate send a resounding note to the corporate world that says you can't have it all; that we are going to pass trade agreements which protect working families, which protect the middle class, and which protect struggling people all over the world and we are going to vote no on fast-track and no on the TPP. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I was necessarily absent during the Senate's consideration of S. Con. Res. 16, which states that Iran should immediately release Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, and Jason Rezaian, and cooperate with the U.S. Government to locate and return Robert Levinson. The resolution also states that the U.S. Government should use every diplomatic tool at its disposal to secure their immediate release. Had I been present, I would have voted in support of S. Con. Res. 16.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, at 2:30 this afternoon, the Senate will vote on a motion to proceed to the fast-track bill which was recently approved by the Finance Committee. I will be strongly opposing that legislation. In a nutshell, here is the reality of the American economy today: While we are certainly better off than we were 6\1/2\ years ago, the truth is that for the last 40 years the American middle class has been disappearing. The truth is that today we have some 45 million Americans living in poverty, and that is almost at the highest rate in the modern history of America. While the middle class continues to shrink, we are seeing more income and wealth inequality than at any time in our country since 1929, and it is worse in America than any other major country on Earth. Today, 99 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. In the last 2 years, the 14 wealthiest people in this country have seen an increase in their wealth of $157 billion, and that $157 billion is more wealth than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans. How is that happening? Why is it happening? We have seen a huge increase in technology, productivity is way up, and the reality is that most working people should be seeing an increase in their income. Yet, median family income has gone down by almost $5,000 since 1999. How does that happen? Why is it that the richest country in the history of the world has almost all of its new wealth in the hands of the few, while the vast majority of the American people are working longer hours for lower wages? How does that happen? Well, there are a lot of factors, but I will tell everyone that our disastrous trade agreements, such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China, are certainly one of the major reasons why the middle class is in decline and why more and more income and wealth goes to a handful of people on the top. The sad truth is that many of the new jobs created in this country today are part-time and low-paying jobs. Thirty or forty years ago, people who maybe had a high school degree could go out and get a job in a factory. They never got rich and it wasn't a glamorous job, but they had enough wages and benefits to make it into the middle class. Since 2001, we have lost almost 60,000 factories in America. When young people graduate from high school today, they don't have the opportunity to work in a factory and have a union job and make middle- class wages; their options are Walmart and McDonald's, where there are low wages and minimal benefits. Those are companies which are vehemently anti-union. The sad truth is that we are in a race to the bottom. Not only have our trade agreements cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, they have depressed wages in this country because companies--virtually every major multinational corporation in this country has outsourced jobs and shed millions of American jobs. What they say to workers is: If you don't like the cuts in health care and wages, we will go to China. We can hire people there for $1 an hour. Sadly, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement follows in the footsteps of the other disastrous free-trade agreements that have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage workers around the world. Over and over again--and I have heard this so many times, including on the floor this morning--supporters of fast-track have told us that unfettered free trade will increase American jobs and wages and will be just wonderful for the American economy. Sadly, however, these folks have been proven wrong and wrong and wrong time after time after time. I hear the same language, and what they say proves not to be true every time. I will mention some quotes from the supporters of NAFTA. These are people who were telling us how great the NAFTA free-trade agreement would be. President Bill Clinton was pushing NAFTA in the same way that President Obama is pushing TPP today. On September 19, 1993, President Clinton said: I believe NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect. . . . I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact. It wasn't just liberals, such as Bill Clinton, who supported NAFTA. I have a quote from the very conservative Heritage Foundation in 1993: ``Virtually all economists agree that NAFTA will produce a net increase of U.S. jobs over the next decade.'' In 1993, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, our majority leader Mitch McConnell, said: ``American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages.'' Were President Clinton, the Heritage Foundation, and Mitch McConnell correct? Well, of course they were not. In fact, what happened was exactly the opposite of what they said. According to the well-respected economists at the Economic Policy Institute, NAFTA has led to the loss of more than 680,000 jobs. In 1993, the year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of more than $1.6 billion. Last year, the trade deficit with Mexico was $53 billion. So all of the verbiage we heard about NAFTA being so good for American workers turned out to be dead wrong. What about China? We were told: Oh my God, China will open up the Chinese market, and there are billions of people. What an opportunity to create good-paying jobs in America. Here is what President Clinton, one of the proponents of permanent normal trade relations with China, had to say in 1999: In opening the economy of China, the agreement will create unprecedented opportunities for American farmers, workers and companies to compete successfully in China's market . . . This is a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences. In 1999, conservative economists at the Cato Institute said: The silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry. In fact, American workers are far more productive than their Chinese counterparts . . . PNTR would create far more export opportunities for America than the Chinese. Wow, were they wrong. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that PNTR with China has led to the net loss of over 2.7 million Americans jobs. Go to any department store in America and walk in the door. Where are the products made? China, China, China. They are made in Vietnam and in other low-wage countries. In fact, it is harder and harder to buy a product not made in China. So all of those people who told us what a great deal PNTR with China would be turned out to be dead wrong. In fact, our trade agreement with China has cost us almost 3 million jobs. In 2001, the trade deficit with China was $83 billion. Today, it is $342 billion. In 2011, on another trade agreement, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--a big proponent of unfettered free trade--strongly supported TPP. The Chamber of Commerce told us we had to pass a free-trade agreement with South Korea because it would create some 280,000 jobs in America. That is a lot of jobs. It turns out they were wrong again. In reality, the Economic Policy Institute recently found that the Korea Free Trade Agreement has led to the loss of some 75,000 jobs. Now, the Obama administration says, trust us. Forget what they said about NAFTA. Forget what they said about Korea. Forget what they said about China. This one is different. Really, really, cross our fingers, hope to die, this one is really, really different. Yes, it may be true that every corporation in America--corporations that have shut down factories in this country and moved to China--they are supporting this agreement. Yes, it is true Wall Street, whose greed and recklessness have almost destroyed the American economy, is supporting this agreement. Yes, it is true the pharmaceutical industry, which charges us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, is supporting this agreement--but not to worry, we should trust these guys. They really are thinking of the American middle class and working families. Trust us when they tell us a trade agreement will be good for working people. Yes, we should really trust them. Meanwhile, every trade union in America and the vast majority of environmental groups in this country are saying be careful about TPP; vote no on fast-track. Here is the reality of the American economy. Since 2001, we have lost 60,000 factories in this country and we have lost over 4.7 million manufacturing jobs. In 1970, 25 percent of all the jobs in this country were in manufacturing. Today, that figure is down to 9 percent. The point is that, by and large, especially if there were unions, those manufacturing jobs paid working people a living wage, not a Walmart wage, not a McDonald's wage. Our demand must be to corporate America--which tells us every night on TV to buy this product, to buy this pair of sneakers, to buy this television, to buy whatever it is--that maybe, just maybe, they might want to start manufacturing those products here in the United States of America and pay our workers a decent wage, rather than looking all over the world for the lowest possible wages in which they can exploit workers who are desperate. I was very disappointed that President Obama chose the headquarters of Nike to tout the so-called benefits of the TPP. Nike epitomizes why disastrous, unfettered free-trade policies during the past four decades have failed American workers. Nike does not employ a single manufacturing worker who makes shoes in the United States of America-- not one worker. One hundred percent of the shoes sold by Nike are made overseas in low-wage countries. That is the transformation of the American economy, and it is not just Nike. When Nike was founded in 1964, just 4 percent of U.S. footwear was imported. In other words, we manufactured the vast majority of the shoes and the sneakers we wore. Today, nearly all of the shoes that are bought in the United States are manufactured overseas. Today, over 330,000 workers manufacture Nike's products in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is 56 cents an hour. I hear President Obama and other proponents of TPP talking about a level playing field. We have to compete on a level playing field. Does anybody think competing against desperate people who make 56 cents an hour is a level playing field, is fair to American workers? Of course, we want the poor people all over the world to see an increase in their standard of living, and we have to play an important role in that, but we don't have to destroy the American middle class to help low-income workers around the world. In Vietnam, not only is the minimum wage 56 cents an hour, independent labor unions are banned, and people are thrown in jail for expressing their political beliefs. Is that the level playing field President Obama and other proponents of unfettered free trade are talking about? Back in 1988, Phil Knight--Phil Knight is the founder and the owner of Nike--said Nike had ``become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.'' Phil Knight was right. In fact, factories in Vietnam where Nike shoes are manufactured have been cited by the Worker Rights Consortium for excessive overtime, wage theft, and physical mistreatment of workers. Today, Mr. Knight is one of the wealthiest people on this planet, worth more than $22 billion. While Mr. Knight's net worth has more than tripled since 1999, the average Vietnamese worker who makes Nike shoes earns pennies an hour. That is pretty much synonymous with what unfettered free trade is about. A handful of people such as Phil Knight become multi-multi- multibillionaires and poor people all over the world are exploited and paid pennies an hour. It is not just Nike and it is not just Vietnam. Another country that is part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is Malaysia. Today, there are nearly 200 electronics factories in Malaysia where high-tech products from Apple, Dell, Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments are manufactured and brought back to the United States. If the TPP is approved, that number will go up substantially. What is wrong with that? It turns out that many of the workers at the electronics plants in Malaysia are being forced to work there under horrible working conditions. According to Verite, which conducted a 2-year investigation into labor abuses in Malaysia--an investigation which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor--32 percent of the industry's nearly 200,000 migrant workers in Malaysia were employed in forced situations because their passports had been taken away or because they were straining to pay back illegally high recruitment fees. In other words, American workers are going to be forced to compete against people in Malaysia--immigrant workers there whose passports have been taken away and who can't leave the country and who are working under forced labor situations. So let me conclude by saying this: All of us understand trade is good. It is a good thing. But I think most of us now have caught on to the fact that the trade agreements pushed by corporate America, pushed by Wall Street, pushed by the pharmaceutical industry are very, very good if you are the CEO of a major corporation, but they are a disaster if you are an American worker. It is my view that we have to rebuild manufacturing in America. It is my view that we have to create millions of decent-paying jobs in America. It is my view that we need to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so our largest export does not become decent-paying American jobs. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the fast-track agreement. Let us sit down and work on trade agreements that work for the American middle class, that work for our working people and not just for the CEOs of the largest corporations in this country. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes after Senator Thune speaks.

Mr. SANDERS. Let me say this, if I might. If I can get unanimous consent to speak after Senator Thune, that would be fine, and I would yield back to the Senator. How is that?

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I would like to recognize the inspiring accomplishments of Steven Leach, a 20-year U.S. Army veteran and past department commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars from Pawlet, VT, who is known by his fellow veterans, friends, and acquaintances as ``The Monument Man.'' Steve has long been a strong leader within the veterans' community, especially as a member of Harned-Fowler VFW Post 6471 in Manchester Center, VT, and a passionate advocate for veterans and their family members. Most recently, Steve has dedicated himself to preserving the memory of the service and sacrifice of wartime veterans for future generations of Vermonters, as well as visitors to the Green Mountain State. In 2010, he spearheaded a major initiative to erect a monument commemorating the thousands of Vermont veterans who served in the Korean war, including the 94 Vermonters who were killed in action during ``the forgotten war'' and the 20 who remain missing to this day. For more than 3 years, Steve planned, designed, coordinated, and fundraised to make the monument a reality, and on August 5, 2013, he helped inaugurate the Vermont Korean War Monument in Manchester, VT. Inspired by the overwhelming support for that effort and not one to rest on his laurels, Steve set out to erect a similar monument in honor of World War II veterans, to be installed at the new Bennington Welcome Center on Route 279, also known as the Vermont World War II Veterans Memorial Highway. That project is almost complete and will be dedicated on August 15 as part of the events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of World War II. On that date, thanks in large part to Steve's efforts, Vermonters will gather to unveil a monument recognizing the sacrifices of those who contributed to the defeat of tyranny 70 years ago, including the more than 1,200 Vermonters who died as a result of combat. Between the two monument campaigns, Steve has logged hundreds of volunteer hours, travelled thousands of miles, raised tens of thousands of dollars, and, most importantly, touched the hearts of countless Vermonters in his quest to honor the service of our State's veterans. Steve Leach is another one of those extraordinary veterans we all have in our home States, who, although he took off his uniform, never really quit serving his country. This humble man will be rather embarrassed that I have chosen to place him in the spotlight for his selfless devotion to public service. His tireless efforts deserve special recognition in this body, and I am so proud to share his accomplishments with my colleagues.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Enzi for his civility and his humor. I have enjoyed the process by which we have gotten to where we are today. But I must say that anyone who takes an objective look at this Republican budget can do nothing else but conclude that this is an absolute disaster for the working families of this country. In fact, one of the problems I have had in describing the Republican budget is that it is so bad--it is so far out of touch with where the American people are--that people really don't even believe us when we talk about what is in this budget, which is what I am going to do in a moment. Before I do that, I think we can all agree that what a budget is about is a development of priorities to address problems. We look at what is going on in our country as we assess the needs of the American people, and we build a budget around those needs. So let me begin by assessing what I believe are the needs of the American people. The fundamental economic reality of today is that for the last 40 years--not the last 6 years, not the last 20 years but the last 40 years--the middle class of this country has been disappearing. Today, we have more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of America, and yet while that is going on, the gap between the very, very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider and wider. Today, in fact, in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on Earth. I know many people think that in the United Kingdom, they have the Queen and dukes and lords and all of this aristocracy; clearly, their distribution of wealth and income must be a lot worse than it is in the United States. That is not the case. Today, compared to every other major country on Earth, our distribution of wealth and income is the worst, and it is worse in this country today than at any time since the late 1920s. It is hard to believe but true: Today, 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Since the Wall Street crash of 2008, 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. What that means is all over this country we have people working not one job but two jobs, three jobs; people working longer hours for lower wages. Yet 99 percent of all of the new income generated is going to the top 1 percent. In the midst of that reality, our Republican colleagues say, Well, only 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent, but what can we do to make the richest people even richer? Median family income in this country since 1999 has gone down by almost $5,000. Families are struggling to put bread on the table, to send their kids to college, to take care of their basic needs. But the Republican budget says the middle class is shrinking, people are struggling; what can we do to make life even harder for the working families of our country. When we talk about unemployment in America, the official unemployment rate is 5.5 percent. The true unemployment--real unemployment--however, is 10.9 percent, if we include those people who have given up looking for work and people who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment, which we never talk about, is over 17 percent, and African-American youth unemployment is literally off of the charts. Does the Republican budget say: How do we put the American people back to work or how do we help our young people who are desperately looking for jobs or looking for education? Quite the contrary. The Republican budget cuts virtually every program out there that is designed to help working families and unemployed workers. The typical male worker--that male worker in the middle of the American economy--incredibly made $783 less last year than he did 42 years ago. In other words, the middle class in this country is moving, unfortunately, in the wrong direction. Does the Republican budget say that we are going to raise the minimum wage so that everybody in this country who works 40 hours a week can live with dignity? No, it does not. Again, it moves us in exactly the wrong direction. While unemployment is much too high, while median family income has gone down, when millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, there is another phenomenon taking place in this country, and that is that the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well--not good, not pretty good--phenomenally well. Today, we live in a society where the top 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Here is the chart. The top 1 percent owns almost as much wealth--here at the top is the 1 percent. Here is the bottom 90 percent, going down. That is reality. The Republican budget says: Wow, look at that extraordinary disparity in wealth. We are going to do something about it. Yes, they do something about it. Their proposals will make the rich even richer and working people even poorer. Not only do we have a situation today where--as incredible as it may sound--the wealthiest 14 people in this country--the wealthiest 14--not 1,400, not 14,000, but the wealthiest 14 people in this country--in the last 2 years have seen their wealth increase by $157 billion. So 14 people have seen their wealth increase by $157 billion. That is more wealth than the total wealth of the bottom 130 million Americans. Here is a chart showing Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, an increase of $19 billion. Larry Ellison's wealth increased by $11 billion. This is just an increase over a 2-year period. Do you know what the Republican budget says to these guys? Hey, $157 billion in increase in 2 years? That is not enough. We are going to give your families a very significant tax break by ending the estate tax. We have a situation where one family in this country--the Walton families, which own Walmart--that one family owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the American people. Given the huge disparity of wealth and income, given the fact that millions of Americans today are struggling to put food on the table, given the fact that working families don't know how they can afford quality child care for their kids and middle class families don't know how they are able to send their kids to college, the Republican budget in virtually every instance moves us in exactly the wrong direction. The United States of America, sadly, is the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right-- something that I believe should occur. I think health care is a right and not a privilege. Today, we have made some gains under the Affordable Care Act. We have more people who have health insurance than was the case a number of years ago. That is a good thing. This is what the Republican budget does: The Republican budget, by ending the Affordable Care Act and by cutting Medicaid by over $400 billion, throws 27 million Americans off of health insurance. That is it--27 million Americans--men, women, kids--off of health insurance. What happens to those people? How many of those 27 million people will die? Certainly thousands, because when they get sick they are not going to be able to go to a doctor. How many of those people will suffer because they had illnesses that could have been treated or cured, but they can't go to a doctor? This budget knocks 27 million people off of health insurance. When you ask the Republicans what happens to those people, they have no response at all--none, zero. So instead of moving us in the direction of having health care for all of our people, they increase the number of uninsured by 27 million Americans. At a time when senior poverty is increasing, the Republican budget calls for ending Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program. What does that mean? The Republican idea is that we give people a voucher. I don't know that they have an exact amount for their voucher--maybe $8,000--whatever. They say: Here is a check for $8,000. You are 85 years of age and you are struggling with cancer. Here is your check for $8,000, and you go out to a private insurance company and get the best deal you can. If you are 85 years of age and you are struggling with cancer or heart disease and somebody gives you a check for $8,000, you tell me what kind of private insurance you are going to be able to get. How many days will it last you in the hospital? This is an effort to undermine and destroy Medicare. It is a disastrous idea. That is exactly what is in the Republican proposal. At a time when millions of disabled people are trying to survive on less than $14,000 a year, the Republican budget would pave the way for a massive cut to Social Security Disability Insurance. Instead of making college more affordable--and I know that in the State of Vermont, my State, and I expect in States all over this country, young people are really wondering whether they want to go to college, because they are so nervous about the debt they will have when they come out-- what is the Republican response to the crisis of the lack of affordability of college? Here is their response. They would cut Pell grants by more than $85 billion over the next decade, which would make the cost of college education more expensive for some 8 million Americans. In other words, instead of addressing this crisis, instead of helping make us competitive in a global economy by giving us the best-educated workforce, what they do is to move us in the wrong direction. We are as a nation the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. Most people don't know it, because almost all of that wealth goes to a handful of people on top. In the midst of this extremely wealthy Nation, disgracefully, today, we have millions and millions of families who literally are worried about how they are going to put food on the table and feed their kids tomorrow and next week. I can tell you that in the State of Vermont--and I expect in States around this country--we have people working 40 and 50 hours a week but, because their wages are so low, they don't earn enough money to buy the food they need to properly take care of their kids and feed their kids well. Those families literally go to emergency food shelters all over America. These are working people who never in their lives thought they would have to go to an emergency food shelter. That is what they are doing all over America. What is the Republican response to hunger in America, taking care of the most basic needs we have? The Republican response is massive cuts-- massive cuts--to food stamps and the WIC Program. The WIC Program is a wonderful program to ensure that low-income pregnant women get good nutrition and that their babies have good nutrition. How basic can it get? Cut those programs. Cut the Meals On Wheels programs for fragile seniors. In the midst of throwing 27 million Americans off of health insurance, in the midst of cutting $85 billion for Pell grants to make it harder for our kids to go to college, in the midst of making massive cuts in nutrition programs which would increase hunger and suffering in the United States of America, Republicans do something else that is literally remarkable--and I know people think I am not telling the truth. I am. What they say is that when the rich are getting richer, when almost all new income and wealth is going to the people on top, what they have decided to do for the wealthiest 6,000 families in America--the top two-tenths of 1 percent--what they say to these billionaire families is that we are going to give you a massive tax break by repealing the estate tax. What we are going to do is give you a $269 billion tax break that goes to the top two-tenths of 1 percent, and 99.8 percent of the American people will not gain one nickel in benefits from the repeal of the estate tax. It only goes to the wealthiest of the wealthy. But to add insult to injury, while giving a huge tax break for the billionaire class, the Republican budget also says: Let's see if we can raise taxes on lower-income and working-class families by allowing the expanded earned-income tax credit and child tax credit to expire. These are tax credits that go to working families and lower-income families who have kids. We added a more generous benefit a few years ago, and they are going to allow that to expire at the same time as they give a massive tax break to the wealthiest families in this country. My friend from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, talks repeatedly about the deficit. I agree that the deficit is a problem. But he will acknowledge that under the last 6 years under President Obama, we have made significant progress in reducing the deficit--about two-thirds. But it remains very high. We have an $18 trillion debt and that is a real issue. There is no denying it. One of the reasons that we have a huge debt--not the only reason but one of the reasons--is that the United States under President Bush went to war in Iraq and went to war in Afghanistan. Now nobody knows what the end cost of that war will be by the time we take care of the last veteran 50 or 60 years from now, but the best guesses are that those wars will cost us $4 to $6 trillion by the time we take care of the needs of our last veteran who served in those wars. How do we pay for those wars? How do we pay for those wars? In every other war that this country fought, Presidents had the courage to go forward and say: Wars are expensive. We are going to raise taxes. Not in this case--those wars were put on the credit card--$4 to $6 trillion and we didn't pay for it. Apparently, my Republican colleagues haven't learned a simple lesson--that you can't be honest and worry about the deficit, and then go to war and not pay for it. What they have done in this budget is to increase Pentagon spending by another $38 billion next year and $186 billion over the next 10 years. And how is that paid for? Oh, it is not paid for. It goes on the credit card. They put it all into the so-called OCO account, and this is, by the way, an account that many of my conservative friends have called an accounting gimmick. So here we are. Here we are at a time when this country probably faces more serious problems than at any time since the Great Depression. The middle class is disappearing. Poverty is much too high. The gap between the very, very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider and wider. Real unemployment is much too high. Young people are unable to afford to go to college. On every one of those issues, the Republican budget does exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. In the year 2015, we should not be voting or bringing forth a budget which makes the billionaires even richer while cutting programs for people who are struggling. With an $18 trillion debt, we should not be increasing military spending by simply adding that money to the deficit. So I would hope that people in this body, in the Senate, will take a deep breath, and appreciate, in fact, what is going on with working families in this country and will vote no on this disastrous budget.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, a budget is a vision of the future, and it clearly appears the two sides have very different visions as to what our country should be and the direction in which we move. At a time of unprecedented and grotesque income and wealth inequality, where 99 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent, my Republican colleagues say we need to give a massive tax break to the 5,000 wealthiest families in America--the top two-tenths of 1 percent--a $269 billion tax break over a 10-year period. That is not what the American people believe. What they believe is that at a time when the rich and large corporations are doing phenomenally well, when we have a large deficit, when we have massive unmet needs in this country, that maybe, just maybe it is time to ask the wealthy and large corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes, not give them more tax breaks. That is exactly what this Republican budget does. At a time when the United States is the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people and when 35 million Americans today have no health insurance and even more are underinsured, with large copayments and high premiums, the Republican budget unbelievably--unbelievably--simply throws 27 million Americans off of health insurance. What happens to them? What happens when the Affordable Care Act is ended--which is what their budget does--and 16 million people lose their health insurance? What happens when another 11 million people lose their health insurance because of the $440 billion cuts in Medicaid? What happens to 27 million Americans? How many of them will die? Clearly, many thousands will die. People who are sick will not be able to go to the doctor. People who are sick will get sicker and suffer. Twenty-seven million people thrown off of health insurance is beyond being unconscionable. Yet, that is what is in the Republican budget. The Presiding Officer is a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire. I know that in New Hampshire--I have been there recently--and in Vermont, young people are wondering about how they are going to be able to afford to go to college and what kind of student debts they will incur when they leave college. Our charge is to work together to make sure that every young person in this country who has the ability and the desire and the willingness to go to college is able to go to college regardless of his or her income. That is what we need to do in a competitive global economy. We used to have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world. Today, we are in 12th place. That is not where we should be if we want to compete globally in this difficult world economy. What is the Republican solution? The Republican solution is to make a bad situation much worse, with a $90 billion cut over a 10-year period in mandatory Pell Grant funding--Pell grants being the major source of funding for low- and moderate-income young people in order to get help to go to college. This budget does exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. The problem we are having is that almost all of that wealth is going to a handful of people at the top. Yet, today we have more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of America. We have seen some descriptions of that in the tragedy we recently observed in Baltimore in communities where 50 percent of the people are unemployed, where kids don't have enough to eat. Honestly, without being too rhetorical, I just don't understand how, when families are struggling to feed their kids, when everybody understands that hunger is a real problem in this country, anybody could vote for a budget that makes huge cuts in food stamps, in the WIC Program, and in other nutrition programs for families who are struggling to feed their families. That is not what this country is supposed to be about. On top of all of that--on top of cutting health care, with 27 million people thrown off of health insurance; cutting education, making it harder for kids to go to college, harder for families to put their kids into Head Start; harder for poor families to feed their kids--my Republican colleagues say a major priority in this country is to give $269 billion in tax breaks to the top two-tenths of 1 percent. Does anybody--anybody outside of this Chamber think that makes any sense at all? Does anybody outside of here think those are American priorities? Billionaires do not need another tax break. They are doing just great. They are doing fine. Then, to add insult to injury, the Republican budget allows to expire the additional benefits we put into the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit. That, in effect, would mean a tax increase for over 10 million working families. We would be raising taxes on low- income workers while lowering taxes on billionaires. Those are not the priorities of the American people. Madam President, I hope very much we will reject this budget. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as you know, I have worked for many years to ensure all Americans have access to primary care. Community health centers are instrumental in providing that access to primary medical, oral, and mental health care. Right now, community health centers provide primary care to 24 million patients in 9,000 underserved communities in every State and territory across the country. Until last month, health centers were facing a 70-percent reduction in funding this fall due to the expiration of the Community Health Center Fund. On an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, I was very pleased that Congress was able to extend the health center fund in the Medicare and CHIP Reauthorization Act bill for 2 years to avert this massive cut to the program. Although I supported legislation to provide funds for victims of trafficking, taking money recently allocated to community health centers in the SGR bill to pay for health care services for victims of trafficking was not a good solution. Both of these programs serve important populations with significant health care needs, and I understand from those who negotiated this agreement that the funding transfer was a special circumstance as a way to move forward on this bill. It is my hope and understanding from the bill sponsors that this was the one and only time Congress draws money from the Health Center Fund to pay for other programs.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the fast- track bill the Finance Committee approved last night, and that I think will be on the floor next week or the following week, on the Trans- Pacific Partnership. I think the most important aspect of this debate is that what we are discussing with the TPP is not a new concept. It is not as though somebody came and said, I have a great idea; let's try this trade agreement, and it is going to be really good for the American worker and the American middle class and the American people. The truth is that we have seen this movie time and time and time again. Let me tell my colleagues that the ending of this movie is not very good. It is a pretty bad ending. I think most Americans understand that our past trade agreements have failed our American workers and have led to the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs. What I simply don't understand--if we were going forward in the first place, with a new idea, maybe we should give it a shot. But when we went forward with NAFTA, when we went forward with CAFTA, when we went forward with Normal Permanent Trade Relations and there were all of these folks telling us how great these agreements were going to be and it turned out that virtually everything they said was inaccurate--not true--why in God's Name would we go forward with another trade agreement which is, in fact, larger than previous trade agreements? Let me give an example of what I mean. On September 19, 1993, President Bill Clinton said the following: I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect. . . . I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its effect. So President Clinton was pushing the NAFTA agreement very hard, and that is what he said. In 1993, the same year, the Heritage Foundation, which is one of the most conservative think tanks in the country--so here we have a liberal President, Bill Clinton, and we have a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation--this is what they said: ``Virtually all economists agree that NAFTA will produce a net increase of U.S. jobs over the next decade.'' In 1993, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, who is now our majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said: ``American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages.'' Mitch McConnell: ``American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages.'' Well, was President Clinton right? Was the Heritage Foundation right? Was Senator McConnell right? No. I think the evidence is pretty clear they were all wrong. According to a well-respected economist at the Economic Policy Institute--and their facts usually hold up pretty well--NAFTA has led to the loss of more than 680,000 American jobs. What President Clinton said was wrong, what the Heritage Foundation said was wrong. We lost substantial numbers of jobs. In 1993, the year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of more than $1.6 billion. Last year, the trade deficit with Mexico was $53 billion. We had a trade surplus of $1.6 billion; last year we had a deficit of $53 billion. Now, how is that a success? I don't know. In other words, NAFTA has been a disaster for American workers. What about the Chinese trade agreement? I remember hearing all of the discussions about how great it would be if we had a trade agreement with a huge country such as China; thinking about all of the American products they would be buying, manufactured here in the United States. Here is what President Bill Clinton said about PNTR with China back in 1999. It is important to remember what people said because they are saying the same thing about this trade agreement. But this is back in 1999, Bill Clinton, President, PNTR with China: In opening the economy of China, the agreement will create unprecedented opportunities for American farmers, workers and companies to compete successfully in China's market. . . . This is a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences. Once again, that is a liberal President. Now, we have the conservative think tanks that love unfettered free trade. In 1999, discussing PNTR with China, the conservative economists at the Cato Institute--these are really conservative guys and this is what they said: The silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry. In fact, American workers are far more productive than their Chinese counterparts. . . . PNTR would create far more export opportunities for America than the Chinese. Well, what can we say about that? The Cato Institute wrote in 1999: ``The silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry.'' Sure. Right. If we go out to any department store in America and we buy products, where are those products made? Guess what. They are made in China. It appears that, in fact, Chinese imports did overwhelm U.S. industry. The Cato Institute was dead wrong. Again, nobody is really surprised at this. There is no more debate about this. Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, that trade agreement, was a disaster. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that trade agreement with China has led to the loss of 2.7 million American jobs. The trade deficit with China has increased from $83 billion in 2001 to $342 billion in 2014. Now, in terms of China, I don't know that the American people have any doubt about it. Every time we go shopping, the products overwhelmingly are made in China. People look in their own towns and in their own States--my State--and see losses of more and more manufacturing jobs. Since 2001, we have lost 60,000 manufacturing facilities in America. Not all of it is attributable to trade; there are other reasons, but a lot of it is attributable to trade. Millions of decent-paying jobs are gone; people thrown out on the street as companies move to China, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries. There is not a debate about it. That is exactly what has happened. Corporation after corporation has said, Why do I want to pay an American worker $15, $20 an hour? Why do I want to deal with the union? Why do I have to obey environmental regulations? I can move to China, I can move to Vietnam, I can move to Malaysia or Mexico and I can pay people pennies an hour and bring the product back into the United States. That is what they said, and that is what they have done. Major corporation after major corporation has reduced employment in America at the same time as they have increased employment in other countries. Not only is it the loss of jobs, it is the race to the bottom. It is employers saying to workers, Look, I am cutting your health care, I am not giving you a raise, and if you don't like it, I am moving to China because there are people all over the world who are prepared to work for wages a lot lower than you are receiving. You can take it or leave it. That is one of the reasons why today the typical American worker is working longer hours for lower wages than he or she used to and why wages have gone down in America. That is what the global economy has done. That is what these horrendous unfettered free-trade agreements have pushed on American workers. That is the Chinese trade agreement: an estimated 2.7 million American jobs lost. Then we have the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which has led to a loss of some 60,000 jobs. Our trade deficit with that country has gone up from $16.6 billion in 2012 to $25 billion in 2014. So we have a history of failed trade agreement after failed trade agreement after failed trade agreement and people say, Hey, we failed, we failed, we failed; let's do the same thing again and this time we are really, really, really going to succeed. I don't think anybody really believes that. I do understand that Wall Street loves this trade agreement and they are staying up nights worrying about ordinary Americans; and I understand that the major corporations in this country love this agreement and the truck companies love this agreement, which gives us enough reason to hold this agreement in doubt. Now, the Obama administration says, Well, trust us. Forget about the other trade agreements. This TPP is something different. It is a better agreement. This time will be different. This time it will support about 650,000 American jobs. Well, supporters of unfettered free trade were wrong about NAFTA, they were wrong about CAFTA, they were wrong about PNTR with China, and they were wrong about the Korea Free Trade Agreement and--surprise of all surprises--they are wrong again. If the fast-track is approved, it would pave the way for the passage of the TPP--the Trans-Pacific Partnership--trade agreement. As my colleagues know, this trade agreement is poised to be the largest free- trade agreement in history, encompassing 12 nations that account for roughly 40 percent of the global economy. This is a very big deal. Let me speak about two of those countries that are involved in the TPP; those are Vietnam and Malaysia. We are fighting here--and I understand there are differences of opinion--we are fighting here in the U.S. Congress to raise the minimum wage. I happen to believe a $7.25 minimum wage, which is what it is federally, is a starvation wage. I would like to see it go up over a period of years to $15 an hour. The Presiding Officer may disagree, and there are others who disagree. Let me tell my colleagues what the minimum wage is in Vietnam. The minimum wage in Vietnam is 56 cents an hour--56 cents an hour. So we have American workers being forced to compete against people who make 56 cents an hour. And we have a situation, just as one example of many, where the Nike company--a company which produces over 365 million pairs of athletic shoes each year--goes all over the world. Do you know how many of those athletic shoes are manufactured in the United States of America? Fifty million? Twenty million? Ten million? One million? Zero. On the other hand, they employ 330,000 workers in Vietnam--mostly young women--and while they refuse to tell us, give us the detailed information, our supposition is that most of those women make very low wages. Let's be clear about what is going on. According to a November 11, 2014, article in the Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien News: ``Analysts acknowledge that Vietnam's abundance of cheap labor has played an increasingly pivotal role in wooing foreign firms looking to set up overseas manufacturing operations in a country with a population of 90 million.'' In other words, that is what this is all about. Wages are very low in Vietnam. Companies from the United States and all over the world will go to that country. Allowing the TPP to pass will make it easier for multinational companies to shut down in America and move to Vietnam. That is wrong. When we talk about free trade, it is important to understand what is involved. Whom are we competing against? Are we competing against Canadian workers whose standard of living is as high or higher than ours? Are we competing against workers in Germany whose standard of living may be higher than ours? No. We are competing against people who are struggling to stay alive, earning the lowest possible wages that keep a human being alive. Last year, the Human Rights Watch published a report on Vietnam. Here are some of the quotes from that report: The human rights situation in Vietnam deteriorated significantly in 2013, worsening a trend evident for several years. The year was marked by a severe and intensifying crackdown on critics, including long prison terms for many peaceful activists whose ``crime'' was calling for political change. In other words, in Vietnam, if you speak up, you want political change, there is a likelihood you will end up in jail. Vietnam bans all political parties, labor unions and human rights organizations independent of the government. . . . The authorities require official approval for public gatherings and refuse to grant permission for meetings, marches, or protests they deem politically or otherwise unacceptable. It is not my point to beat up on Vietnam. They are a struggling country--a poor country that went through a terrible war with the United States that caused them incredible harm. But when we look at a trade agreement, when we say to American workers: This is your competition, people who are making 56 cents an hour in some cases, people who can't form an independent trade union, people who politically can't stand up and speak up for their rights, is that really appropriate and fair to the American worker? I don't think it is. I don't think it is. Let me say a word not just on Vietnam but another country in that consortium of partners in the TPP; that is, the country of Malaysia. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a New York Times article, dated September 17, 2014.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, what the New York Times article talks about is that today there are nearly 200 electronics factories in Malaysia where high-tech products from Apple, Dell, Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments are manufactured and brought back into the United States. It turns out Malaysia is a major center for the manufacturing of electronics, and some of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world are centered or have plants in Malaysia. If the TPP is approved, that number will go up substantially. Now, what is wrong with that? Well, let's talk about what is going on in Malaysia, where American companies in this country and American workers will have to compete as part of the TPP. Well, it turns out that many of the workers at the electronics plants in Malaysia are immigrants to that country and are forced to work there under subhuman working conditions. According to Verite, which conducted a 2-year investigation into labor abuses in Malaysia, which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor--this report was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor. This report tells us that 32 percent of the electronics industries' nearly 200,000 migrant workers in Malaysia were employed in forced situations because their passports had been taken away or because they were straining to pay back illegally high recruitment fees. According to the New York Times article commenting on the study, 92 percent of the migrant workers in Malaysia's electronics industries had paid recruitment fees, and 92 percent of that group had paid fees that exceeded legal or industry standards defined as more than one month's wages. Ninety-four percent of the migrants did not have their passports when Verite's investigators interviewed them. Let me repeat that. The passports were taken away from 94 percent of the people whom these investigators interviewed. Now, if you are a migrant in a foreign country and your passport is taken away, you have no rights at all. You can't leave. You may not be able to travel. You have no rights at all. In other words, many of these workers who wanted to leave Malaysia were unable to do so. They were forced to stay and continue to work under these subhuman conditions. Mr. President, 30 percent of foreign workers--this is again in the report from Verite, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor--30 percent of foreign workers said they slept in a room with more than eight people, and 43 percent said there was no place where they could safely store their belongings. Well, when we talk about competition and a competitive global economy, I do not believe the American worker should be forced to compete against workers who are literally held in slave-like conditions, unable to leave the country, having their passports taken away, working for pennies an hour. Let me conclude simply by saying this: This trade agreement is being pushed on the Congress by the largest corporations in the United States of America. They love unfettered free trade because it enables them to shut down in America and move to low-wage countries where they can employ workers at pennies an hour. This trade agreement is pushed on us by Wall Street, that wants to make sure that around the world they will have financial regulations that make it easier for them to do what they do, rather than serve the economies of countries around the world. This legislation is strongly supported by the pharmaceutical industry that will have the opportunity to prevent poor countries around the world from moving to generic drugs and make medicine affordable to the poor people in these countries. So all of the billionaire class, all of the powerful corporate world is supporting this trade agreement. Who is opposing this trade agreement? Well, virtually every trade union in America whose job it is to stand up for American workers. They are in opposition. I was just at a rally with them the other day. They are united. They are in opposition. You have many environmental groups that understand this is a bad agreement. You have medical groups that understand this is a bad agreement for poor people in developing countries, and you have millions of workers in this country who do not want to compete. They are not afraid of competition. We are a productive country. They do not want to compete against people making 56 cents an hour or against forced labor in Malaysia. That is where we are today. Where we are today is, Do we go forward with a failed trade policy or do we take a deep breath and say enough is enough? Let us rethink trade policy. Let us figure out a way we can grow the American economy, create decent jobs in the United States, and, by the way, help poor people around the world. All of us want to see wages go up in poor countries around the world, but that does not mean wages have got to go down in the United States of America. We need a trade agreement that works for our people, works for people around the world but is not a trade agreement that only works for the Big Money interests in the United States. I hope very much the Senate will take a real hard look at this trade agreement, take a hard look at what people have been saying for years about previous trade agreements and say we are not going down this failed path anymore. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I object to the unanimous consent request to waive rule XXVI to allow the Finance Committee to pass a fast-track bill that will undermine the American worker.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me say to my friend, the majority leader, I appreciate his position. But as he knows, not only is there massive opposition to this TPP agreement, but there is a lot of concern that the American people have not been involved in the process, that there is not a lot of transparency. What we are trying do is to make sure this debate takes place out in the public, that the American people have as much time as possible to understand the very significant implications of this trade agreement. I, and I suspect others, will do our best to make that happen.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Reserving the right to object. Sorry. I withdraw the objection.

Mr. SANDERS. I object.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I objected to the unanimous consent request to waive rule XXVI to allow the Finance Committee to pass a fast-track bill because I think it is time we slowed down fast-track. This trade agreement, I think everybody acknowledges, is of enormous consequence to working people all over this country. We need more transparency. We need to know what is in this legislation, and we need to involve the American people in this discussion. I must say I am extremely disappointed that on a piece of legislation which involves 40 percent of the world's economy, that is the largest trade agreement in the history of the United States of America, much of the major media has virtually ignored this issue. Now, you may be for the agreement, you may be against the agreement. I am strongly against it--and I will tell you why in a moment, but I would hope we could all agree this is an enormously important issue that deserves significant discussion on the part of the American people and their elected representatives. I find it incomprehensible that, to the best of my knowledge, ABC-- the ABC television network--has had zero coverage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, zero; CBS television, zero coverage; NBC, zero coverage. PBS has had three mentions of the TPP. CNN has had zero coverage, FOX television has had four mentions, and MSNBC--mostly because of the excellent work of Ed Schultz--has covered it on 33 occasions, and all of this since January of 2015. So here we are engaged in a discussion--some people are for it and some people are against it--but how do the American people know what is going on if the major networks are virtually blocking out any serious discussion, any mention of the agreement? Supporters of the fast-track bill have told us over and over again that unfettered free trade will increase American jobs and increase American wages, but they have been proven dead wrong every single time we have had a trade agreement. In other words, we hear the same rhetoric: vote for NAFTA, vote for CAFTA, vote for the free-trade agreement with China. It is going to increase jobs in America, improve life for the middle class. Yet every single time the rhetoric around these past trade agreements has been proven to be dead wrong. I was in the House of Representatives in 1993 and 1994 during the debate over NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. I remember all of those people who supported that agreement telling us how NAFTA was going to open the Mexican economy for products made in the United States of America and how it was going to create all kinds of good- paying jobs in this country. On September 19, 1993, President Bill Clinton said the following: I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first two years of its effect. . . . I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact. That was President Bill Clinton, who strongly supported that agreement. But it wasn't only President Clinton who made those claims. The Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative think tanks in this country, said in 1993: ``Virtually all economists agree that NAFTA will produce a net increase of U.S. jobs over the next decade.'' That is from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Further, during the debate over NAFTA and the Senate in 1993, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, who is now the majority leader, said: American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages. That was Senator McConnell. Virtually every major newspaper in America had editorials saying: Support NAFTA--the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. Support NAFTA; it is good for the American worker. Well, it turns out that NAFTA, which, of course, was supported by every major corporation in America, supported by Wall Street, supported by all of the Big Money interests--well, it turns out that all of those projections regarding NAFTA turned out to be dead wrong. According to the well-respected economists at the Economic Policy Institute, NAFTA has led to the loss of more than 680,000 jobs--not the creation of 1 million jobs, the loss of 680,000 American jobs. In 1993, the year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of more than $1.6 billion. Last year, the trade deficit with Mexico was $53 billion. I quote what the Economic Policy Institute says about NAFTA: [President] Clinton and his collaborators promised [NAFTA] would bring ``good-paying American jobs,'' a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Instead, NAFTA directly cost the United States a net loss of 700,000 jobs. The [trade] surplus with Mexico turned into a chronic deficit. And the economic dislocation in Mexico increased the flow of undocumented workers into the United States. Further, I quote an article that appeared in the New York Times yesterday: Mexico has become the most attractive place in North America to build new automobile factories, a shift that has siphoned jobs from the U.S. and Canada. . . . In the past two years, eight automakers have opened or announced new plants or expansions in Mexico. . . . Low labor costs and fewer tariffs are the swing factors. That was the New York Times yesterday. In other words, despite all of the rhetoric about how this unfettered free-trade agreement with Mexico was going to create jobs in this country, it turned out--not too surprisingly, I voted against NAFTA--to be exactly the opposite. Those people who told us how great the agreement was going to be were dead wrong. Why were they wrong? Well, for obvious reasons. When you have workers in low-wage countries, people who are prepared to work for 50 cents an hour, $1 an hour, $2 an hour, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to figure out that corporations will shut down in America, move to those countries, pay workers pennies an hour--not have to worry about environmental regulations, not have to worry about, in some cases, trade unions. You don't have to worry about that stuff. So what would American corporations do? Of course they would go to those countries. That is exactly what they have done. I talked for a moment about NAFTA. What about permanent normal trade relations with China? I don't think I have to elaborate on the fact that when Americans go shopping and they walk into a department store-- just look at the labels. Look at where the products are manufactured. Time after time, the products come from China, China, and China. As unbelievable as it may sound, back in 1999 and 2000, we were told--this is again what we were told--that permanent normal trade relations with China would open up the huge Chinese market to all kinds of American-made products. The argument was, look, China is the largest country in the world. If we can just have an unfettered free-trade agreement with them, think about all the products manufactured in America that would be sold to the huge population in China. That was the argument. I think it is important for the American people to hear what the supporters of permanent normal trade relations with China--free trade with China--had to say back then and whether those arguments turned out to be right. In other words, if we are going to look at TPP today and hear what people are saying now, it is important to hear what people said about these other free trade agreements back then. Here is what President Bill Clinton said about PNTR with China back in 1999: In opening the economy of China, the agreement will create unprecedented opportunities for American farmers, workers and companies to compete successfully in China's market . . . This is a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences. That was President Bill Clinton. In addition, this is what the conservative economists at the Cato Institute--a very conservative think tank--wrote back in 1999: The silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry. In fact, American workers are far more productive than their Chinese counterparts . . . PNTR would create far more export opportunities for American than Chinese concerns. In other words, we had a liberal President, President Clinton, saying PNTR--free trade--with China would open up great economic opportunities in America, create new jobs, and raise wages. We had a conservative think tank say exactly the same thing. We had all of corporate America, all of Wall Street, all of the big-money interests saying: Oh boy, what a great opportunity for the United States. We can create all these jobs. Well, were they right or were they wrong? I think everybody knows-- the facts are pretty clear--they were, once again, not wrong, they were dead wrong. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that PNTR with China has led to the net loss of over 2.7 million American jobs. The trade deficit with China has increased from $83 billion back in 2001 to a recordbreaking $342 billion in 2014. I note that my Republican colleagues often talk about our national deficit, which is an important issue, but I don't hear much discussion about our huge trade deficit, especially with China, which was at $342 billion in 2014. After all of the talk on the floor of the Senate and the floor of the House, after all of the editorials written in the major newspapers throughout our country, after all of the discussion and expositions of Wall Street and the big-money interests, it turned out that the trade agreement with China was an unmitigated disaster for American workers. PNTR was passed in the year 2000. A couple of years later--and this kind of tells you everything you need to know about unfettered free trade--Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, one of our large corporations, was quoted on this subject at an investor meeting 1 year after China was admitted to the World Trade Organization, and this is what Mr. Immelt said: When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there. You need to change the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive. You can take an 18 cubic foot refrigerator, make it in China, land it in the United States, and land it for less than we can make an 18 cubic foot refrigerator today ourselves. What Mr. Immelt was saying is what virtually every major corporation CEO was thinking, and it is not hard to understand why. In China, wages are very, very low. Environmental regulations are almost nonexistent. It is hard to find a trade union to negotiate for workers. Why wouldn't a company shut down in America and run to China? And that is exactly, of course, what they have done. Before PNTR with China passed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told us it would create jobs. But just a few years later, on July 1, 2004, the Associated Press ran an article with the headline ``Chamber of Commerce leader advocates offshoring of jobs.'' The article quotes Thomas Donohue, the president and CEO, who, by the way, just yesterday was before the Senate Committee on Finance advocating for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This is what the AP article said back in 2004: Mr. Donohue urged American companies to send jobs overseas as a way to boost American competitiveness . . . Donohue said that exporting high-paid tech jobs to low-cost countries such as India, China and Russia saves companies money. So the dirty secret is that of course these guys like these free- trade agreements--not because they are going to create jobs in America. No one seriously believes that. When they are honest about it, they understand and they say that if companies shut down plants in America, throw millions of people onto the streets in this country and move abroad--when they do that, their profits go up. And they are right. I give them credit for that. That is right. That is what unfettered free trade has meant in this country. And on and on it goes. It is not just Mr. Immelt, the head of General Electric; it is not just Mr. Donohue, the head of the chamber of commerce; it is major corporation after major corporation. It is Wall Street. It is all of the moneyed interests. Before the agreement, they tell us as part of the discussion how many good jobs NAFTA is going to create, how many good jobs free trade with China will create, how many good jobs the Korean trade agreement will create. After the agreement, word comes out: Hey, this is a good opportunity. Shut down in America, go abroad, pay people pennies an hour, and bring your products back into this country. In 2011, we were told we just had to pass the South Korea Free Trade Agreement because of all the jobs it would create. Same arguments-- another free-trade agreement that is going to be great for the American worker. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce told us this free-trade agreement could create some 280,000 jobs in America. Instead, the South Korea Free Trade Agreement has led to the loss of some 60,000 jobs and the trade deficit with our country has gone from $16.6 billion in 2012 to $25 billion in 2014. Now the administration, Wall Street, and the largest corporations in this country are saying: Trust us. Forget about everything we said about all of these other trade agreements. Yeah, maybe we were wrong on NAFTA. Maybe we were wrong on CAFTA. Maybe we were wrong on the China Free Trade Agreement. Maybe we were wrong on the South Korea Free Trade Agreement. But trust us, on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is different. This one really, really, really--cross our fingers--really is going to be different. This one will support about, they say, some 650,000 American jobs. You know, it is one thing to be fooled once. It is another thing to be fooled twice. It is another thing to be fooled three times. But there comes a point where the American people are catching on that one of the reasons why the middle class of this country is disappearing, one of the reasons why most or many of the new jobs being created are low wage and part time, one of the reasons why real inflation-accounted-for wages for American workers has plummeted is because of these disastrous free-trade agreements. So you can fool me once. You can fool me twice. Maybe I am dumb and you can fool me three times. But there does come a limit to how many times you think you can fool the American people. When we talk about why the middle class of this country has been in decline for the last 40 years, one of the important reasons is that since 2001 we have lost nearly 60,000 factories in this country. Over that same time period, we have lost over 4.7 million manufacturing jobs. In 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, that number is just 9 percent. In January of 2001, there were 17.1 million manufacturing workers in this country. Today, there are only 12.3 million manufacturing workers. In my small State of Vermont, we have lost 34 percent of our manufacturing jobs over the past 14 years. In January of 2001, Vermont had 47,000 factory jobs. Last February, it was down to 30,700. And that is true for virtually every State in this country. Why is this significant? It is significant because historically manufacturing jobs paid the highest wages available to blue-collar workers. If you had a job at a manufacturing plant, if you had a union, the likelihood was that you would earn decent wages, have decent benefits, and you could actually support your family. You earned the wages that enabled you to take good care of your family. With the decline of manufacturing, what has happened is we have seen a huge increase in service industry jobs--McDonald's, Walmart--where wages are low, benefits are nil, and American workers who work there are having a hard time surviving economically. Manufacturing goes down, people lose their jobs, wages go down, and new jobs are being created that pay significantly less than the jobs people used to have. The fact is that TPP is just a new and easy way for corporations to ship jobs overseas and force Americans to compete with low-wage workers in Vietnam and other countries. The minimum wage in Vietnam is 56 cents an hour. What this trade agreement says to American workers is, you are now competing against people who in some cases will be working for 56 cents an hour. I think that is grossly unfair. We should not force American workers into a race to the bottom. Let's be clear. The TPP is much more than a free-trade agreement; it is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large, multinational corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs, undercutting workers' rights, dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety, and financial laws, and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system. The TPP is poised to be the largest free-trade agreement in history, encompassing 12 nations that account for roughly 40 percent of the global economy. That is why it has been referred to as ``NAFTA on steroids.'' Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and Members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process. While the full text of the TPP has not been made public, there have been some leaks of what is included in it, and what I have seen is very disturbing. It has been estimated by outside experts that the United States would lose more than 130,000 jobs to Vietnam and Japan alone if the TPP goes into effect. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. At a time when corporations have already outsourced over 3 million service sector jobs that were in the United States, the TPP includes rules that will make it even easier for corporate America to outsource call centers, computer programming, engineering, accounting, and medical diagnostic jobs. So these are not just manufacturing jobs; these are all kinds of other jobs which, if they can be done cheaper in other countries, will be sent there. Under TPP, Vietnamese companies would be able to compete with American companies for Federal contracts funded by U.S. taxpayers, undermining American laws. The TPP will undermine U.S. sovereignty by giving foreign corporations the right to challenge any law in this country that threatens their expected future profits before international tribunals. In other words, if we pass an increase in the minimum wage, under the TPP, Vietnamese companies that invest in America could sue the United States in an international court full of corporate lawyers if they believe it will hurt their profits. By the way, that is what this whole agreement is about--maximizing the investment profits of corporations from the United States and all over the world. If localities--local governments, state governments, federal governments--stand up and say: You know what, we want to protect health, and we want to protect the environment--if that impinges on the future profits of the corporation, it can take legal action against that local, state, or federal agency. That may sound kind of crazy, but that is exactly what has already happened in Egypt after it signed a free-trade agreement with France. In 2012, a French utility company sued Egypt in an international tribunal for 82 million euros. And what was Egypt's crime? For what were they being sued? They were being sued because they had increased their minimum wage, among other things. The French company saw raising the minimum wage for Egyptian workers--which is very low--as an impingement on their ability to make profits. Further, large pharmaceutical companies are working hard to ensure that the TPP extends the monopolies for their prescription drugs by extending patents that already can last for 20 years or more. Doctors Without Borders--a heroic organization of doctors who go to some of the most difficult, the poorest, the most dangerous parts of this world to treat people who desperately need medical care--they are very brave people. They wrote that ``the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.'' In other words, what the big pharmaceutical industry wants is for countries all over the world to have to pay top dollar for prescription drugs. They want to be able to maintain their patents for as long as possible and prevent those drugs from going generic, where the prices would be significantly lower. The problem is that people in poor countries cannot pay a lot of money for their prescription drugs. So if this agreement goes through and the pharmaceutical industry can force poor countries to pay high prices for prescription drugs, people will suffer and people will die. After one disastrous trade agreement after another, I think it is time for the American people and their elected officials to reassess how we do trade in America. It is time to say we need trade agreements that work for working people in this country and not just trade agreements that work for the CEOs of large, multinational corporations. It is time to say to corporate America: If you want us to purchase your products, it is time you started manufacturing those products here in the United States and not in low-wage countries all over the world. The evidence is overwhelming. For decades, our trade policies have been responsible for lowering the standard of living of tens of millions of Americans. People today all over this country are working longer hours for lower wages. Most of the new jobs being created are low-wage jobs, and many of them are part-time jobs. We need to rebuild our manufacturing sector. To do that, we need a fundamental revision in our trade policies. NAFTA has failed. CAFTA has failed. Permanent normal trade relations with China has failed. The Korea trade agreement has failed. It is basically insane to keep going with the same type of trade policy that has failed and failed and failed. I hope very much that here in the Senate and in the House we can defeat this TPP and come back to the table and develop a trade agreement that works for American workers, works for people all over the world, and not continue these disastrous trade agreements. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I send to the desk my motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, later today, maybe as early as 11 o'clock or so, we are going to begin a discussion of the budget. As we know, the budget is a set of national priorities. A budget has to do with our vision of where America is and where America should be. We are now in the process of moving the budget to a conference committee between the House and the Senate. When I think about a budget, I think about a document designed to address the problems facing our country. In that regard, I find the Republican budget that will likely pass to be totally inadequate, and a budget whose priorities are way, way out of place with where the American people are. When we talk about the needs of America, the most significant need and the most significant economic problem we face is that for 40 years the American middle class has been in decline. Today we have over 40 million Americans living in poverty, almost more than at any time in the modern history of America. Our real unemployment is not 5\1/2\ percent; real unemployment is 11 percent. And despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, we still have 35 million Americans who have no health insurance. While millions of Americans work today longer hours for lower wages than used to be the case, despite a significant increase in productivity, what we are seeing as a nation is an obscene level of income and wealth inequality. That reality speaks to the fact that since the Wall Street crash of 2008, about 99 percent of all new income today is going to the top 1 percent. I know people find that amazing, but it is true. Which means that no matter what the GDP may be--2 percent, 5 percent--it doesn't really matter, because virtually all the new income goes to the top 1 percent. In terms of distribution of wealth, what we are seeing in America today is worse and more unequal than any major country on Earth, and worse in America than at any time since the late 1920s. Today we have the top one-tenth of 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Unbelievable--the top one-tenth of 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Today we have one family owning more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the American people--that is, the Walton family of Walmart. A recent report came out by Forbes magazine which pointed out--and this is almost beyond belief--that the wealthiest 14 people in this country, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Koch brothers, others, saw their wealth increase between 2013 and 2015, a 2-year period, by $157 billion. That is just an increase in their wealth.

Mr. SANDERS

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