Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me cut to the chase, and I will try to be brief here. We hear a lot of talk on the floor of the Senate about patriotism, about love of country, about how we all have to work together for the common good. It would seem to me that when we talk about those who sacrificed, those who have put their lives on the line to defend this country, we are talking about the men and women in America who are veterans. Yet what we have seen in the last month from the President and from Elon Musk is a chain saw approach to essentially destroy the Veterans' Administration, and that is, there are plans afoot--public; no one is debating the numbers--they want to fire 83,000 employees. When you fire 83,000 employees, no one, nobody believes that anything else will happen but that there will be a deterioration in the quality of healthcare our veterans receive or a delay in the benefits they have earned. Now, I have heard criticism of the VA. The VA is the largest healthcare system in America. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Does it have its problems? Of course it does. But compared to what? Compared to the American healthcare system, which is the most expensive in the world? a system in which 83 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured? where 60,000 people die each year? where we have the lowest life expectancy of any other major country on Earth? So, no, the VA is not perfect. It needs improvement. But I will tell you that in the State of Vermont, I talk to a lot of veterans. I am the former chair of the Veterans' Committee, and I have been honored to talk to veterans of Vermont and all over this country. In Vermont, what they tell me is there is enormous pride in the quality of care they get at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT, and as well in the community-based outreach clinics that exist all over our State. And I expect, with some exceptions, that is true all over the country. The bottom line is, veterans appreciate the care that they get at the VA. They want it improved, but they appreciate it, and they do not believe that there should be massive cuts to the Veterans' Administration. The truth is that in fiscal year 2024, before Trump took office, the VA reported over 36,000 vacancies, including 2,400 doctors, 6,300 registered nurses, 1,800 social workers, and 1,200 custodians. When you have a workforce shortage, the solution is not to fire 83,000 people; it is to add people. It is to make sure you know where your workforce is going and that you have quality people. But you don't lay off 83,000 people. That is not just my view. It would seem to me that before you take a chain saw to the Veterans' Administration, you might want to talk to the veterans organizations and see what they think about it. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, or VFW, said: We call upon VA to reconsider its planned reduction of 83,000 employees and thoroughly review any proposed cuts prior to rolling out further announcements like this. The Paralyzed Veterans of America said that they are ``deeply troubled by actions being taken in Washington, D.C. that are already having a detrimental impact on the services that veterans with spinal cord injuries and diseases like ALS and MS rely on.'' The Disabled American Veterans, or DAV, said: We are extremely concerned about the leaked proposal to arbitrarily eliminate 80,000 VA employees. That is what some of the major veterans organizations are saying, and I have talked to all of the--virtually all of the--veterans organizations. And they are deeply, deeply, deeply concerned about the cuts that we have seen and the cuts that Musk is proposing. So this is not a difficult issue. Everybody here wants to make the VA more efficient. The way you do that is to come up with some plans. You work with the Veterans Committee, and you see how we can make the VA more efficient. Nobody in their right mind thinks that just firing 83,000 people is the way to go. And let me be very clear: Mr. Musk has made it public that he thinks that we should privatize anything that can be privatized. There are people--not all people--in the Republican Party who eventually want to privatize Social Security. We are looking at $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid that dismantle that very important healthcare organization. And if anybody thinks that the laying off of 83,000 employees of the VA--the lowering of quality of care that our veterans will receive--is not a prelude to the movement to privatize the VA, you would be surely mistaken. So with that, Madam President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 165, which was submitted earlier today; further, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. The bottom line: Do not lay off 83,000 employees at the Veterans' Administration.

Mr. SANDERS. I am not aware that in the so-called mandate of President Trump--and, by the way, he got millions of votes less than Joe Biden got 4 years previously. I don't recall that during the campaign, Trump went around the country saying: Hey, elect me, and then I will lay off 83,000 workers at the Veterans' Administration. Yes, we all want the VA to operate more efficiently, but the idea that you can lay off 83,000 employees and make that happen is absurd. The truth is, again, before Trump took office, we had a significant shortage in the number of doctors, nurses, mental health counselors, and other practitioners. So it is disturbing to me that anyone who claims to be supporting veterans in this country and the sacrifices they have made would object to this amendment, this resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me say a few words about where we are as a nation, what this budget resolution does, and why I am strongly opposed to it. As you may know, we have more income and wealth inequality in our country today than we have ever had in the history of America. Three people on top own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. CEOs now make about 300 times more than their workers. In other words, the very rich are becoming much richer, and working families are struggling. So what does this budget resolution do to address this very serious crisis? Does it help working people? Does it help low-income people? No, not really. It actually makes income and wealth inequality much worse by providing massive tax breaks to the billionaires and the richest people in this country, driving up the national debt and making those on top very, very happy. In America today--the richest country in the history of the world--we have 60 percent of our people living paycheck to paycheck, struggling every week to put food on the table, to pay the rent, to deal with childcare, to take care of healthcare. Real wages--real inflation, accounted-for wages--for the average American worker have been stagnant for the last 50 years. This is why the huge increase in worker productivity. Today, all across this country, you have workers working for 11, 12, 13 bucks an hour--working for starvation wages. Some of them are actually sleeping in their cars. Now, how does this budget resolution address the crises facing working families? Well, at a time when many workers are struggling to find affordable housing, what this budget will do is cut back on housing programs, making it harder for working people to get decent housing. It will cut funding for low-income and affordable housing. So it makes life more difficult for millions of working families. This is a time when 22 percent of our seniors are trying to survive on less than $15,000 a year. That is really quite shocking. It is something we don't talk about. It is something that we don't deal with here in Congress. Can you imagine a senior citizen trying to survive on $15,000 a year when seniors need additional healthcare, when seniors need to keep their homes warmer--there are all kinds of issues--trying to get by on $15,000 a year? Twenty-two percent of seniors are in that position. Half of seniors are trying to get by on $30,000 a year or less. So how does this legislation--this budget--help seniors? What does it do for seniors? Well, it makes a bad situation much worse. This legislation--this budget--will make it much harder for seniors to receive the care they desperately need in nursing homes. In Vermont--and, I expect, in most States in this country--we have a major nursing home crisis. Nursing homes are shutting down. It is harder and harder for people to get into nursing homes. Well, when you cut Medicaid by $880 billion, you are going to make it much, much harder for seniors to access nursing homes because two out of three seniors are dependent upon Medicaid to get into nursing homes. This legislation would also cut back on nutrition programs for seniors at a time when many seniors are having a hard time affording the food that they need. Maybe worst of all, at a moment when Mr. Musk and his billionaire friends are laying off thousands of workers at the Social Security Administration and closing down Social Security offices all over the country, making it harder for people with disabilities and older people to get the benefits that they have paid into for their whole lives, this bill does nothing to address that crisis. We, right now, embarrassingly, have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. It is a little bit embarrassing for the richest country on the face of the Earth. We have more income and wealth inequality than any other country. We are seeing significant growth in the number of billionaires we have, but in terms of our kids, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major Nation. Now, how would this budget impact our children? Well, it would make a bad situation even worse by throwing millions of kids off the healthcare that they have. That is what happens when you cut Medicaid by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. This budget would cut nutrition programs that one out of every five children depends upon. Amazingly, sadly, in America, a lot of kids go to school hungry, and this legislation would cut nutrition programs. Furthermore, for working families, this legislation would do nothing to address the outrageously high cost of childcare in America. By the way, it would make devastating cuts to education, I think, significantly in working- class communities. It is no secret to anybody that our current healthcare system is far and away the most expensive in the world. We spend about twice as much per capita on healthcare as almost any other nation. Most Americans understand and deal with the reality every day that our healthcare system is dysfunctional. It takes forever to get a deal with the insurance companies and get your claims processed. It is extremely cruel that a significant number of people who are struggling with cancer end up going bankrupt because they cannot afford the outrageous costs of the hospital care that they have received. So what does this budget do to address our broken and dysfunctional healthcare system? Well, it is hard to believe, but it makes a terrible situation even worse. By cutting Medicaid by up to $880 billion, this legislation could force as many as 36 million Americans off the healthcare that they currently have. Now, right now, we have got 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured. That number would soar. So you have low-income, working people who don't have a lot of money. What happens when they get sick? We lose 60,000 people a year right now, despite Medicaid, who don't go through a doctor when they should because they can't afford to. This budget would make that situation much, much worse. At a time when we have a massive crisis in primary healthcare--not enough doctors, not enough nurses, not enough mental health counselors, not enough primary care facilities where people can get into a doctor when they need to--by cutting Medicaid, this legislation would make access to community health centers, which is something I have worked on for a very long time--it would make it harder for people to access community health centers because community health centers are highly dependent on Medicaid for their funding. Virtually every scientist who has studied the issue has made it clear that climate change is an existential threat to our planet. I understand that the current President of the United States thinks that it is a hoax originating in China, but that is not what 99.5 percent of the scientists who have studied the issue believe. As we look around and see year after year it is becoming warmer--and over the last 10 years, the warmest on record--and we see the terrible flooding and drought and extreme weather disturbances taking place in our country and all over the world, the American people understand that climate change is all too real, and it is having devastating impacts on our lives. So what does this legislation do to address the extraordinary crisis that we face in terms of climate change? Well, it is hard to believe, but it makes a bad situation even worse by opening up vast swaths of public land to big oil companies so they can ``drill, baby, drill,'' and it opens up public lands to more and more oil companies. Brilliant. We face an existential threat, and this legislation makes that threat even worse. Well, it seems to me that, instead of passing this absurd budget proposal, we should move in exactly the opposite direction that this proposal takes us. Instead of making life more difficult for the working class of our country, instead of rewarding the billionaire campaign contributors who fund many, many campaigns around here, maybe, just maybe, we should represent the needs of our constituents--the working families of this country. One of the ways that we could do it is by raising the minimum wage to a living wage. I know that is, around here, a very radical idea. Imagine that--that we raise the minimum wage--which is, today, at the Federal level, $7.25 an hour. So we are going to be offering an amendment to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $17 an hour. Maybe, instead of making it harder for working families to find affordable housing, maybe, just maybe, we should build millions of units of low-income, affordable housing. Maybe, just maybe, instead of making it harder for families to access childcare, we should make it easier and more affordable. Instead of cutting Medicaid by $880 billion--maybe instead of doing that--we should do what virtually every other major nation on Earth does, and that is understand that healthcare is a human right--that every man, woman, and child is entitled to healthcare as a human being. We can do that by passing a Medicare for All, single-payer program. The function of a healthcare system should not be to make the insurance companies and the drug companies much wealthier. It should be to provide quality healthcare in a cost-effective way to all of our people. So there you go. What we have is a budget proposal in front of us which makes bad situations much worse and does virtually nothing to protect the needs of working families, but what it does do, of course, is reward wealthy campaign contributors by providing over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1 percent. You know, I am going to vote against this proposal. That is for sure. I wish my Republican friends the best of luck when they go home--if they dare to hold town meetings--and explain to their constituents why they think, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it is a great idea to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut Medicaid and education and other programs that working families desperately need. I do wish them the very best of luck as they go forward in that way. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2126 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this amendment is simple and straightforward. Millions of Americans today are working for starvation wages. What this amendment does is raise the Federal minimum wage from an embarrassingly low $7.25 an hour to a living wage of $17 an hour over a period of 5 years. In other words, 5 years from now, everybody in America would make at least $17 an hour. That is not a radical idea. Quite unbelievably, the average American worker today makes $42 a week less than he or she did 52 years ago. Almost all of the new wealth that has been created has gone to the top 1 percent--a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the people on top. It has been 16 years--16 years--since the Federal minimum wage has been raised.

Mr. SANDERS. Now is the time to address the crises facing working Americans. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. SANDERS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to resume legislative session.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Pursuant to section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 33 and S.J. Res. 26 relating to the disapproval of the proposed foreign military sales to the Government of Israel of certain defense articles and services.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate debate the motions concurrently with all other provisions from yesterday's order remaining in effect.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by telling the American people something that they already know, and that is, as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, we now have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows billionaires to buy elections and to influence major pieces of legislation. That, I think, is not a secret to the American people. If you are a Republican and you vote against the Trump-Musk administration in one way or another, you have got to look over your shoulder and worry that you are going to get a call from Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, and he will tell you that if you vote against what he wants, he will spend unlimited amounts of money to defeat you in the next election. That is not a great secret. That is what Musk has been saying publicly. If you are a Democrat, you have to worry about the billionaires who fund AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If you vote against Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his horrific war in Gaza, AIPAC will punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements and other ways to see that you are defeated. AIPAC's PAC and super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined during the 2023-2024 election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission. And I must confess that AIPAC has been successful. Last year, they defeated two Members of the U.S. House who opposed providing military aid to Netanyahu's extremist government. Now, given all of that, I would hope that Democrats and Republicans who understand that they were elected to protect the interests of their constituents, not billionaire campaign contributors, would support the ending of Citizens United and would move us toward public funding of elections so billionaires could not continue to control the political and legislative process. Further, I would hope that both parties would move to end super PAC funding in their primaries, keep the super PAC money, Musk money, AIPAC money out of the Democrat and Republican primaries. I would hope that that would be the case so that we can, once again, become a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and not a government run by the billionaire class. Israel Mr. President, I trust that every American and certainly every Member of the Senate understands that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages. The International Criminal Court was correct in indicting the leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities. Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas. But most Americans also understand that while Israel had a right to wage war against Hamas, it did not and does not have the right to wage war against the entire Palestinian population, and, tragically, that is exactly what we have seen over the last year and a half. Let us be clear: Prime Minister Netanyahu's racist and extremist government has waged an all-out, barbaric war against the Palestinian people and made life unlivable in Gaza. Within Gaza's population of just 2.2 million people, more than 50,000 have been killed and more than 113,000 have been injured, 60 percent of whom are women, children, and elderly people. That is 7.4 percent of the population of Gaza killed or wounded--7.4 percent in a year and a half. If those same percentages were applied to the United States, in terms of a horrible war where our people were killed or wounded, it would mean that over 25 million Americans would have been killed or wounded. In total, since this war began, 15,000 children--children--in Gaza have been killed, and today there are some 17,000 orphans. But it is not just the dead and the wounded. Israel's indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two- thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92 percent of the housing units--as you can see from this photo. Ain't a whole lot left. I don't know why they need any more bombs; they basically destroyed the entire area. Nothing much left to be destroyed. Almost no part of Gaza has been left unscathed. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures. Most of the territory's hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed, leaving virtually all Gazans without basic medical care at a time when bombs are flying and people are being wounded, and think about what that means. I have met repeatedly with doctors, American doctors and others, who have served in Gaza, and they are treating hundreds of patients a day without electricity, without anesthesia, without clean water, including dozens of children arriving with gunshot wounds to the head. I have seen the photographs and the videos. Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90 percent of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads in Gaza have been destroyed or made impassable. Gaza's educational system has been obliterated. Children are not going to school. According to the World Bank, more than 2,000 educational facilities ranging from kindergartens to universities have been destroyed. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza's 12 universities. There has been no electricity in Gaza for 17 months, no electricity. Put simply, Netanyahu and his extremist government have killed or wounded over 7 percent of Gaza's population and has turned Gaza into a wasteland unfit for human life. That is what has been going on over the last year and a half. In terms of where we are today, right now, the Netanyahu government broke the cease-fire 2 weeks ago, endangering the well-being of the remaining hostages held by Hamas. Further, in the last 2 weeks, they have intensified their assaults against the Palestinian people. According to UNICEF, since Netanyahu broke the cease-fire, more than a thousand people have been killed, including over 300 children, and more than 600 children have been wounded in the last short period of time. UNICEF says that most of these children were killed while sheltering in makeshift tents or damaged homes. Just in the last 24 hours, 97 more people have been killed in Gaza. Since Netanyahu broke the cease-fire, even more aid workers, the people whose job it is to try to help people who have been wounded or hurt, more aid workers have been killed, putting the total of over 400--400--aid workers have been killed since the war began. Earlier this week, the United Nations announced that they have recovered the bodies of 15 emergency aid workers who were killed by Israeli forces while wearing their emergency responder uniforms and then dumped into a mass grave in southern Gaza. They were buried alongside the destroyed emergency vehicles, clearly marked ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. car. With the resumption of bombing, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are once again being forcibly displaced by bombing and evacuation orders. This week, Israeli authorities issued displacement orders for most of Rafah, where about 150,000 people were estimated to be sheltering. Think about what all of this means in human terms. Throughout this war, millions of desperately poor people, the people in Gaza, by and large, are extremely poor. They have been repeatedly driven from their homes. They have been forced to pick their way through a demolished landscape again and again with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Families have been herded into so-called safe zones, only to face continued bombardment. The children of Gaza--Mr. President, this is just one picture--have suffered a level of physical and emotional torture that is almost beyond comprehension and that will clearly stay with each and every one of them for the rest of their lives. These children are hungry. They are thirsty. It is hard to get clean water. They have been denied healthcare. And they have witnessed the death of their parents, their family members, their homes, and virtually everything around them. And they have been picked up and moved from one place to another. All the while, drones are on top of them, shooting or photographing what they are doing. Throughout this war, Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid have left hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children, facing malnutrition and starvation--malnutrition and starvation. Children have literally starved to death while aid just sat a few miles away, blocked by Israeli forces. The U.N., the United States, and every aid organization working in Gaza has been clear throughout this war: Israel's unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions on humanitarian aid have contributed to massive death and profound suffering. But as bad as the last year and a half has been, at least Israel let some--some, not enough, but some--aid through. But what is happening right now is unthinkable. Today, it is 31 days and counting with absolutely no humanitarian aid getting into Gaza--nothing--no food, no water, no medicine, no fuel for over a month. That is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. It is a war crime. You don't starve children. And it is pushing things toward an even deeper catastrophe. Earlier this week, 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme were forced to close because they ran out of flour and cooking gas. The U.N. is still trying to deliver its remaining stocks of food already in Gaza but says ``that the situation remains extremely critical since the cargo closure of the crossings almost a month ago.'' All of this is unconscionable. What we are talking about is a mass atrocity, and what makes it even worse, and why I am here today and why I have introduced the resolutions that we will soon be voting on, is that we, as Americans, are deeply complicit in all that is happening in Gaza. This is not some terrible event. This is not an earthquake in Myanmar. It is not something that we had nothing to do with. We are deeply complicit in all of this death and suffering. Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel and delivered more than 50,000 tons of military equipment. It is American bombs and American military equipment that are being used to destroy Gaza, kill 50,000 people, and injure over 110,000 people. We cannot hide from that reality. If we condone the barbarism that is taking place in Gaza today, we will have no standing in the world to condemn the horrors and war crimes that other countries may commit. You are not going to be able to look at China or Russia or Saudi Arabia or any other country and say: Look, how terrible. Look at what they are doing to the children, to the women, to innocent people. We will have no credibility because they will come back and say: Really? You are really concerned about what China, Russia, Saudi Arabia may be doing? Hey, take a look at what you supported in Gaza and the billions of dollars in aid you gave to Netanyahu's government. Today is the day to stand up to barbarism in Gaza and to do our best to prevent future barbaric acts all over the world. It is no secret to anyone how these U.S. weapons have been used. Israel has bombed indiscriminately, killing civilians, journalists--a whole lot of journalists have been killed--paramedics, children, and humanitarian workers in record numbers. They have used massive 2,000- pound bombs in densely populated Gaza, despite the fact that studies show that 90 percent of victims of explosive weapons used in a populated area are civilians. These bombs have a blast radius of more than 350 meters, yet Israel has dropped them into crowded apartment buildings, killing hundreds of civilians, to take out a handful of Hamas fighters. All of that is illegal and immoral and against American law. The Foreign Assistance Act, which is what we are talking about today, and the Arms Export Control Act, what we are talking about today, are very clear. The United States cannot provide weaponry to countries that violate internationally recognized human rights or block U.S. humanitarian aid. According to the U.N., much of the international community, and every humanitarian organization on the ground in Gaza, Israel is clearly in violation of these laws. Under these circumstances, it is illegal for the U.S. Government to provide Israel with more offensive weaponry. It is simply against our laws. Despite all of that, in the last month, the Trump administration has announced its intention to transfer some $12.5 billion more in offensive weapons--not defensive weapons, offensive weapons--to Netanyahu's government, in clear violation of U.S. law. And that is why we are here today. Joint resolutions of disapproval--which is what we are dealing with right now--are Congress's tool to enforce American law. Today, we will vote on two resolutions to block two of the most egregious of these Trump administration offensive arms sales, which would provide almost $9 billion more in heavy bombs and other munitions to Netanyahu, including more than 35,000--35,000--massive 2,000-pound bombs that have killed so many civilians. The first resolution, S.J. Res. 33, would block a sale of over $2 billion for 35,000 MK-84 2,000 bombs and 4,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads. The second resolution, S.J. Res. 26, would block almost $7 billion for 2,800 500-pound bombs, 2,100 small-diameter bombs, and tens of thousands of JDAM guidance kits. All of these systems have been linked to dozens of illegal airstrikes, including on designated humanitarian sites, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. These strikes have been painstakingly documented by human rights monitors. There is no debate. And none of these systems are defensive. None of them are necessary to protect Israel from incoming drone or rocket attacks. For those of my colleagues who may be ambivalent, not quite sure how they want to vote on these resolutions, let me say a word about how the Trump administration is ignoring the law in advancing these arms sales in terms of the process. Unlike Biden, whose policies on Gaza I strongly opposed--and I stood right here, at this location, strongly opposing what Biden was doing in terms of military aid to Israel. But unlike Biden, President Trump is trying to circumvent Congress with these transfers, ignoring the Foreign Assistance Act by issuing a bogus emergency declaration--an emergency declaration to bypass congressional review. There is no emergency to justify cutting Congress out of the process. In fact, some of the systems the Trump administration claims are part of this emergency sale have not yet been produced. And this is also part of a broader Trump administration effort to cut Congress out of the arms sales process. It is no great secret that Congress is way out of touch with where the American people are on issue after issue--whether it is the economy, whether it is healthcare, whether it is climate--whatever it may be. Everybody knows. Congress is way out of touch, and the billions of dollars that we are providing to the Netanyahu extremist government is just one more example of how out of touch we are with the American people. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll in March, just 15 percent of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel--15 percent--while 35 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely. To my Democratic colleagues, I would mention that in that same poll, just 8 percent of Democrats support increasing military aid to Israel. And, I think, as Democrats have held town meetings over the last year, they have heard from those people. Eight percent of Democrats support what we are doing now, more military aid for Israel. Forty-seven percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely--8 percent, increasing, Democrats; 47 percent, decreasing military aid. Among Republicans, 9 percent are for decreasing military aid and 15 percent for stopping all--24 percent for stopping or decreasing all military aid. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed this poll in the Record.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, according to a J Street poll of Jewish voters in November, 62 percent of American Jews support withholding ``shipments of offensive weapons like 2,000-pound bombs until Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for a release of Israeli hostages.'' And 71 percent of Jewish voters support increasing humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Finally, as unbelievably horrific as the situation in Gaza is and has been for the last year and a half, there is another development that could make the situation even worse. It is hard to believe. It really is, but it could. In recent months, President Trump and Israeli officials have openly talked about forcing out--forcibly expelling--the 2.2 million people who live in Gaza, pushing them out to make way for what Trump calls a riviera, some billionaire's playground. Now, I think some people who may be watching this think: This can't be true. You must be kidding. You must be lying. This is inconceivable--pushing 2.2 million desperate people out of where they live to create a playground for billionaires. But a few years ago, as some may recall, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner said that he felt--Jared Kushner--``Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable,'' floating the idea of redeveloping it. I think that many people at the time thought that was a weird and terrible joke. But it turns out that his father-in-law, Donald Trump, took it seriously. Here is what Trump has said repeatedly in recent months: The U.S. will take over the Gaza strip and we will do a job with it. We're going to take over that piece that we're going to develop it. I do see a long-term ownership position. . . . Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land. I guess he didn't speak to too many Palestinians who live on that land. On Truth Social, Trump wrote: The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. What about the Palestinians who have lived in Gaza for their entire lives? Trump said: I don't think people should be going back to Gaza . . . They lived like you're living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living. Gaza could become, again, Donald Trump: The Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so [valuable] this could be so magnificent. Yes, throw 2.2 million people who have suffered incalculably; throw them out of the land in which they live in order to create a billionaire's playground. There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ``ethnic cleansing.'' It is illegal. It is a war crime. Mr. President, the United States must not continue to be complicit in the destruction of the Palestinian people. History will not forgive us for this. The time is long overdue for us to tell the Netanyahu government that we will not provide more weapons of destruction for them. Instead, we must demand an immediate cease-fire, surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people. For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote yes on these two resolutions which would prevent illegal and immoral arms sales to Netanyahu, would uphold congressional power and the rule of law, and would protect innocent life. I will yield to the Senator from Maryland, Senator Van Hollen.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes and Senator Risch for up to 5 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall votes.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I think Senator Risch and I live in parallel universes. The universe that I live in is a universe which says, yes, of course Israel has a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023. No one debates that. But Israel did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, in violation of international and U.S. law. It doesn't matter in one sense whether you don't care that 50,000 people in Gaza have been killed or 112,000 women--you don't care about that? Fine. But you should care about American law. What the Foreign Assistance Act says is that the United States cannot provide military assistance to a country which is in violation of U.S. and international law. When you starve children, you are in violation of international law. When you have a blockade that does not allow any humanitarian aid to come into a desperate situation for 31 days, you are in violation of international law. When you kill 15,000 children and bring about malnutrition and starvation for even more, you are in violation of international law. What is going on right now is not some abstract horror show. We are complicit. Those are our bombs that have destroyed or damaged 92 percent of the housing in Gaza, our bombs which have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of schools in Gaza, our bombs which have attacked every single one of the 12 universities in Gaza. What we are standing here today discussing is not just Gaza. If the United States remains complicit in this war, we are telling every other country in the world that international law and human rights are meaningless. You could do whatever you want, and no President will ever be able to condemn any other country for their inhumanity. That is what is at stake today. Do we try to maintain a shred of moral integrity in the world or do we simply say to Netanyahu: Here are some more bombs. Kill some more kids. Kill some more women. Bomb some more hospitals. Is that what we do? With that, I would yield to the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Van Hollen for his extraordinary efforts today and for over a long period of time standing up for justice and morality in the Middle East. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, very briefly, nobody is supporting Hamas. Hamas is a disgusting terrorist organization that began the war. Israel had a right to defend itself against Hamas, but it did not have the right to kill 50,000 Palestinians and wound 112,000, 60 percent of whom are women, children, and the elderly. It did not have a right to bomb every university in Gaza. As Senator Van Hollen indicated, what we are talking about here is whether or not we support U.S. law. And U.S. law is clear: We cannot supply weapons to a country which is acting in violation of international law. Starving children is a violation of international law. With that, Mr. President, I would yield the floor and ask for a ``yea'' vote on these resolutions. Vote on Motion to Discharge

Mr. SANDERS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, in the last couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to travel in many parts of our country, and I have been able to talk to folks in Nebraska, in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. What I am hearing from in all of these States and, in fact, all over the country is that our Nation right now faces enormous crises-- unprecedented crises in the modern history of our country. How--right now, at this moment--we respond to these crises will not only impact our lives, it will impact the lives of our kids and future generations, and in terms of climate change, the well-being of the entire planet. Mr. President, what I have to tell you is that the American people are angry at what is happening here in Washington, DC, and they are prepared to stand up and fight back. In my view, and what I have heard from many, many people is that they will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires control our government; where the wealthiest person on Earth, Mr. Musk, is running all over Washington, DC, slashing the Social Security Administration so that our elderly people today are finding it extremely difficult to access the benefits that they paid into; where Mr. Musk and his friends are slashing the Veterans' Administration so that people who put their lives on the line to defend us will not be able to get the healthcare that they are entitled to or get the benefits that they are owed in a timely manner; slashing the Department of Education; slashing USAID. And why is all of this slashing taking place? It is taking place so that the wealthiest people in this country can receive over $1 trillion in tax breaks. Now, I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. There are very few people in this country who think that you slash programs that working families desperately need in order to give tax breaks to billionaires. I am the former chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and I have had the honor of meeting with veterans in my own State of Vermont--all over Vermont--but all over the country. These are the men and women who put the uniform of this country on and have been prepared to die to defend our Nation and American democracy. These veterans and Americans all over our Nation will not accept an authoritarian form of society with a President who undermines our Constitution every day. Every day there is something else out there where he is undermining our Constitution and threatening the very foundations of American democracy. That is not what people fought and died to allow to happen. I am not a historian, but I do know that the Founding Fathers of this country were no dummies. They were really smart guys, and in the 1780s, they wrote a Constitution and established a form of government with a separation of powers--a separation of powers--with an executive branch, the President; a legislative branch, the Congress; and a judicial branch. These revolutionaries in the 1780s had just fought a war against the imperial rule of the King of England, who was an absolute dictator--the most powerful person on Earth--and these revolutionaries here in America forming a new government wanted to make absolutely sure that no one person in this brandnew country that they were forming would have unlimited powers. That is why we have a separation of powers. That is why we have a judiciary, a Congress, and an executive branch. In other words, way back in the 1780s, they wrote a Constitution to prevent exactly what Donald Trump is trying to do today. So let us be clear about what is going on: Donald Trump is attacking our First Amendment and is trying to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him in an absolutely unprecedented way. He has sued ABC, CBS, Meta, the Des Moines Register. His FCC is now threatening to investigate NPR and PBS. He has called CNN and MSNBC illegal. In other words, the leader--or the so-called leader--of the free world is afraid of freedom. He doesn't like criticism. Well, guess what, none of us likes criticism, but you don't get elected to the Senate; you don't get elected to the House; you don't become a Governor; you don't become a President of the United States unless you are prepared to deal with that criticism. And the response to that criticism in a democracy is not to sue the media, is not to intimidate the media. It is to respond in the way that you think best. But it is not just the media that Trump is going after. He is going after the constitutional responsibilities that this body, the U.S. Congress, has. I will say it amazes me--it really does--how easily my Republican colleagues here in the Senate and in the House are willing to surrender their constitutional responsibilities, give it over to the President. Trump has illegally and unconstitutionally withheld funds that Congress has appropriated. You can't do that. Congress has the power of the purse. We make a decision. We argue about it here, big debates, vote-a-ramas, the whole thing, make that decision; that money goes out. The President does not have the right to withhold funds that Congress has appropriated. Trump has illegally and unconstitutionally decimated Agencies that can only be changed or reformed by Congress. You don't like the Department of Education? You don't like USAID? Fine. Come to the Congress, and tell us what reforms you want to see. You do not have the right to unilaterally do away with these Agencies. Trump has fired members of independent Agencies and inspectors general that he does not have the authority to do. But it is not just the media that he is trying to intimidate. It is not just the powers of Congress that he wants. Now, in an absolutely outrageous, unconstitutional, and extraordinarily dangerous way he is going after the judiciary. His view is that if you don't like a decision that a judge renders, you get rid of that judge. You try to impeach that judge. You intimidate judges so that you get the decisions that you want. You know, I am thinking back now as someone who is not a supporter of the Roberts' Court, and I am thinking about one of the worst Supreme Court decisions that has ever been rendered, and that is Citizens United. I will say more about that in a moment. I am thinking about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, taking away American women's right to control their own bodies. In my view, these were outrageous decisions, unpopular decisions, but it never occurred to me--because maybe I am old-fashioned and conservative and I believe that you live by the rule of law--to say: Hey, look at the decision Roberts made. We are going to impeach him. No. We try to elect a new President, who is going to appoint new Supreme Court Justices. That is the system that people have fought and died to defend. But it is not just the movement or oligarchy which is outraging millions of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, by the way, and it is not just the movement toward authoritarianism that we are seeing; the American people, especially with Mr. Musk and 13 billionaires in the Trump administration running Agency after Agency, the American people are saying as loudly as they can that they will not accept a society of massive economic and wealth inequalities where the very richest people in our country are becoming much richer while working families are struggling to put food on the table. Having gone all over this country, I can tell you that the American people are sick and tired of these inequalities, and they want an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. You know, we deal with a whole lot of stuff here in the Congress, and you know, virtually all of it is important in one way or another. Well, let's doing something fairly radical today. Let's try to tell the truth--the real truth--about what is going on in our society today, something that we don't talk about too much here in the Senate. We don't talk about it too much in the House. We don't talk about it too much in the corporate media. But the reality is that today we have two Americas, two very, very different Americas. In one of those Americas, the wealthiest people have never ever had it so good. In the whole history of our country, the people on top have never ever had it so good as they have it today. Today, we have more income and wealth inequality than there has ever been in the history of America. I know we don't discuss it. You don't see it much on TV. You don't hear it talked about here at all. But the American people do not believe that it is appropriate that three people--one, two, three; Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, and Mr. Zuckerberg--three Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans in society--170 million people. Really? Three people own more wealth than 170 million people? Does anybody here think that is vaguely appropriate? By the way, those very same three people--the three richest people in America--were right there at Trump's inaugural, standing right behind the President. Do you want to know what oligarchy is? I know there is some confusion out there. What is oligarchy? Well, it starts off when you have the three wealthiest people in the country standing right behind the President when he gets inaugurated. The top 1 percent of our country now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. CEOs make 300 times more than their average worker. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for wages today for the average American worker, if you can believe it, despite a massive increase in worker productivity, is lower today than it was 52 years ago. During that period, there was a $75 trillion transfer of wealth that went from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent. That is the reality of the American economy today. Do you know what? Maybe we might want to be talking about that. In our America today, that top America, that one America, the 1 percent are completely separate and isolated from the rest of the country. Do you think they get on the subway to get to work? Do you think they sit in a traffic jam for an hour trying to get to work? Not the case. They fly around in the jets and the helicopters that they own. They live in their mansions all over the world, in their gated communities. They have nannies taking care of their babies. They don't worry about the cost of childcare. They send their kids to the best private schools and colleges. Sometimes they vacation not in a Motel 6, not in a national park, but on their very own islands that they have. On occasion, for the very, very richest, just for a kick, to have a little bit of fun, maybe they will spend a few million dollars flying off into space in one of their own spaceships. Sounds like fun. But it is not just massive income and wealth inequality that we are dealing with today; we have more concentration of ownership than ever before. While the profits on Wall Street and corporate America soar, a handful of giant corporations dominate sector after sector, whether it is agriculture, transportation, media, financial services, et cetera, et cetera. A small number of huge corporations, international corporations, dominate sector after sector. As a result of that concentration of ownership, they are able to charge the American people outrageously high prices for the goods and services we need. We don't talk about it too much, and maybe we should, but there are three Wall Street firms--BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street--that, combined, are the major stockholders in 95 percent of our corporations. Got that? Three Wall Street firms--three--are the major stockholders in 95 percent of American corporations. So that is one America--people on top doing phenomenally well. Not only do they have economic power, they have enormous political power. That is what is going on there. They live like kings. That is one America, but there is another America. In that other America, 60 percent--6-0, 60 percent--of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions of workers from one end of this country to the other are trying to survive on starvation wages. Now, unlike Donald Trump, I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck, and I know the anxieties that my mom and dad had living in a rent-controlled apartment. Can we afford to buy this? Why did you buy that? That is the story taking place all over America. What does living paycheck to paycheck mean? It means that every single day millions of Americans worry about how they are going to pay their rent or their mortgage, all over the country. Rents are skyrocketing, and people wonder, what happens? What happens to me and my kids if rent goes up by 20 percent and I can't afford it? Where do I live? Do I have to take my kid out of school? Where do I put my kid? In a worst-case scenario, do I live in my car? Let's be clear. There are many people who are working today who are living in the back of their cars. How do I pay for childcare? I talked to a guy the other day, a police officer, who spends $20,000 a year for childcare. How do I buy decent food for my kids when the price of groceries is off the charts? What happens if I get sick or my kid gets sick or my mother gets sick and I have a $12,000 deductible and I can't afford to go to the doctor? How, at the end of the month, am I going to pay my credit card bill even though I am being charged 20 or 30 percent interest rates by the usurious credit card companies? People are worrying about such things. What happens if my car breaks down and the guy at the repair shop says it is going to cost a thousand dollars and I don't have a thousand dollars in the bank? If I don't have a car, how do I get to work? If I don't get to work, how do I have an income? If I don't have an income, how do I take care of my family? Those are the crises that millions of Americans are experiencing today. But it is not just working-age Americans; today in our country, half of older workers--older workers--have nothing in the bank as they face retirement. They are watching TV, and they are seeing Mr. Musk firing Social Security workers and are actually worrying whether Social Security will be there for them. It is not just older workers with nothing in the bank wondering what happens when they retire; 22 percent of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year. I dare anybody in this country, let alone somebody who is old, who needs healthcare, who needs to keep the house warm--try to survive on $15,000 a year. And there are people here, by the way, talking about cutting Social Security. It is not just about income and wealth inequality; it is about a healthcare system which everyone in the Nation understands is broken, is dysfunctional, and is outrageously expensive. I hear my Republican friends--you know, I don't know where they are today--wanting to destroy the ACA, and my Democratic friends say: Oh, we have to defend the ACA. The ACA is broken. It doesn't work. In my State, the cost of healthcare is going up 10, 15 percent. In America today, you have 85 million people who are uninsured or underinsured. The function of the healthcare system today is not to do what a sane society would do: guarantee healthcare to all people in a cost- effective way--something which, by the way, every other major nation on Earth manages to do. The function of our healthcare system, as everybody knows, is to make billions of dollars in profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies. So I say to my Democratic friends: It is not good enough to defend the Affordable Care Act. It is a broken system. You have to have the guts to stand up and allow us to do what every other major nation does: guarantee healthcare for all people as a human right, not allow the drug companies and the insurance companies to make massive profits every year. I want to touch on an issue that gets virtually no discussion, but I think it is enormously important, and it says a hell of a lot about what is going on in our society today. In America, according to international studies, our life expectancy--how long we live as a people--is about 4 years lower than other countries. In most European countries, people there live longer lives. In Japan, they live even longer lives than in Europe. So question No. 1 is, Why is that happening? We spend $14,000 a year per person on healthcare--almost double what any other country spends-- and yet people around the world are living on average 4 years longer than we do. But here is the really ugly fact, even worse than that, and that is that in this country, on average, if you are a working-class person, you will live a 7-years-shorter life than if you are in the top 1 percent. If you are a working-class person, your life will be 7 years shorter than if you are wealthy. In other words, being poor or working class in America today amounts to a death sentence. It is not only a broken healthcare system; we have to ask ourselves a simple question--and the Biden administration began a little bit of movement in this direction--and that is, Why are we living in a nation where one out of four people can't even afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe? Why are we in some cases paying 10 times more than our neighbors in Canada or in Europe? How does that happen? The answer, of course, has to do with the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and their power right here, all of the campaign contributions they make, which has prevented us from negotiating prices. But it is not just healthcare or prescription drugs when we look at what is going on in America. In Vermont and throughout this country, we have a major housing crisis. Here we are, the richest country on Earth, and 800,000 people are sleeping out on the streets and 20 million people are spending more than 50 percent of their limited incomes on housing. Can you imagine that? If you are a working person spending 50 percent of your income on housing, how do you have money to do anything else? And the cost of housing is soaring. Do not tell me that in a nation which can spend a trillion dollars on the military, a nation that can give massive tax breaks to the rich, that we cannot build the millions of units of housing we desperately need. So why is all of this happening? Why do we have a healthcare system that is broken and prescription drugs that are the most expensive in the world and a housing system and education in deep trouble? I talk to educators in Vermont and all over the country. I talked to a principal the other day in Vermont. The starting salary at a public school is $32,000 a year. But don't worry--they can't afford to even bring people in because they can't afford housing in the community. Why have we let education sink to the level that it has? I think the bottom line of all of this is that the American people, I think, are catching on. And Mr. Musk--I must thank him because he has made it very clear. We are living in an oligarchic form of society. If anybody out there thinks Mr. Musk is running around out of the goodness of his heart trying to make our government more efficient, you have not a clue as to what is going on. What these guys want to do is destroy virtually every Federal program that impacts the well-being of working people--Social Security, Medicare, the Postal Service, public education, you name it--so they can get huge tax breaks for the rich and eventually make government so inefficient that they will have the ability as large corporations to come in and privatize everything that is going on. So this is a pivotal moment in American history, and I sense that the American people have had it up to here. They are prepared to fight back. They do not want a government run by billionaires who have it all, whose greed is uncontrollable. We have in Vermont and I think all over this country a serious problem with addiction, with drugs, people drinking too much alcohol, people smoking too many cigarettes. The worst form of addiction this country now faces is the greed of the oligarchy. You might think that if you had $10, $20 billion, it would be enough--you know, kind of enough to let your family live for the next 20 generations--but it is not. For whatever reason, for whatever compulsive reason they have, these guys want more and more and more, and they are prepared to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and nutrition programs for hungry people in order to get even more. That, to me, is disgusting. Now we are at a pivotal moment in American history. Now, having been all over this country, many parts of this country, I am absolutely confident that the American people--and I am not just talking about Democrats, who are as complicit in the problems that we have right now as are Republicans. We have a two-party system which is basically corrupt. You have Mr. Musk over on the Republican side saying to any Republican who dares to stand up and defy the Trump agenda: We are going to primary you. On the Democratic side, you have AIPAC and you have other super PACs saying: You stand up for working people, you are in trouble as well. We have a corrupt campaign finance system in which billionaires are able to buy elections. And that is why, all over this country, people are not happy with our two-party system, the Republicans and the Democrats. So this is a pivotal moment in American history, but we have had difficult moments before. I am confident from the bottom of my heart that if we stand together and we do not allow some rightwing extremists to divide us up by the color of our skin or our religion or where we were born or our sexual orientation--if we stand together, we can save this country, we can defeat oligarchy, we can defeat the movement toward authoritarianism, and, in fact, we can create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the few. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Wyden for his outstanding work as the former chairman of the Finance Committee and now as the ranking member. I get around Vermont a bit. I get around the country a bit. And, generally speaking, when I talk to a group of people, I ask them a simple question. I say: What do you think about the healthcare system? Is it working well or is it broken? Is it dysfunctional? And, overwhelmingly, the hands go up that the American healthcare system today is broken, it is dysfunctional, and it is cruel. And what people understand is the function of the American healthcare system, today, is not to provide quality healthcare to all of our people, which, in fact, goes on in every other major country on Earth. It is to make huge profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies. The current healthcare system is a system in which we spend twice as much per capita on healthcare as do the people of any other nation--an astronomical sum of money. And yet despite all that money, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and the cost of healthcare keeps going up every single year. One out of four Americans cannot afford the costs of the drugs that their doctors prescribe. And, unbelievably, it is a system in which 60,000 Americans die each year because they can't get to a doctor on time. It is a system in which we don't have enough doctors, we don't have enough nurses, we don't have enough dentists, and we don't have enough pharmacists. But the good news is the insurance companies and the drug companies are making huge profits. The current healthcare system is a system in which our life expectancy is lower than in any other major country, and if you are working class in America, you are going to live 7 years of shorter life than if you are wealthy. It is a system in which some 500,000 people go bankrupt each year because of medically related debt. It is a system where, in large parts of our country, rural hospitals are being shut down and where people even with decent insurance have to travel hours in order to find a doctor. As Senator Wyden indicated, in December, after months and months of difficult negotiations--and I want to congratulate Senator Wyden, Senator Crapo, and all of the people involved in those negotiations--we made some progress on this healthcare crisis by coming together on a bipartisan and bicameral agreement on a healthcare package. That legislation, while more modest than I would have wanted, would have provided $4.5 billion for community health centers this year and $4.6 billion next year, up 15 percent from a few years ago. Community health centers provide primary healthcare to 32 million Americans--working-class, lower income people. They do a phenomenal job, but they are under financial stress. That legislation would have provided $350 million a year, over 2 years, for the National Health Service Corps, so we can attract young people to go out and work--young doctors to work in underserved areas. And it would have provided $300 million a year for teaching health centers. It would have also lowered the outrageous price of prescription drugs by taking on the greed of pharmacy benefit managers. It was a bipartisan bill. And just before that bill was going to be passed, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, who does not have to worry about whether he and his friends can afford healthcare, he sent out a series of tweets--some of them outrageously dishonest--to kill this legislation, and he succeeded in doing so. So, today, it is important that we take a step forward and undo the damage that Mr. Musk caused, and the legislation that we are proposing today would, in fact, begin to take us back where we were. It would increase funding for community health centers and do all of the other important work that Senator Wyden wanted. We have a healthcare crisis in America today. The CR that we are going to be voting on in a little while will make a bad situation worse. This is an opportunity to tell the American people that we are aware of the healthcare crisis; we are at least trying to do something. And I would yield back to Senator Wyden.

Mr. SANDERS. That is it?

Mr. SANDERS. We have a healthcare crisis--85 million uninsured or underinsured, people dying because they can't afford healthcare. We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We have reached a bipartisan conclusion to go forward in a modest way, but it would have some impact in approving healthcare in America, and my Republican colleague objects. That is about it. Well, I hope the American people are watching.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as people all over this country understand, we are a nation today that faces enormous crises. Sadly, the continuing resolution passed Tuesday in the U.S. House and which will come to this body very shortly not only does nothing to address these crises but, in fact, it makes a bad situation much worse. Today, at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country, 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. What that means--I grew up in a family living paycheck to paycheck. It means that people are worried about how they are going to afford housing. What happens if their landlord raises the rent? People go to the grocery store, and they see the high prices of food and wonder how they are going to feed their kids. People are looking at the outrageous cost of childcare, but you need childcare if you are going to go to work. How can you afford childcare? Our healthcare system is dysfunctional. People worry about how they can afford healthcare if they are lucky enough to be able to find a doctor. That is the reality of what is going on in our country today: The rich are getting richer; working people are struggling; and 800,000 Americans are sleeping out on the streets. So, given that reality, what does this bill do--the bill written by the rightwing extremists in the House of Representatives without any bipartisan discussion at all? What does this bill do? Well, let me count the ways. It makes the financial struggles of working people even more difficult than they are today, and it does all of that to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for Elon Musk and the billionaire class. For a start, some 22 percent of our seniors in this country are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less, which, to me, is really quite incredible. I don't know how anybody, let alone a senior, survives on $15,000 a year or less. Half of our seniors are trying to survive on $30,000 a year or less. So what does the Trump-Musk administration do to address the terrible economic pressures on seniors all over America? Well, they have got a brilliant idea. They illegally fire thousands of workers at the Social Security Administration, with plans to cut that staff in half. In America today, 30,000 people die each year while waiting to receive their Social Security disability benefits because of a grossly understaffed and underresourced Social Security Administration. My office--and I expect the Presiding Officer's office and I expect every other office--gets calls every day from seniors, saying: I am having a problem with Social Security. I can't make contact with the Social Security people. They are not getting back to me. That is because, today, they are understaffed. If Musk and Trump get their way and the Social Security Administration's staff is cut in half, nobody can deny that that will be a death sentence for many thousands of seniors who desperately need their benefits. Now, Mr. Musk, who is worth a few hundred billion, may not understand that there are millions of seniors in this country who have nothing in the bank, who worry every day as to how they are going to heat their homes or buy the food that they need, and if they can't get the benefits that they need, some of them will, in fact, die. Let me be clear: When you have Mr. Musk calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme despite the fact that it has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the last 80-plus years, that ain't no Ponzi scheme. When you have the President of the United States coming before Congress and lying--outrageously lying--about millions of people who are 150 or 200 years of age receiving Social Security benefits--a total lie--everybody should understand what is going on. Trump and Musk are laying the groundwork for dismantling the most successful Federal program in history--Social Security--a program that keeps over 27 million Americans out of poverty. By the way, just to set the record straight, over 99 percent of the more than 70 million Social Security checks that go out each month are going to people who earned those benefits--over 99 percent. People 150 or 500 years of age are not getting Social Security checks. But this continuing resolution that passed in the House is not just a vicious attack on Social Security; it is an attack on the veterans of our Nation--the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our country. While we made some progress under the Biden administration in improving veterans' healthcare, the truth is that the VA has remained significantly understaffed. In the fourth quarter of 2024, there were 36,000 vacancies at the VA. We needed 2,400 more doctors, 6,300 more registered nurses, 3,400 more schedulers, 1,800 more social workers, and 1,200 more custodians. So what do the Trump administration and Mr. Musk do to address this very serious workforce shortage? Their answer is that they are threatening to dismantle the VA by firing 83,000 employees. In other words, you have got a shortage today, and their solution to the shortage is to fire 83,000 workers. Not only does this CR do nothing to stop that, but it cuts more than $20 billion in funding needed to provide care for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances next year. Pathetically, our Nation--the richest country on Earth--has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on the planet, and that is often reflected in the crises facing many public schools today. Throughout America, children are coming into school hungry; kids are coming into school with serious mental issues; kids are coming into school from dysfunctional families and families often dealing with drug abuse. And what is the Trump-Musk administration doing about that crisis? Well, their response was interesting. Just the other day, they fired half of the staff at the Department of Education. That means that it will be far harder to administer the title I program that helps 26 million low-income kids get the education they need and pays the salaries of some 180,000 public school teachers throughout the country. So how does a school in a working-class community survive if you don't get the funds to pay for teachers? Further, it means that it will be far harder to administer the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the IDEA, that provides vital resources for 7\1/2\ million kids with disabilities. We have made progress in a bipartisan way over the last number of years to say to families: If your kid has a disability, that kid can still go to a public school. There will be services available for that kid. But when you cut the Department of Education staff here in Washington in half, that is going to be extremely difficult to do, and it means that it will be far harder for some 7 million low-income and working- class students to get the Pell grants they need to get a higher education. In fact, just hours after the Department of Education laid off half of its staff, the website for the free application for Federal Student Aid that working families use to apply for Pell grants and other financial institutions crashed. They fired workers, and the website crashed for the people who were applying for Pell grants. This CR that we will be looking at perhaps tomorrow gives the Trump administration the green light to make these horrific cuts to education. And it is not just education. We have a major healthcare crisis in our country. Despite spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as the people of any other major country, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Over 500,000 of our people go bankrupt because of medically related debt; over 60,000 people die each year because they can't afford to get to a doctor on time; and our life expectancy is not only lower than in almost any other major country, it is a system wherein working-class and low-income Americans die 7 years younger than wealthier Americans. So you have got a crisis: People can't find a doctor. People are going bankrupt because of healthcare bills. And what does this CR do? Well, at a time when, in particular, our primary healthcare system is completely broken, when we don't have enough doctors or nurses or dentists or mental health counselors, this proposal cuts--cuts-- community health center funding by 3.2 percent; it cuts the National Health Service Corps by over 5 percent; and it cuts funding for teaching health centers--a program which helps train doctors in rural and underserved areas--by almost 13 percent. So, in the midst of a horrific primary healthcare crisis in Vermont and all over rural America, this proposal will make it that much harder for people to get the healthcare that they desperately need. But it is not just healthcare. Everybody in this country, from Vermont to Los Angeles, understands we have a major housing crisis. It is not just all of the homelessness we are seeing. Over 20 million of our people, incredibly, spend more than 50 percent of their limited income on housing. How in God's name do you pay for anything else? How do you buy food? How do you take care of healthcare if you are spending 50 percent or more for your housing? So how does this CR address the housing crisis? Well, it does it by cutting rental assistance for low-income families in America by $700 million, which could lead to more than 32,000 families in our country being evicted from their homes. Well, that is a heck of a solution to the housing crisis: You make it much worse. But it is not just housing. I know that the President might disagree. He thinks that climate change is a hoax. The whole scientific community understands that it is an existential threat. They understand that the last 10 years have been the warmest ever recorded, and extreme weather disturbances and natural disasters have been taking place all over the world--from California to India, across Europe, to North Carolina. So what does the CR do about the existential threat of climate change? It does not even specify funding levels within the Environmental Protection Agency. In other words, the administration can simply eliminate funding for climate change and environmental justice, and that would be consistent with this CR. And on top of all of this, the administration is already indicating that they will simply ignore the provisions of the spending bill they don't like. This week, it was reported that Vice President JD Vance said to the Senate Republican caucus: I want everyone to vote yes. The President, under section II, will ensure allocations from Congress are not spent on things that harm the taxpayer. There is so much grift in Washington. Let's move this CR, get to reconciliation, and for Congress to pass appropriations. In other words, what Vance is saying is: Don't worry about what is actually in the bill. If the Trump administration doesn't like it, they won't do it. And let's be clear: The House CR that was passed in an extremely partisan vote--I think they won by 3 or 4 votes. One Democrat out of-- whatever--215 voted for it. The House CR and the Trump administration are doing everything they can to lay the groundwork for more tax breaks for billionaires, paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, housing, and education. So you are looking at a one-two punch: a very bad CR and then a reconciliation bill coming down, which will be the final kick in the teeth for the American people. This legislation that the Republicans are working on--the reconciliation bill--would cut taxes for billionaires in the top 1 percent by over $1.1 trillion over the next decade. According to a recent study, if all of Trump's so-called ``America First'' policies are enacted, the bottom 95 percent of Americans will see their taxes go up, while the richest 5 percent will see their taxes go down--way down. I should also mention that that reconciliation bill which Republicans are working on right now would also cut Medicaid by $880 billion. Tax breaks for billionaires; throwing low-income kids off of healthcare; decimating nursing homes all over America, because nursing homes receive two-thirds of their funding from Medicaid; making it harder for community health centers to survive, which provide healthcare to 32 million Americans, because 43 percent of their revenue comes from Medicaid--cut Medicaid by $880 billion, and you will significantly deteriorate the quality of healthcare all over America, at a time when the system is already broken. Further, the reconciliation bill proposes to cut at least $230 billion from nutrition. Today, nearly one out of five kids in America rely on Federal nutrition programs to keep them from going hungry. I find it rather remarkable that the richest person on Earth, somebody worth hundreds of billions of dollars--that he and his other oligarch friends are working night and day to cut programs for the working people of this country and to actually deny food to hungry kids in America. There is no world, no universe, no religion that would not believe that that is grossly immoral and unacceptable. You don't give tax breaks to the rich and take food away from hungry children. The House CR bill that we will be soon voting on here is a piece of legislation I cannot support. Instead, what the Senate must do is pass a 30-day CR so that all Members of Congress, not just the House Republican leadership, can come together and produce a good piece of legislation that works for all Americans and not just the few. We have an opportunity now to serve the American people. We have an opportunity to write something that reflects what people in the Congress feel, what the people in America feel. I go around the country, and, just a couple of weeks ago, I held a telephone townhall in Vermont. We are a small State. We only have about 650,000 people. Yet on that telephone townhall, there were 34,000 people listening in. It is a significant percentage of a small State. I have been in many parts of the country recently. I have been in Iowa. I have been in Wisconsin. I have been in Nebraska. I have been in Michigan. And what I can tell you with absolute certainty is, whether people are conservative, whether they are Republican, whether they are progressive, whether they are moderate, whether they are Independent-- whatever they may be--there are very few people in this country who think we should give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the rich and cut back on Medicaid, education, and nutritional programs for hungry children. So, Mr. President, what I strongly propose is that we pass a 30-day CR; that we do what has always been the case here in the Senate: have both bodies, both parties work together to come up with a good piece of legislation. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, my office and I suspect all Senate offices are getting a whole lot of calls from senior citizens who are experiencing a great deal of fear and anxiety with all of the confusion and chaos that is currently going on here in Washington. When we have the President and my Republican colleagues talking about cutting Medicaid by some $880 billion--let us be clear--they are not just talking about throwing millions of children and others off of the health insurance they have; they are also talking about cuts to community health centers, which receive about 43 percent of their funding from Medicaid and where millions of seniors go to get their primary care. So cutting Medicaid impacts primary care. At a time when we have a major crisis in nursing home availability--I know that is true in Vermont; I expect it is true in almost every State in the country--let us understand that Medicaid provides approximately two out of three seniors with the funding they need to live in nursing homes. Make drastic cuts in Medicaid, and it is going to be harder for your mom, your dad to get into a nursing home or to stay in a nursing home. Cuts in Medicaid would be a disaster for seniors in nursing homes. But it is not just Medicaid cuts that worry seniors. At a time when the Social Security Administration is already understaffed--and again, for years, I have been hearing in my office--I expect other Senators have been hearing in their offices--from seniors who tell us they are calling up Social Security, they have got a problem, and they are not getting a response. And the result of that is that some 30,000 people a year die--die--waiting for their Social Security disability benefits. And in the midst of all of that, in the midst of a crisis where Social Security is understaffed, when our response should be to significantly increase staffing so that Social Security can better respond to the needs of our constituents, we have Elon Musk and his minions at DOGE cutting some 2,500 of Social Security staff. And, incredibly, they are now threatening to cut up to half of Social Security Administration staffing. And then, on top of all that, you have Mr. Musk claiming that Social Security, which has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American for over 80 years, claiming that it is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American for over 80 years. And then you have the President of the United States--State of the Union--lying about millions of people: Oh, millions of people, 200 years of age, 300 years of age, imagine that, getting Social Security benefits. Seniors understand what all of that is about. They know that Musk and Trump want us to lose faith in Social Security and that, over a period of time, they want to give that indispensable program over to Wall Street. So let us be clear: In America today, 22 percent of Americans living who are 65 years of age are trying to survive on an income of less than $15,000 a year. Think about that: 22 percent of seniors in America trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. Half of seniors are trying to get by on $30,000 a year or less. Frankly, I don't know how any senior living on $15,000, $20,000 survives. I don't know. The high cost of prescription drugs, food, housing, keeping warm in the winter, I don't know how they can do that. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we now have the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of senior poverty compared to other wealthy nations. In America today, according to the latest OECD estimates, 23 percent of seniors are living in poverty compared to just 4 percent in Norway, 6 percent in France, and 11.5 percent in Canada. Yes, we have more nuclear weapons than any other country; we have more billionaires than any other country, but we also have one of the highest rates of senior poverty of any country on Earth. We might want to get our priorities right. Now, while my Republican colleagues would like to make massive cuts to Medicaid in order to provide more tax breaks to billionaires, some of us have a better idea. We think that it makes more sense to substantially improve the lives of our Nation's seniors by expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare, one of the most popular and successful government programs in our Nation's history, into law. Before the enactment--this is really quite interesting. Before the enactment of Medicare, about half of our seniors were uninsured. Today, everyone in America age 65 or older is guaranteed healthcare benefits through Medicare regardless of their income or medical condition. That is the good news. The bad news is that, since its inception 60 years ago, Medicare has failed to cover such basic healthcare needs as hearing, dental care, and vision. The result: Millions of senior citizens have teeth that are rotting in their mouths. They are unable to hear what their children say or they are unable to read a newspaper because of failing eyesight. This is the United States of America. We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Senior citizens should not be walking around with no teeth in their mouth. They should not be unable to hear conversations. They should not be unable to afford glasses so that they can read a newspaper. The need to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and eyeglasses is absolutely critical. Nobody--nobody--denies that oral health, hearing, and vision are essential parts of healthcare. We cannot continue to deny seniors these basic healthcare benefits. We can no longer tolerate the fact that 26 million seniors and people with disabilities in America have no dental insurance and no idea how they will be able to pay for the very expensive dental procedures that they need. The results have been tragic. Nearly one out of five seniors in America have lost all of their natural teeth. Twenty percent of seniors in America have no natural teeth in their mouths. Disgracefully, 60 percent of our Nation's seniors have untreated gum disease, which can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. Further, it is not acceptable that while nearly two-thirds of seniors over the age of 70 experience hearing loss, less than 30 percent of seniors above this age have ever used a hearing aid, primarily because hearing aids are too expensive. In my view, no senior in America should face isolation from their families and friends simply because they cannot afford the extremely high price of a hearing aid. In addition, we cannot continue to allow seniors with poor vision to go without routine eye exams or properly prescribed glasses. Poor vision can lead to injury, cognitive impairment, and depression. Adding dental, vision, and hearing benefits to Medicare is not just good public policy; it will not only ease human suffering and improve the health of our Nation's seniors; it is precisely what the overwhelming majority of the American people want. Poll after poll tells us exactly that. According to a poll conducted by Data for Progress last year, it found that 92 percent of the American people support expanding Medicare to provide dental, vision, and hearing benefits, and that is why I have introduced legislation today with Senators Warren, Booker, Welch, Markey, Duckworth, Merkley, and Blumenthal to do just that. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, in the House, has introduced similar legislation, which has more than 110 cosponsors. Now, I am sure that some of my Republican colleagues may say: Well, you know, it is an interesting idea. It is a good idea, but how are you going to pay for it? So let me tell you how we are going to pay for it. We are going to pay for it by requiring Medicare to pay no more for prescription drugs than the VA. Right now, we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and that means significantly increased expenses for Medicare. By making sure that Medicare pays no more than the VA, which has for years--for decades--negotiated prices with the pharmaceutical industry, we could not only cut the price of prescription drugs for our seniors in half, we will save over $800 billion over the next decade, which would more--more--than pay for this legislation. Lower the costs of prescription drugs, and get the revenue we need to cover dental, vision, and hearing for seniors. Now, some of my Republican friends may also argue that this bill is not needed. Some Medicare Advantage plans already offer dental, vision, and hearing benefits, yes, but what my Republican friends may not tell you is, one, seniors still pay thousands of dollars out of pocket because these private Medicare Advantage benefits are totally inadequate. Further, the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has estimated that Medicare Advantage plans overcharge the Federal Government by $83 billion a year. In other words, if we are serious about waste, fraud, and abuse--hear a lot about that--we may want to take a look at the massive waste and fraud that is taking place with private Medicare Advantage plans. Those savings would also more than fully pay for this legislation. Therefore, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 939, which was introduced earlier today, that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. SANDERS. I ask my colleague, my friend, the chairman of the Finance Committee a question. I hear what you are saying. Do I hear you correctly that you are prepared to discuss this legislation in committee?

Mr. SANDERS. Look, I understand that this bill would bring forth serious debate and discussion, but I would appreciate if we could have a starting point. This bill is pretty simple. It says--and I hear you saying that you need--am I hearing you correctly to say that the idea of covering dental, vision, and hearing is something that you entertain, you think is a good idea, or am I not hearing that?