Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to my science policy fellow, Adria Wilson, through the end of the session.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, as we begin this new session, I think it is important for us to remember why we are here and what our job is as Senators. What our job is, it seems to me, is to try to understand the needs of the American people, the problems facing our constituents, and propose real solutions to those problems. So before we get involved in all of the debates I know we are going to have, let me put on the floor what I believe--in hearing from the people of the State of Vermont--are some of the most important issues facing our country and the need for the Senate, the Congress, and the President to address those issues. First and foremost, to my mind, is the state of American democracy. We are a democracy, and men and women have fought and died to preserve American democracy, which means the people of America--not kings, not queens, not an aristocracy but the people of this country--regardless of where they come from or their economic status, have the right to participate in the political process, to elect their leaders and create the future they want for themselves and their kids. What is the status of American democracy today? We just came out of a midterm election where Republicans did very well. But I think it is important to understand that in that election--that national election-- 63 percent of the American people didn't vote. Eighty percent of young people didn't vote. The overwhelming majority of low-income and working people didn't vote. There are a million reasons an individual doesn't vote, but my guess is that for many people they look at the political process and they say: Yes, my family is hurting. I am working longer hours for lower wages. My job went to China. My kid can't afford to go to college. I can't afford health insurance. What are those people in Washington doing to protect my interest? Not much--not the Republicans, not the Democrats. I am hurting. What are they doing? People say: Hey, I don't want to participate in this process. It doesn't mean anything. I am not going to vote. I think another aspect about why people don't vote is they turn on their TVs and they are bombarded with 30-second ugly television ads-- often ads that come not even from the candidate but from people who do ``independent expenditures.'' As a result of the disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, billionaires, corporations are now allowed to spend unlimited sums of money in a political process. If somebody is a billionaire, they can now spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy other candidates or to elect the candidates they want. Is that truly what American democracy is supposed to be about? Do we believe that men and women fought and died for us so billionaires can elect candidates to protect the wealthy and the powerful? I would say at the very top of the agenda for this Congress should be a movement to overturn, through a constitutional amendment, this disastrous Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United. In my view, we should move toward public funding of elections so all of our people, regardless of their economic status, can participate in the political process and run for office. I think the next issue we have to take a very hard look at is the 40- year decline of the American middle class. I know some of my Republican friends talk about what has happened under the Obama administration, and they are right in saying we are nowhere where we should be economically. No one debates that. But let us not forget where we were 6 years ago when George W. Bush left office. Everybody remembers where we were: 700,000 people a month--a month--were losing their jobs. People say: Hey, we are growing 200,000 or 300,000 jobs a month now, not good enough. Right, it is not good enough, but growing 200,000 or 300,000 jobs a month is a heck of a lot better than losing 700,000 jobs a month. Our financial system--the U.S. and the world's--was on the verge of financial collapse. That is where we were when Bush left office. Now Wall Street is doing very well. In terms of our deficit, when Bush left office we had a $1.4 trillion deficit. Now that deficit is somewhere around $500 billion. Are we where we want to be? No. Are we better off than we were 6 years ago? Absolutely. But when we look at the middle class today, we understand the problems are not just the last 6 years or the last 12 years. The problems are what has been going on over the last 40 years. The fact is, we have millions of working people who are earning, in real inflation-accounted dollars, substantially less than they were 40 years ago. How does it happen, when we are seeing an explosion in technology, when worker productivity has gone up, that the median male worker--that male worker right in the middle of the economy--earns $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago? Look at why people are angry. That is why they are angry. In inflation-accounted-for dollars, the median male worker is making $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,300 less last year than she made in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation. So people all over this country look to Washington and they say: What is going on? You gave us this great global economy. You have all these great unfettered free-trade agreements. We have all this technology. Yes, I know the billionaires are getting richer, millionaires are getting richer, with 95 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent. We have one family, the Walton family, now owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. Yes, the billionaires are doing great, but what is happening to me? What is happening to the middle class? The answer is, for a variety of reasons, in the last 40 years the middle class has shrunk significantly. Today we have more people living in poverty than at almost any other time in American history, and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. So what do we do? What do we do to rebuild the middle class? What do we do to create the millions of decent-paying jobs we need? Let me throw out a few suggestions that I hope in this session of Congress we will address. For a start, everybody in America understands our infrastructure is collapsing--no great secret. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, nearly one-quarter of the Nation's 600,000 bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and more than 30 percent have exceeded their design life. What that means is that all over this country bridges are being shut down because they are dangerous and they need repair, almost one third of America's roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and 42 percent of major urban highways are congested. As we speak, in cities all over America people are backed up in traffic jams, burning fuel and wasting time because we don't have proper infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers says we must invest $1.7 trillion by 2020--5 years-- just to get our Nation's roads, bridges, and transit to a state of good repair--more than four times the current rate of spending. So what happens when we invest in infrastructure? I will introduce legislation to invest $1 trillion in rebuilding our roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants, aquifers, older schools, and rail. When we do that, $1 trillion in infrastructure investment not only makes our country more productive and efficient, but it also creates a substantial number of decent-paying jobs. A $1 trillion investment would maintain and create 13 million decent-paying jobs. The fastest way to create good-paying jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. In my view, that should be a very, very high priority for this Congress. The second issue I think we need to address--and I understand there are differences of opinion on this issue. I think when our kids and our grandchildren look back on this period and they look at an issue such as the Keystone Pipeline, they will be saying: What were you people thinking about? How could you go forward in terms of increasing the exploration and production of some of the dirtiest oil on this planet when virtually all of the scientists were telling us that we have to substantially reduce carbon emissions and not increase carbon emissions? In my view, an important mission of this Congress is to listen to the science and the scientific community. They are telling us loudly and clearly that climate change is real, climate change is caused by human activity, climate change is already causing devastating problems in America and around the world in terms of drought, in terms of flooding, in terms of extreme weather disturbances, and we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency, into weatherization, into wind, into solar, into geothermal, and into other sustainable energies. When we do that, we not only lead the world in reversing climate change, but we also create a significant number of jobs. In this last election, interestingly enough in some of the most conservative States in America, voters voted to raise the minimum wage because they understand that a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour--here in Washington, DC, the Federal minimum wage--is literally a starvation wage. No family, no individual can live on $7.25 an hour. I applaud all those fast food workers all over this country--people who work at McDonald's and Burger King--for having the courage to go out on the streets and say: We have to raise the minimum wage. I applaud their courage in doing that, and I applaud the many States around this country, including the State of Vermont, who have raised the minimum wage. In my view, if someone works 40 hours a week, they should not be living in poverty. I hope that one of the major priorities in this Congress is to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Over a period of years, I would raise that minimum wage to $15 an hour. It is also unacceptable that in America today women who do the same work as men earn 78 cents on the dollar compared to male workers. I think we have to address this discrimination, and we need to move forward with pay equity for women workers. When we talk about the decline of the American middle class and the fact that millions of workers are working longer hours for lower wages, when we talk about the fact that in the last 14 or so years this country has lost 60,000 factories and millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs--when we put that issue on the table, we begin the discussion which is long, long overdue about our trade policies. That is what we have to talk about. The truth of the matter is that from Republican leadership in the White House to Democratic leadership in the White House, there has been support for a number of trade policies which, when looking at the cold facts, have failed. NAFTA has failed. CAFTA has failed. Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China--PNTR-- has failed. Over the last 30 years, Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents have continued to push unfettered free trade agreements which say to American workers: Guess what. You are now going to be competing against somebody in China who makes $1.50 an hour. If you don't like it, we are going to move our plant to China. And many companies have done exactly that. Do we think that is fair? Do we think that is right? I don't. We are going to be coming up with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, TPP. Without going into great detail at this point, I have very, very serious problems with that agreement. In terms of the process, no Member of this Congress has been able to walk into the office where these documents--highly complicated legal documents--are held, bring staff in there, and copy the information. We are not allowed to do that, but we are supposed to vote on a fast-track agreement to give the President the authority to negotiate that agreement. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. So I hope we use the TPP as an opportunity to rethink our trade agreements. Trade is a good thing, but American workers should not suffer from unfettered free trade. Trade should be used to benefit the middle class and working families of this country and not just the multinational corporations. We live in a highly competitive global economy. Everybody understands that. I think we also understand that our young people are not going to do well and our economy does not do well unless our people have the education they need to effectively compete in this global economy. It saddens me to note that a number of years ago the United States of America led the world in terms of the percentage of people who had college degrees. We were number one. Today we are number 12. The reason is that the cost of college has soared at the same time that the income of many middle-class and working-class people has declined. We are in a position now where hundreds of thousands of young people thinking about their future look at the cost of college, look at the debt they will incur when they leave college, and they are saying: I don't want to go to college. I am not going to go to college. I am not going to get post-high school education. That is a very bad thing for this country. It is a bad thing for our economy. We should put high up on the agenda the issue of how in America all of our people, regardless of the income of their families, can get the education they need without going deeply in debt. This issue of college indebtedness is a horror. I remember a few months ago talking to a young woman in Burlington, VT, who left medical school $300,000 in debt. Her crime was that she wanted to become a doctor and work with low-income people. She shouldn't be punished with a debt of $300,000. Other people are graduating college $50,000 in debt. And graduate school--we have attorneys in my office who have a debt of over $100,000. We can do better than that as a nation. Those are some of the issues. There are others out there. But I think what is most important is that we try to listen to where the American people are today--to the pain of a declining middle-class, to single moms desperately struggling to raise their kids with dignity, to older people trying to retire with a shred of dignity. On that issue, let me be very clear. If there is an attempt going to be made here in the Senate to cut Social Security or to cut Medicare, there will be at least one Senator fighting vigorously on that. Poverty among seniors is going up. Millions of seniors in this country are trying to make it on $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 a year. The last thing we should be talking about is cutting Social Security. In fact, we should be talking about expanding Social Security. There are a lot of issues out there. I hope we don't get lost in the weeds. I hope we focus on those issues that are major concerns to the American people. I hope very much that we have the courage to stand up to the very, very wealthy campaign contributors and their lobbyists who have enormous influence over what takes place here, and that we in fact represent the people who sent us here who are overwhelmingly middle- class and working-class people. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the truth is that despite our rather big egos, much of what we do in the Senate is pretty quickly forgotten. People have a hard time remembering what we did 2 months ago or yesterday, let alone last year. But I have a feeling that the Keystone Pipeline bill we are now discussing and decisions that will be made about that bill will not soon be forgotten--not by our children or our grandchildren and not by people throughout the world and, in fact, not by history. I believe that decades from now our kids and our grandchildren will scratch their heads and they will say: What world were these people--Members of Congress--living in in 2015 when they voted for this Keystone Pipeline? How did it happen that they did not listen to the overwhelming majority of scientists who told us we have to cut greenhouse gas emissions, not increase them? I think our kids and our grandchildren will be saying to us: Why did you do that to us? Why did you leave this planet less habitable than it could have been? The issue we are dealing with today is of huge consequence. I fear very much that a majority of the Members in the Senate and in the Congress are poised to make a very dangerous and wrong decision. In that light, I am more than delighted that President Obama has indicated he will veto this Keystone Pipeline bill if it is passed. Climate change is one of the great threats not only facing our country but facing the entire planet. It has the capability of causing severe harm to our economy, to our food supply, to access to water, and it raises all kinds of international national security issues. Let me read an excerpt from a letter sent to the Senate back in October 2009: Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and a disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades. This statement was signed by virtually every major scientific organization in this country, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, and many other scientific organizations. Scientists are not the only people warning us about the danger of climate change. Hear what the Department of Defense has to say about the impact of climate change on international and national security. What they point out--and I think what every sensible person understands--is that when people are unable to grow the food they need because of drought, when flood destroys their homes, when people throughout the world are forced to struggle for limited natural resources in order to survive, this lays the groundwork for the migration of people and international conflict. That is what the Department of Defense tells us. Now, given all of the scientific evidence and given the concerns raised by our own Department of Defense and national security experts all over the world and given the fact that the most recent decade--the last 10 years--was the Nation's warmest on record, one would think that when the National Climate Assessment warns us that global warming could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States by the end of the century--can we imagine this planet becoming 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and what this means to the planet? When sea levels have already risen by nearly 7 inches over the last century and are expected to rise another 10 inches to 2.6 feet by the end of the century--when all of that is on the table, one would think this Senate would be saying: All right, we have an international crisis. How do we reverse climate change? Instead, what the debate is about is how we transport some of the dirtiest oil in the world and thereby cause more carbon emissions into the atmosphere. I suspect our kids and our grandchildren will look back on this period and say: What world were you living in? Why did you do that to us? It would seem to me that what we should be debating here is how we impose a tax on carbon so that we can break our dependence on fossil fuel. That is what we should be discussing, not how we increase carbon emissions. We should be discussing what kind of legislation we bring forward that moves us aggressively toward energy efficiency, weatherization, and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, and geothermal. That is the kind of bill that should be on the floor. We should be having a debate about legislation that makes our transportation system far more efficient, that expands rail and helps us get cars and trucks off the road. We should be having a debate about how we can create the kind of automobiles that run on electricity and make them less expensive and how we can get cars running 80 to 100 miles per gallon. Those are the kinds of debates and that is the kind of legislation we should be having on the floor, not how do we expand the production and the transportation of some of the dirtiest oil on the planet. In my view, the U.S. Congress in a very profound way should not be in the business of rejecting science because when we reject science, we become the laughingstock of the world. How do we go forward? How do we prepare legislation if it is not based on scientific evidence? And to say to the overwhelming majority of scientists that we are ignoring what they are telling us and we are going to move in exactly the wrong direction I think makes us look like fools in front of the entire world. How do we go forward and tell China and India and Russia and countries around the world that climate change is a huge planetary crisis at the same time as we are facilitating the construction of the Keystone Pipeline? So I am delighted the President will veto this legislation if it happens to pass the Congress. Our job now is not to bring more carbon into the atmosphere; it is to transform our energy system away from coal, away from oil, away from fossil fuel, and toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy. That should be the direction of this country, and we should lead the world in moving in that direction. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back any remaining time.

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, it is no secret to anyone in America that the middle class of our country today is struggling; that while millions of American workers are now working longer hours for lower wages than they did in some cases 30 or 40 years ago--we are looking at a 40-year decline of the middle class--that almost all of the new income being generated today is going to the top 1 percent. Tragically, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth. But the issue is not just for the middle class right now or for working families. The issue of the economic crisis we are in significantly impacts senior citizens and children, the most vulnerable people in this country. My hope always has been that as a great nation we will not turn our backs on the children of America. But year after year that is exactly what we do. We continue to have millions of children living in poverty. In fact, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. Almost 20 percent of our kids live in poverty. We have about one out of four children in America who gets their nutrition from the food stamp program. I worry very much about the future of this country if we cannot stand with the children of America; if we cannot make sure that working parents all over this country have high quality, affordable childcare. That is certainly not the case right now, despite the fact that virtually all psychologists recognize that the most important years of a human being's life are zero to four. But our childcare system is a disaster. It is not only the children we have turned our backs on. Increasingly we are turning our backs on senior citizens as well. It has distressed me for a number of years to be hearing many of my Republican friends and some Democrats talking about the need to cut Social Security--to cut Social Security. There are various schemes out there--some of them have to do with the so-called chained CPI--which would reformulate how we determine cost-of-living adjustments for seniors. This means, in fact, over a period of years significant reductions in what seniors and disabled veterans would get. We have worked, I have worked, in opposition to that concept for years. I think we have beaten it back, but I have no doubt that it will surface again. There are folks who want to cut Social Security, and, in my view, we have to do everything we can not only to defeat that proposal but we have to begin talking about how we expand Social Security benefits. Because today the kind of benefits that millions of seniors get are simply not adequate for them in terms of giving them the income they need to purchase the medicine they require, the food they need, the fuel to heat their homes in the wintertime, and other basic necessities. In terms of Social Security, let me be very clear. Despite what folks on TV may be saying, and some politicians may be saying, Social Security is not going broke. Let me repeat: Social Security is not going broke. Today Social Security has a surplus in the trust fund of $2.76 trillion--a surplus of $2.76 trillion--and can pay out benefits to every eligible American for the next 19 years, to the year 2033. So anyone who comes forward and says Social Security is going broke, that is just factually not true. Social Security can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 19 years. We also hear the argument: Well, we have a large deficit, and Social Security is one of the causes of our deficit and our national debt. That is absolutely inaccurate. Social Security has not contributed one nickel to our deficit or our national debt, because Social Security, as every worker in America knows, is independently funded through payroll tax contributions from workers and employers--6.2 percent from each-- and it does not receive funding from the Federal Treasury. So, a, Social Security is not going broke; and, b, it is not contributing to the deficit. But I will say this about Social Security. In an incredibly volatile economy, the stock market goes up, the stock market goes down. Social Security, from its inception 79 years ago, through good economic times and bad economic times, has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible beneficiary with minimal administrative cost. Social Security is not an investment program. You can invest money on Wall Street, and sometimes you do well. You can invest money on Wall Street, and sometimes you lose your shirt. Social Security is a social insurance program. It has never failed 1 American in 79 years. That is a pretty good record. But even with Social Security being strong and solvent for the next 19 years, we have to recognize we do have a retirement crisis in America today. I fear very much that the appropriations bill just passed the other day, which will allow pensions for millions of workers to be cut, is only going to exacerbate that problem. Today in America only one in five workers has a traditional defined benefit that guarantees income in retirement. Amazingly enough, when we talk about anxiety among the American people, stress among the American people, and why people are angry, why they are fearful, over half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings. Stop and think about that. If you have less than $10,000 in savings, an automobile accident or needing a new car can wipe you out; an illness can wipe you out; a divorce can wipe you out. So we have millions and millions of Americans sitting there wondering how they are going to retire with dignity when they have $5,000, $8,000 or less in savings. Here is the importance of Social Security: Two-thirds of senior citizens today depend upon Social Security for more than half of their income; one-third of all seniors depend upon Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income. So when we talk about cutting Social Security, understand that a third of seniors depend upon Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income. This is not extra money; this is not fun money; this is life-and-death money. This is money that people need to buy medicine, food, and to keep their homes warm in the wintertime. I wish I could say otherwise, but the truth is that the percentage of seniors living in poverty in America is going up. In 2011, the official senior poverty rate was 8.7 percent. Last year the official senior poverty rate was 9.5 percent. That is a pretty significant increase in senior poverty. But if we look at the Census Bureau's more comprehensive measure of poverty, which takes a careful look at the out-of-pocket medical costs for seniors, the poverty rate for seniors is even worse. According to this supplemental poverty measure from the Census Bureau, the real senior poverty rate in America is actually 14.6 percent. What that means is that one out of seven seniors living in America last year could not afford to meet their most basic needs. The average Social Security benefit today is just $14,000 a year. As someone who will be the next ranking member of the Budget Committee, I intend to do everything I can not only to oppose vigorously any efforts to cut Social Security, I am going to do everything I can to expand Social Security benefits. In fact, the best way to expand Social Security is to ask the wealthiest people in our country to pay more into the system by scrapping the cap on income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax. As the Presiding Officer knows, right now a billionaire pays the same amount into Social Security as someone who makes $117,000 a year. So if there is a multimillionaire here--somebody who is making $50 million--and somebody who is making $117,000, they both contribute the same amount into the Social Security trust fund. This is regressive. This is unfair. This is absurd. If we lifted this cap and applied the Social Security payroll tax to income above $250,000--not $117,000, but $250,000 a year, we could not only extend the solvency of Social Security for decades to come--which is what we want to do--but we could also provide the resources necessary to expand Social Security benefits. That is exactly what we should be doing, and that in fact is what the American people want us to do. In August 2014, a poll by Lake Research Partners asked likely voters if they support the idea of: . . . increasing Social Security benefits and paying for that increase by having wealthy Americans pay the same rate into Social Security as everybody else. Interestingly, the poll found that 90 percent of Democratic voters said they support the idea, and 75 percent strongly support that idea of lifting the cap; 73 percent of Independent voters support that idea, 55 percent strongly support it; 73 percent of Republican voters support that idea, 47 percent strongly support it. So there is for that idea enormously strong support across the political spectrum, Democrats, Independents, Republicans. Sadly, despite this overwhelming support for expanding Social Security, the CEOs at the Business Roundtable--the organization representing the largest corporations in America--came out with a plan last year which does exactly what the American people do not want to do. The American people want to expand Social Security and the Business Roundtable came out with a plan that would increase the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70 and severely cut the COLA of senior citizens and disabled veterans. The Congress and the Senate here have got to make a very fundamental decision, and that is: Do we listen to the American people who are hurting today--the seniors who have worked their whole lives but who cannot get by in what in many cases are meager and inadequate Social Security benefits--do we listen to them? Do we stand up for and with the people who helped build this country--who worked the farms, who worked in our factories, who served us in our Armed Forces? Do we stand with them and expand Social Security, or do we listen to those on Wall Street and corporate America who want to cut Social Security benefits and in some cases want to privatize Social Security? This is a huge issue for tens of millions of Americans. I intend to do everything I can not only to resist cuts to Social Security but to do everything we can to expand Social Security benefits for those seniors and disabled vets who desperately need that expansion. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Later today or tomorrow, we are going to be dealing with the $1 trillion omnibus bill, and I will explain why I will be firmly voting against that bill. But before I do, I think it is important to put the budget in the broader context of what is happening in America. We can't look at a budget in the abstract; we have to see it in the context. The context is that right now most Americans understand the middle class of this country is disappearing. Median family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999. Today the median male worker is making $700 less in inflation-adjusted dollars than he made 41 years ago. The median female worker is making $1,300 less than she made 7 years ago. Meanwhile, while the middle class disappears and we have more people living in poverty than at almost any time in modern American history, the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. We have massive wealth inequality in America. One family, the Walton family, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. The top one-tenth of 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of the American people. Today, unbelievably, 95 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent and corporate profits are at an all-time high. That is the overall reality of what is going on with the American economy today. And in the midst of that, we have the budget. So let's talk a little about this $1 trillion budget and how it addresses or doesn't address the problems facing our country. Are there good things in this budget? The answer is: Absolutely. I am chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, and I want to thank Chairman Mikulski and others for making sure that our VA gets the kind of budget they need. Included in that budget, by the way, is also a provision called advanced appropriations for the VA, which will mean that in the event of a government shutdown, veterans will still be able to get the disability benefits they desperately need. And there are other provisions in there that are very good. But overall, if you look at the budget in the context of contemporary American society, this is simply not a good budget. Let me pick up three points where I have strong disagreements. I think the vast majority of the American people understand that we have huge unmet needs in this country. I expect in the Chair's State of Virginia, in Vermont, and all over this country we all know our infrastructure is crumbling--our roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants. Our rail system is falling behind Europe, Japan, China. We have enormous work to be done. The American Society of Civil Engineers tells us we have to invest $3 trillion into rebuilding our infrastructure. In terms of college, we know there are hundreds of thousands of bright young people who can't afford to go to college. Others are graduating school saddled forever with these terrible debts from college or graduate school. This budget doesn't address those problems. It doesn't address the crisis of childcare, and the fact that in Vermont and around the country it is very hard for working-class families to get quality, affordable childcare. But what this budget does do--people don't know it--roughly 60 percent of the budget goes to defense spending. It goes to defense spending. Sixty percent of the discretionary budget goes not to our kids, not to our elderly, not to students, not to working people, not to the infrastructure, not to all of the huge unmet needs we face as a country, but it goes to the military. Does anyone here deny we need a strong military, a strong National Guard? I don't. We do. But sometimes, in tough times, you have to make tough decisions. And I think spending $554 billion on the military is too much. I would point out, Mr. President, what I am sure you know; that it is clear--it has been admitted--that the military can't even audit itself. We don't even know effectively and appropriately how the military is spending its money. They do not even have the computer technology to tell us where they are spending. What we also know is that cost overruns in the military are extraordinary. Time after time after time an agreement is reached about how much a weapons system will cost, and it turns out the contractor was just joking because there is a huge overrun. And then we have fraud. Fraud. Virtually every major military contractor has been involved in fraud resulting in either convictions or settlements with the government. So we have folks here who last year were talking about cuts in nutrition programs, education, health care--you name it, programs that are life and death for working families--yet when it comes to the military, we can spend $554 billion. I think that is too much. Second of all, when you look at the global economy and you look at our international partners, I find it interesting that every other major country on Earth provides health care for all of their people as a right except the United States; yet in terms of their defense spending, they are spending a heck of a lot less than we are. We are spending now almost--almost--as much as the entire rest of the world combined. So I object in this bill to the significant amount of money being spent on the military, and I would have hoped there would be more opposition to this large military expenditure. The second point I want to make, and it has not gotten a whole lot of attention, is the impact this legislation will have on working people in terms of cuts in pensions. There are provisions in this bill, written in secret, which allow significant cuts in benefits for retirees who are members of multiemployer pension plans. Let me quote from a recent Washington Post article regarding the change in this bill: The change would alter 40 years of federal law and could affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as trucking, construction and supermarkets. Reuters mentions this: The centerpiece is a provision that would open the door to cutting current beneficiaries' benefits, a retirement policy taboo and a potential disaster for retirees on fixed incomes. What does that mean? When you go to work for a company, you get wages, you get benefits, but you also, in some cases, get a promise in terms of a pension--what you will get when you retire after 20 years, 30 years, 40 years of work. What this bill does is allow companies to renege on that promise. It is my understanding that, in some cases, the cuts in pensions could be draconian. I am talking about a 50-percent cut. Imagine somebody who has worked his or her entire life, expects to retire with a certain level of income, and suddenly, after 20, 30, 40 years of work, wakes up in the morning and finds out that promise has been cut in half. Wow. That is awful. That is totally awful. I remember back, as the American people do, that Wall Street--the CEOs of Wall Street--engaged in illegal and reckless behavior, which drove this economy into the worst recession in modern history, impacting millions and millions of people's lives. And what happened to Wall Street? Well, Congress bailed them out. Congress bailed out the folks on Wall Street whose criminal action caused the recession. Yet now we have working people who have done nothing wrong except work their entire lives--10, 20, 30 years--and through no fault of their own, they are not getting bailed out. They are going to see a 50- percent reduction in their pensions. That is unacceptable and that opens--it just opens up a future in terms of pensions which I think is very frightening for the American people. So I can't support that provision as well. The last point I want to make is getting back to Wall Street. In my very strong opinion, we have reached the stage with Wall Street where the major financial institutions are just too big, they are just too powerful. Anyone who thinks that Congress regulates Wall Street has got it backwards. The reality is that Wall Street, with their incredible wealth and lobbying capabilities and campaign contributions, regulates the United States Congress. You cannot see a better example of that than what is in this legislation. This is the headline from a recent article in the New York Times: ``Banks' Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article.

Mr. SANDERS. And let me quote from that article: In a sign of Wall Street's resurgent influence in Washington, Citigroup's recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee's 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. In other words, it is not even Members of Congress writing these bills, it is Wall Street writing the bills and getting them into this legislation. Now what does this legislation do? Well, we suffered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s because of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street. What Wall Street did is engage in absolutely reckless speculation, and then the chickens came home to roost. People could not pay back the debts they incurred on subprime mortgages, and the entire financial system of the United States of America and the world was on the verge of collapse. So Congress, a few years ago, passed Dodd-Frank. It didn't go anywhere near as far as I would go. I believe we should break up these major financial institutions. I don't believe you can control them. I don't believe you can regulate them. They regulate the Congress. But Dodd-Frank took some steps toward that, and there was one provision I will quote--section 716. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this section I am going to quote from.

Mr. SANDERS. This is the title of the provision, 716, that this bill repeals: ``Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities.'' Now to quote from that section: (A) Prohibition on Federal Assistance--notwithstanding any other provision of law (including regulations), no Federal assistance may be provided to any swaps entity with respect to any swap, security-based swap, or other activity of the swaps entity. That is what is being repealed. So Wall Street, as a result of the work of Citigroup and the other Wall Street companies, can now continue to engage in reckless derivatives speculation. And when they make a whole lot of money, they get richer. But when they lose money, because of the repeal of this provision, it is the taxpayers of this country who have to bail them out. Does anybody--anybody--think that makes any sense at all? That is in this bill. So for those reasons and more, I would hope very much that the Senate rejects this agreement and that we renegotiate. No one wants to see the government shut down, but we must negotiate an agreement that is much fairer to the American people and to the working families of our country. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I am going to be brief. The truth is that the Senator we are honoring right now, Tom Harkin, will go down in history as one of the great Senators of this particular period in American history. Not many Senators, if any, have a list of enormous accomplishments anywhere close to what Senator Harkin has accomplished. I would like to tell my colleagues a little story. It turns out that coincidentally, really, I have traveled with Senator Harkin to a number of places around the world as part of congressional delegations. Like most congressional delegations, we meet with the leadership of the country, the President and so forth. But what was interesting in traveling with Senator Harkin is wherever you go, he gets honored by ordinary people in those countries. We went to Vietnam a number of years ago. Many people will not remember, but the truth is that one of the very first people ever to expose the terrible prison conditions that the South Vietnam Government had established was Tom Harkin. So we go there and we meet people who had been imprisoned in tiger cages, and they said: Senator Harkin, thank you very much for exposing those conditions and improving our lives. There was a very emotional response. Then I go with him to Ghana, and it turns out that in Ghana and in countries in Africa, Tom Harkin had been a leader in fighting against child labor. There were kids 8 or 9 years of age who should be in school who were out picking crops. And Tom Harkin, working with people all over the world, had a real impact on getting those kids into school. We went to a school, a beautiful school which is partially funded by the U.S. Government. We have bright kids who are in school, and they were so proud of the assistance we had given them, where they were in school and not working in fields. Then we go to Chile. We go to Chile and we meet with the President of Chile, all the dignitaries of Chile. Who knew this? We go to Chile, and Tom Harkin gets an award from the government. In the very dark days of the Pinochet government, when the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a violent coup by Pinochet--with, unfortunately, the assistance of the U.S. Government--and people were rounded up and put into prison camps and tortured and killed, Tom Harkin goes knocking on the door to one of the prison camps. He goes knocking on the door-- pretty crazy, but that is what he did. He was met with soldiers with guns. But he exposed that particular prison camp and played a role in facilitating the ending of some of the more barbaric actions of the Pinochet government. Those are three trips I made with him. That is about all. I am sure he has gone on other trips. That is a pretty good record, internationally. Then, back home, in terms of disability issues, I can remember and others can remember that 30, 40, 50 years ago, families had kids born with disabilities, and often those kids were institutionalized, they were hidden, they were an embarrassment to the family. Something bad happened; there was a child with a disability--Down syndrome, whatever it may be. Think about the revolution that has taken place, the mainstreaming of those kids. I know in Vermont and all over this country, kids with disabilities who are sitting in classrooms right now, loved and respected by their fellow students, educating their fellow students, making them more human, more compassionate. I think many of us have been to high school graduations where people with disabilities get their diploma and people stand up and applaud those kids. There has been a transformation of the culture in terms of how we deal with people with disabilities through the Americans with Disabilities Act. That didn't happen by accident. Tom Harkin wasn't the only person who did it, but he helped lead the effort here in the U.S. Congress to say that people with disabilities are part of the human community and we are going to treat them with the dignity they deserve. Then we have all the other issues that people have talked about. Probably nobody in the Congress has been a stronger fighter for working people and organized labor than Tom Harkin. I think people come here, regardless of political persuasion, to try to make a difference and do what they think is right. We disagree about what is right, but I think when we look at the list of accomplishments and the enormously hard work that has gone into those accomplishments, this man, Tom Harkin, will go down as one of the great Senators of our period. Tom, thank you so much for all you have done.

Mr. SANDERS. I want to take a moment to thank Carl Levin for his friendship. It has been previously noted that Carl is recognized as having perhaps the greatest intellect in the Senate. Carl has been, for so many years, a forceful fighter against waste in the military, and in recent years he has led the Senate in telling us it is absurd that large multinational corporations are able to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes by storing their money in offshore tax savings. He has been a leader on that and for those of us who are concerned about the needs of our kids and elderly and infrastructure, all of the terrible problems facing this country, this is an issue we have to focus on. I think Senator Carl Levin has been a Senator's Senator. He has been a model of what a good Senator should be, and it is not surprising that people from all political persuasions will come to the floor to thank him for his service. Senator Levin, thank you very much for your time. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the American people must make some very fundamental decisions in the coming years, and the most important of them is whether we continue the status quo of American society, and that is in terms of our economics and our politics which includes a 40- year decline of our middle class. Let me repeat that. We are not just talking about what is happening today. We are not talking about the Wall Street crash of 2008. We are talking about a 40- year decline of the American middle class and an ongoing and growing gap between the very wealthy and everybody else. That is the reality of America now. We can continue the same old, same old, or we can develop a bold economic agenda that begins the process of creating the millions of jobs we desperately need, an agenda which raises wages so that most of the new jobs being created are not low wage or part time, an agenda which protects our environment, and an agenda which enables us to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a right. That is the issue of our time. Do we continue the status quo, continue the disappearance of the middle class, continue the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else, or do we have the courage to come up with an agenda that stands for working families and raises wages and provides for our kids and our seniors? As part of that decision in my view is the reality that we cannot go forward unless we deal with another very important question, and that is, do we as a nation have the courage to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class? I know many of my colleagues don't like to talk about it. We talk about this and we talk about that, but most Americans in their gut understand that our economic and political life are controlled by a small number of very wealthy people and institutions, including but not limited to Wall Street, the oil companies, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the military-industrial complex, et cetera, and all of their lobbyists who flood Capitol Hill--trying to get this or that provision in tax bills and everyplace else--and, of course, their power in terms of campaign contributions, and especially since this disastrous Supreme Court Citizens United decision. It means the billionaire class can put unlimited sums of money into electing candidates who represent their interests. Those are the most important questions of our time. Do we have the courage to take on the handful of billionaire special interests who wield so much economic and political power? Do we have the will to push forward an economic agenda that works for working families and not just for the very wealthy? The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been a pretty sight. Today we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on Earth and the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. The top 1 percent now owns about 41 percent of the financial wealth of our country, while the bottom 60 percent owns all of 1.7 percent. The top 1 percent owns 41 percent of the financial wealth, the bottom 60 percent owns 1.7 percent. In fact, amazingly enough, the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of the American people. Does anyone believe that is what America is supposed to be about, where the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent? Today we have the absurd situation, the obscene situation, where one family, the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, are worth about $148 billion. That is more wealth in that one family than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. Today in the United States we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. About one-quarter of our kids get nutrition through food stamps, and we are the only industrialized country--major country--that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but today in a highly competitive global economy we are now in 12th place. In terms of infrastructure, the United States used to have the finest, most envied infrastructure in the world. Today, as I think every citizen of this country knows, our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, rail, water systems, airports, dams are virtually collapsing. The American Society of Civil Engineers tells us that we need to spend $3 trillion just to bring our infrastructure up to par. But with infrastructure spending now at its lowest level since 1947, we rank 16th in the world in terms of infrastructure according to the World Economic Forum. So once we led the world in terms of the numbers of percentages of people graduating college; today we are 12th. Once we led the world in terms of the strength of our infrastructure; today we are the 16th. But we do have the dubious distinction of being first in terms of childhood poverty of any major country. Real unemployment today is not what the official unemployment states of 5.8 percent; it is over 11 percent when you include those people who have given up looking for work or are working part time. Youth unemployment is over 18 percent. We hear a lot about Ferguson, MO, and that is a very important issue, but we don't hear enough about the reality that African-American youth unemployment is over 30 percent. Today in this country millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted-for dollars, the median male worker--listen to this; this is really quite unbelievable and it tells us a little bit as to why the American people are angry. The median male worker--that worker right in the middle of the economy--last year earned $783 less than he made 41 years ago--$783 less than he made 41 years ago in inflation-accounted-for dollars. In the explosion of technology, the great global economy, all of the great free trade agreements, and that male worker today is earning over $700 less than he made in real dollars 41 years ago. The median female worker made $1337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less this year than a family earned 25 years ago. Are we better off today than we were 6 years ago when Bush left office and we were hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs a month and the financial system was on the verge of collapse with a $1.3 trillion deficit? Of course we are. But if you look at the trends over the last 40 years, the reality is, the middle class in this country is disappearing and almost all new income and wealth is going to the people on top. The American people must demand that Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working families, not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need Federal legislation to put the unemployed back to work, raise wages, and make certain that all Americans have health care and education in order to live healthy and productive lives. We can spend hours dissecting and analyzing the problems of American society, and in my view, they are worse today than at any time since the Great Depression, and if you throw in the planetary crisis of climate change, we may have more problems today facing our Nation than at any time in a very long period. But what I wish to do today is very briefly throw out and discuss 12 initiatives that I believe, if enacted by the Congress, could begin to address the collapse of the middle class and rebuild our economy. I will just touch on them briefly. No. 1, as I mentioned earlier, our infrastructure is collapsing--our roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants, airports, railroads, and older schools. We spent $3 trillion--or when we take care of the last veteran, we have spent $3 trillion fighting a war in Iraq that we never should have fought in the first place. If over a period of years we were to invest $1 trillion in rebuilding our infrastructure, we could create 13 million decent-paying jobs, and that is exactly what we have to do. Think of what America would look like if you went around the country and saw work being done on roads, bridges, and cutting-edge technology for our water plants and wastewater plants. We would become more productive and efficient. We would put people back to work. No. 2, in my view--and I know many of my Republican colleagues don't agree, but the scientific community is united when they say climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and if we do not reverse and substantially cut back carbon emissions, this planet will become increasingly uninhabitable for our kids and our grandchildren. In my view, we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy, such as wind, solar, geothermal, et cetera. When we address energy efficiency and sustainable energy, not only do we lead the world in transforming our energy system and reversing climate change, but we also create a significant number of meaningful and important jobs. No. 3, in my view, instead of giving tax breaks to large corporations which shut down in America and go to China, we want to invest in new economic models to increase job creation and productivity, and that is giving workers the opportunity to own their own businesses. We have some of that in Vermont, and I know in Ohio there are worker-owned businesses where workers are more productive and feel better about their jobs. I would rather invest in that than in corporations that will shut down in this country and move abroad. No. 4, I think most people understand that when you have a union to negotiate and engage in collective bargaining, wages are higher and working conditions are better. Today corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers signs cards in support of a union, they can have that union. No. 5, the Federal minimum wage today is a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. People who work 40 hours a week should not live in poverty. No. 6, women workers today earn about 78 cents on the dollar to what their male counterparts earn doing the same work. That is not acceptable. We need equal pay for equal work. We need pay equity in our country, and we have to pass that legislation. No. 7, an issue that we don't talk about enough, and, in fact, has had bipartisan support for many decades, is our disastrous trade policy, NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China. The simple fact is these trade policies have been a disaster for the American worker. Since 2001, we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. Not all of that is attributable to bad trade policies, but a lot of it is. We need to rethink our trade policies and demand that corporate America invest in the United States of America and not in China. I know that is a radical idea. Imagine going shopping in a department store where we can actually purchase products made in America and not in China, but I think we should be doing that. No. 8, we are not going to be a successful economy unless our young people have the ability to get the college education they need regardless of the income of their families. Right now it is increasingly difficult for working families to afford college. Many of our young people are coming out of college deeply in debt. In this area we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Forty, fifty years ago, tuition was virtually free at some of the great public universities in America, such as the University of California, New York City, and State colleges around country. Today it is unaffordable. We need to radically rethink higher education in this country. Our goal is that everyone, regardless of income, should be able to get a quality college education and not come out in debt. No. 9, I think everybody understands the enormous stranglehold that Wall Street has on our economy. Banking is supposed to be the facilitator to get money out in the productive economy where companies are producing products and services and not see Wall Street or financial institutions as an end in itself, but that is exactly what we have right now. We have six financial institutions in this country that have assets equivalent to over 60 percent of the GDP of the United States of America. That is too big, and it gives them too much economic and political power. In my view, they must be broken up and we must bring about a more competitive financial system where money is getting out to the real economy so businesses can create real jobs. No. 10, and many people don't know this, but the United States is the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right. Yet we end up spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other Nation. In my strong opinion, if we want health care for all and we want to do it in a cost-effective way, we need to move toward a Medicare for all, single-payer system. No. 11, today in this great Nation, millions of seniors are living in poverty, and that number is growing, and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of talking about cutting Social Security or cutting Medicare or cutting Medicaid or cutting nutrition programs, we should be expanding those programs. This is a great country, and we should not have millions of people wondering how they are going to be able to buy medicine for their illness or heat their homes in the wintertime. We have to expand the social safety net for our kids, our seniors, and our vulnerable populations. Last, but certainly not least, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major profitable corporations have paid nothing in recent years in Federal income taxes and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries'. We are losing about $100 billion a year from companies that stash their profits in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and other tax havens. We need real tax reform. We need to end all of these corporate tax loopholes so we have the revenue we need to do the important tasks in front of us to rebuild this country. With that, I think the American people have some fundamental choices to make. Do we continue the status quo from an economic perspective and political perspective or do we demand that Congress start listening to the pain of the middle class and working families of this country and start producing legislation which rebuilds our crumbling middle class? With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to recognize a remarkable Vermonter, Rebecca Haslam, who is the recipient of Vermont's 2015 Teacher of the Year Award. This award is a testament to Rebecca's dedication to her students' academic success and her work to promote the ideals of tolerance and diversity throughout the Burlington School District. Rebecca's leadership in education has helped encourage intellectual and personal growth in so many students. She has earned the respect of the community through her diligence in the classroom and for her innovative approach to learning. Ms. Haslam's commitment to her students is unwavering, ``They have such a love of learning and they are joyful when they come to school,'' she explained recently. Rebecca provides a welcoming environment for students to learn, fostering their social, academic, and emotional development. Ms. Haslam sets high expectations and provides the guidance needed in the classroom to ensure the success of all her students. Rebecca is committed to providing both a rigorous curriculum and a nurturing environment. Her academic expectations inspire students of all backgrounds and learning abilities to thrive. Over the last few decades, Burlington's schools have welcomed students from all over the world, and for such a small city, the district's classrooms are among the most diverse in the country. Rebecca has drawn from her own childhood experiences in an effort to build bridges of understanding between students, faculty, and community members from different backgrounds. Rebecca serves as the Burlington School District's social studies and equity coach and works with teachers from around the district to incorporate the values of cultural competency in their lesson plans. These professional development sessions have served as valuable tools in capturing the interests of students and preparing them to be engaged citizens who prize equality in our increasingly diverse society. Rebecca is a role model for all Vermonters. She uses her experiences to forge goals and serve as motivation for her students. The work that Rebecca does to create an atmosphere that is conducive to learning is commendable, and I would like to offer her warm congratulations on her award.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me begin by thanking Senator Tester not only for being on the floor today but for working on the issue of making sure that in 50 States in this country--in rural America and in urban America--we continue to have a Postal Service of which the American people are proud. I wish to acknowledge Senator Baldwin, who is presiding, for her strong work on this issue, as well. I represent one of the most rural States in America. I don't know if it is more rural than Montana, but it is very rural. Most of our people live in very small towns. The local post office is not just the place to pick up mail or to mail letters. It is a symbol of what the town is about. It is an institution that identifies the town. It is where people come together. It is a very important part of rural America. We have been battling on this issue now for a number of years. As Senator Tester will remember, it wasn't so many years ago when the Postmaster General came up with a proposal that would have led to the shutting down of 15,000 mostly rural post offices all over America. To my mind, that was a disastrous proposal. Many of us stood up and fought back and worked something out. While the compromise was not all that I wanted, at least it prevented the shutdown of 15,000 post offices all over this country. Right now--and I think Senator Tester made this point--the Postal Service has announced that beginning next month, it will be shutting down up to 82 mail processing plants. Those are the plants that move the mail along into areas all over the country. They also want to abolish overnight delivery standards and first-class mail. In the process, at a time when we need to create decent-paying jobs, this proposal would eliminate up to 15,000 good-paying, middle-class jobs at the Postal Service. The reason Senator Tester and I and hopefully others have come to the floor today is to send a very loud and clear message to the Postmaster General, to our colleagues here in the Senate, to our colleagues in the House, and to the President of the United States. The message is that at a time when the middle class is disappearing and the number of Americans living in poverty is almost at an alltime high, do not destroy decent-paying jobs at the Postal Service. At a time when the Postal Service is competing with the instantaneous communication of emails and of high speed Internet, do not slow down mail delivery service, but speed it up. Do not dismantle the Postal Service by shutting down up to a quarter of the mail processing plants that are left in this country. On August 14, I was delighted to work with Senator Tester and others on a letter to the Appropriations Committee, urging them to include language in the omnibus appropriations bill or the continuing resolution to prevent the Postal Service from making these devastating cuts and protecting these 15,000 jobs and these 82 processing plants. I am happy to say that a majority of the Members of the Senate--51 of them, including Majority Leader Reid, Senator Durbin, Senator Schumer, and six Republicans--Senator Hatch, Senator Inhofe, Senator Hoeven, Senator Blunt, Senator Thune, and Senator Collins--all signed on to this letter. They understand--many of them coming from rural areas-- that this is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue; this is an issue to protect mail delivery all over this country and especially in rural areas. Shortly after we sent our letter, 160 Members of the House signed on to a similar letter calling for a 1-year moratorium to stop these mail processing plants from closing, and 23 Republicans signed that letter as well. So we are seeing bipartisan support in the House and in the Senate saying loudly and clearly: Do not shut down 82 processing plants; do not slow down mail delivery service; do not eliminate 15,000 decent-paying jobs. I know Senator Mikulski, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, wants to see this happen, but to make it happen, she needs Republican support. I very much urge my Republican colleagues to stand up for rural America, stand up for 15,000 jobs. Let's protect these 82 processing plants. As Senator Tester has made clear, the beauty of the Postal Service is that it provides universal service 6 days a week to every corner of America--no matter how small or how remote. It supports millions of jobs in virtually every other sector of our economy. It provides decent-paying union jobs to some 500,000 Americans, and, in fact--and I say this as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs-- it is the largest single employer of veterans. Whether one is a low- income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt road in Pennsylvania or Vermont or a wealthy CEO on Wall Street, people get their mail 6 days a week. The American people, by the way, pay for this service at a cost far, far less than anywhere else in the industrialized world. But if Congress doesn't stop the Postmaster General from making these devastating cuts, it will drive more Americans away from the Postal Service and will lead to what we call a death spiral. The quality of service deteriorates, fewer people use the Postal Service, less revenue comes in, and the process continues to deteriorate. Despite what some in this country have been hearing in the media, and despite what some in the Postal Service have been saying, the Postal Service is not going broke. We hear that every three months--people telling us the Postal Service is going broke. That is not true. The major reason the Postal Service is in bad financial shape today is because of a mandate signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2006, during a lameduck session of Congress, that forces the Postal Service to prefund 75 years of future retiree health benefits over a 10-year period. This burden is unprecedented in any other government agency or any private sector company in the United States of America. It is a burden that every single year costs the Postal Service $5.5 billion, and that one provision--that one provision--is responsible for all of the financial losses posted by the Postal Service since October 2012--just that one provision. Over the past 2 years, the Postal Service has made an operating profit of nearly $1 billion. Let me repeat that. Over the past 2 years, the Postal Service has made an operating profit of nearly $1 billion, excluding this prefunding mandate that must be gotten rid of. Further, before this prefunding mandate was signed into law, the Postal Service was also profitable. In fact, from 2003 to 2006, the Postal Service made a combined profit of more than $9 billion. So when we hear that the Postal Service is in financial difficulty, the key reason--the overwhelming reason--is this onerous, unprecedented burden of coming up with $5.5 billion every year to pay for future health retirees. Given the improved financial condition of the Postal Service, it makes no sense to me to close down mail plants, destroy jobs, and slow mail delivery. Our job right now is to make the Postal Service an agency that functions efficiently in the 21st century. We have to give them the tools to effectively compete. But the way we do that is not by cutting, cutting, and cutting. That is a path toward disaster. So I hope the Members of the Senate and the Members of the House of Representatives will stand together and prevent these 82 processing plants from shutting down and come up with some legislation which expands the capability of the Postal Service to compete and protects the American people who want high quality Postal Service. With that, I yield the floor to the Senator from Wisconsin, Ms. Baldwin.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, it seems to me the American people at this particular moment in our history must make a very fundamental decision, and that decision is do we continue the status quo--which includes a 40-year decline of our middle class and a huge and growing gap between the very rich and everyone else--or do we fight for a bold and meaningful economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects our environment, and provides health care for every American? The question of our time is whether we are prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? That is the question which the American people must answer. I hope and expect they are prepared to answer with a resounding yes and a desire to move this country in a very different direction. The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been a pretty picture. Today we have more wealth and income inequality than any other major country on Earth, with the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, with one family, the Walton family of Walmart, owning more wealth itself than the bottom 40 percent. Today in the United States we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth, and we are the only major country on this planet that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. The United States once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, and that in a global economy is an enormously important issue. We can't create jobs unless we have a well- educated workforce. We were once in first place in terms of percentage of our people who graduated college. Today we are in 12th place. I think, as most Americans understand, we once were the envy of the world in terms of the quality of our infrastructure--our roads, bridges, waste water plants, water system, rail--but today, as all Americans know, our physical infrastructure is literally collapsing before our eyes. Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent. That is official unemployment. When we include those people who have given up looking for work and those people who are working part time when they want to work full time, real unemployment is 11.5 percent, youth unemployment is 18.6 percent, and African-American youth unemployment is over 30 percent. Today millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. When we try to understand why the American people are angry, it is important to understand that, in inflation adjusted for dollars, the median male worker--that male worker right in the middle of the economy--earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago, despite all of the increases in productivity. The median woman worker made $1,300 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago. Why are the American people angry? That is why: a huge increase in productivity, all of the global economy, and yet the median family income in America is $5,000 less than it was in 1999. It seems clear to me that the American people must demand that Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working families and not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need Federal legislation to put millions of our unemployed workers back to work, to raise wages, and make certain that all Americans have the health care and education they need for healthy and productive lives. In other words, we must have a vision for the future, which talks about what this Nation can become in terms of jobs, in terms of income, in terms of education, and in terms of health care. Let me very briefly describe some of the major initiatives that I intend to fight for in the new Congress. There are 12 major initiatives which, if enacted, will transform the middle class of this country. No. 1, we need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure--our roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads, schools, et cetera. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq, a war we should never have gotten into in the first place, will end up costing us some $3 trillion. If we invested $1 trillion in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, we could create 13 million decent-paying jobs and make this country more efficient and more productive. We need to invest in infrastructure, not in war. No. 2, the United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and making certain this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. When we do that--make our transportation system energy efficient, make our homes more energy efficient, move to wind, solar, geothermal biomass--we can also create a significant number of good-paying jobs. No. 3, we need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in the businesses in which they work, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down, and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs. No. 4, union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than nonunion workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form that union. No. 5, the current Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty. No. 6, women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts earn. We need pay equity in this country--equal pay for equal work. No. 7, since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We once led the world in terms of our manufacturing capability. Yet in State after State, we have seen significant losses in manufacturing jobs. When people walk into a store, it is harder and harder for them to purchase products made in the United States of America. The time is now for us to end our disastrous trade policies--NAFTA, CAFTA, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China--because these policies simply enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries. We need to end the race to the bottom and to develop trade policies which protect the interests of American workers and not just multinational corporations. American companies should start investing in this country and not simply in China and other low-wage countries. No. 8, in today's highly competitive global economy, millions of Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order to get good-paying jobs. About 40 or 50 years ago we had a situation in this country where some of the great public universities of our Nation--the University of California, City University of New York, and State colleges all over America were virtually tuition free, and anybody could go to those schools regardless of the income of their families. Today, for many, many families and young people the cost of higher education is simply unaffordable. Either students choose not to go to college because they can't afford it or they come out of school deeply in debt--a debt fastened on their shoulders for decades. Quality education in America--from child care to higher education-- must be affordable for all. Without a high-quality and affordable educational system, we will be unable to compete globally in the international economy and our standard of living will continue to decline. We have to invest in education. The idea that we are laying off teachers is completely absurd. No. 9, the function of banking--the banking system--is to facilitate the flow of capital into a productive and job-creating economy. That is what banking is supposed to be. People save, people put money in banks, and that money goes out into the economy so that people can buy homes and create businesses. Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of the real productive economy. In other words, banking must be a means to an end by improving society, creating jobs, providing people with decent housing, and not simply a means by which financial institutions make more and more profit. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product. There is close to $10 trillion in 6 financial institutions. These institutions underwrite more than one-half of the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, and every day when we open up our newspapers, we see another major banking scandal. The truth of the matter is that these financial institutions on Wall Street are too powerful to be reformed. They have too much money, too much wealth, too many lobbyists, and make too much in campaign contributions. Our goal must be to break them up. They have too much power and too much wealth. They must be broken up so that our financial institutions begin to serve the needs of the American people and not simply the CEOs and the stockholders of Wall Street firms. No. 10, the United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that health care is a right of all and not a privilege. I think many Americans don't know that we are the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. Yet, within this dysfunctional health care system, we have 40 million people who have no health insurance, more people who are underinsured, millions of people with high premiums and high deductibles, and at the end of all of that, we end up spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other major country on Earth. The time is now for us to declare that health care is a right of all people and not a privilege. We need to pass a Medicare-for-all, single- payer system. No. 11, millions of senior citizens in this country live in poverty, and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. I hear a lot of discussion on the part of my Republican colleagues-- and some Democrats--that we should be cutting Social Security. Well, I strongly disagree. In my view, we must strengthen and expand Social Security--not cut it. That is terribly important, especially at a time when more and more seniors are slipping into poverty. We have millions of seniors who are trying to survive on $12,000, $13,000 and $14,000 a year. They have to decide every single day whether they should buy the medicine they need, heat their homes adequately or buy the food they need. We should not be cutting these programs; we should be expanding these programs. No. 12--and the last point I will make as part of an agenda that rebuilds America and rebuilds our middle class--at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that every single year we have major, profitable corporations which pay nothing in Federal income taxes. It is not acceptable that we have corporate CEOs in this country who make millions of dollars every year and enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than that of their secretaries. That is grotesquely unfair, and it must be changed. Further, we have to address the disgrace that every single year our country loses over $100 billion in revenue because corporations and the wealthy stash their money in offshore tax havens all over the world. The time is long overdue for real tax reform which says to the wealthy and large, profitable corporations that they have to begin paying their fair share of taxes. I will conclude by getting back to the point I made in the beginning of my remarks, and that is that we are in a pivotal moment in American history. The very, very rich are becoming richer, the middle class is disappearing, and today we have more people living in poverty than at almost any other time in American history. With the wealth of the billionaire class, they are exercising their power politically because Citizens United--a disastrous Supreme Court decision--has given them the power to buy elections and control, to a significant degree, our political process. We, as a nation, have to ultimately make a decision about whether we are going to continue the process where the middle class continues to decline and the very, very richest people become richer or whether we are prepared--and this is not easy stuff--to stand together to take on the billionaire class and their greed and to say: Enough is enough. This country does not just belong to the top 1 percent or the top one- tenth of 1 percent. It belongs to all of us. I hope very much that the American people make the right choice, because if they do, we can bring about a transformation of this country so the government begins to work for all of the people and not just the billionaires who are on top. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 3 p.m.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 2:30 p.m. in room SR-253 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Addressing Domestic Violence in Professional Sports.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 2:15 p.m. in room SD- 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 9:30 a.m. in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 2, 2014, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Innovation and the Utilities of the Future: How Local Water Treatment Facilities are Leading the Way to Better Manage Wastewater and Water Supplies.''

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. If I may reclaim my time and wind down and finish my remarks, there are two basic issues. No. 1, I know many of my Republican friends deny what the overwhelming majority of scientists are telling us; that is, not only is climate change real, that it is caused by human activity, that it is already causing devastating problems. To continue to deny that reality is to endanger the lives of our kids, our grandchildren, and the planet on which they will live. To say to people all over the world that we Americans are concerned about climate change and yet vote for a project which will encourage and accelerate the excavation of some of the dirtiest oil in the world will make all of us look like fools and hypocrites throughout the world and will make future generations wonder what we were thinking about on that vote today. With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Yes.