Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to reiterate the very important point that Senator Whitehouse has made. This struggle is not only to transform our energy system, to move away from fossil fuel, and to end the absurdity of importing over $300 billion a year in oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries and move toward energy independence, this effort is to cut greenhouse gas emissions so that we save the planet. This effort also has to do with creating jobs in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. I hope that every Member of the Senate is on the side of the American workers in helping us to grow sustainable energy companies so we create the jobs we need in this country rather than let China and other countries dominate those industries. Mr. President, I am very proud to give the floor over to the chairperson of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, certainly one of the great environmental leaders here in the Senate, Senator Barbara Boxer of California.

Mr. SANDERS. I wish to thank my friend from Rhode Island for his remarks and for his extraordinary effort in fighting for jobs and protecting our environment. If we read some headlines today in the media, we might think, especially the rightwing media, that renewable energy in America is on the verge of collapse. Quite literally--this is quite literally the case. A recent headline from FOX News said: ``Entire solar industry on brink of collapse.'' The reality is quite the contrary. The fact is, not only is the solar industry not on the verge of collapse, the reality is the American solar energy industry is thriving, as is the renewable energy industry more broadly. We have doubled the number of solar jobs in America since 2009. It does not sound to me like that industry is collapsing. It sounds to me like it is doing extraordinarily well. Today, more than 100,000 Americans work in the solar industry, at more than 5,000 companies in every single State in our country, and that includes manufacturing, installation, and supply chain jobs. Mr. President, last year we installed nearly 1,000 megawatts of solar power in the United States--more than double the amount installed in 2009. That doesn't sound like an industry that is collapsing to me. With the solar industry growing at a rate of 69 percent annually, it is one of America's fastest growing industries and is creating jobs all over our country. The cost of solar panels has fallen 30 percent over just the last 2 years, continuing a long-term decline in the price of solar and making it more and more competitive with other energy technology. (Mrs. HAGAN assumed the Chair.) Madam President, everyone, from Walmart to the U.S. Marine Corps, is looking toward a future in solar. Walmart is installing solar panels at 130 stores in California, and they say: Walmart has reduced energy expenses by more than a million dollars through our solar program. The military--the U.S. Department of Defense--is using solar energy with battery storage to fully power forward operating bases in Afghanistan. Marine COL Bob Charette said: For the Marines, renewable energy is about saving lives by reducing the number of dangerous fuel convoys needed for resupply. The reason I am making these points is that many people don't know the extent to which we are already making progress in sustainable energy. We are on the verge of something extraordinary. But it is important to understand where we are today and to refute those people who suggest that solar and wind are not the technologies for the future. In terms of wind, that technology is growing rapidly. Texas alone has more than 10,000 megawatts of wind energy installed. That is equal in capacity to 10 nuclear powerplants--in Texas alone. Iowa now gets 20 percent of its electricity from wind. There are 75,000 wind energy jobs in America today and more than 400 manufacturing facilities in 43 States. The price of wind energy has dropped by 90 percent since 1980, and wind electricity today is competitive with fossil fuels at 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour. At the same time, we are increasing American manufacturing of wind turbines, and now 60 percent of turbine components installed in the United States are made in America, up from 25 percent in 2005. In the midst of this horrendous and painful recession, the story of renewable energy in the United States is actually a rare good news story. It is a good news story. Renewable energy is helping to cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, it is making our country more energy independent, and it is creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. But all of this could be significantly slowed down if we do not continue Federal support for the renewable energy industries at a fraction of the kind of support we are giving to fossil fuels. It is absurd that we even have to fight to extend renewable tax credits and grants when fossil fuel industries enjoy permanent subsidies. Mature industries, such as oil and gas, continue to reap billions every year in Federal subsidies and massive tax breaks that never expire, despite the fact that the top five oil companies earned nearly $1 trillion in profits over the last 10 years. So here we are struggling to help wind and solar--new technologies--and we are giving massive tax breaks to mature industries that are incredibly profitable. Contrast what we do for renewable energy to what we do with fossil fuel and specifically with regard to the production tax credit for wind energy, which was allowed to lapse three times in recent years--1999, 2001, and 2003--leading to an average dropoff of 81 percent in new wind energy installation each time the credit expired. The wind credit is set to expire again in 2012. The point here is the one Senator Cardin made a moment ago. Unless there is predictability, unless the industry knows these tax credits will be there, they are not going to start investing or working on new projects only to have the rug pulled out from underneath them. They need stability and predictability, which is why we have to move not only to extending these tax credits but to making them permanent. I also want to say a word about the Keystone XL Pipeline, and that is to say there are some in the House and some in the Senate who want to use year-end legislation to tack on a rider that says to the State Department: You have to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline within 60 days. Let's be clear about what we are talking about in terms of the Keystone XL Pipeline. What we are talking about is a 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada to the gulf coast that would carry tar sands oil. Tar sands oil is not like regular oil. It requires an energy-intensive process to get it out of the ground, extract it, and, in fact, to refine it. That means it emits approximately 82 percent more carbon emissions when produced compared to regular oil, according to the EPA. Tar sands oil is also hard to clean up when it spills. Refining tar sands also produces more toxic air pollution compared to conventional oil. A tar sands spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan that happened in 2010 is still being cleaned up, at a cost now exceeding $700 million. In my view, the last thing we need is to eliminate the environmental and safety reviews now taking place and fast-track approval of this pipeline. I also note to my colleagues who want to fast-track Keystone XL that I, along with several other Senators and Congressmen, asked the State Department inspector general to look into allegations of conflicts of interest in the preparation of the environmental impact study of Keystone XL. The contractor the State Department used for the impact study, Cardno Entrix, has financial ties to the project developer, TransCanada. Those ties need to be investigated to ensure that the Federal environmental and safety reviews were done correctly and without bias. That inspector general special review is under way right now. I think it is completely inappropriate to try to fast-track this pipeline when we have not even heard back from the inspector general about potential conflicts of interest. I urge my colleagues to allow that special review to play out before any decisions are made. I will conclude my remarks this morning by thanking my colleagues for joining me--Senators Whitehouse, Boxer, and Cardin--who speak for many other Members of Congress and I think who speak for tens of millions of Americans, who see an energy future in this country in which we break our dependence on foreign oil, in which we no longer spend over $300 billion a year for oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries; who see a future in this country where we move toward energy independence; who see a future in this country where the United States is a leader in reversing global warming by not only cutting greenhouse gas emissions in America but providing technology and expertise for countries all over the world, for them to do the same; and also understand that, as we move to energy efficiency--and I have to tell you that in Vermont we are leading the country in energy efficiency. What we are seeing as we weatherize homes is fuel bills going down for the middle-class, working-class people by 30, 40, 50 percent. We are investing in weatherization, and the payback is pretty good. It takes place over a very few years, when you cut fuel prices 30 to 50 percent. In Vermont, we are probably doing as well as any other State in that area, but we can and will do a lot better. Tens of thousands of homes in our State can be weatherized. When we do that, we not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, we not only reduce the need to import foreign oil, we also create jobs. We create jobs for those people who are producing the insulation, the new doors, the windows, and the new roofing that makes homes and buildings more energy efficient. Furthermore, in our State and around the country, we are seeing, as I indicated a moment ago, significant progress in moving to sustainable energy--the solar industry, growing very rapidly; wind energy, growing very rapidly; other technologies, growing very rapidly. As a nation, we should be proud of the change that is taking place. But understand that we have a long way to go to be the kind of energy efficient and sustainable energy Nation we know we can become and to help lead the world in a new energy direction. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

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 13, 2011, at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Our Nation's Water Infrastructure: Challenges and Opportunities.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 13, 2011, at 10 a.m. in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 13, 2011, at 10 a.m.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I am submitting a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution. I do not do this lightly, nor have I ever done something such as this before. The U.S. Constitution is an extraordinary document which has served our country well for over 200 years and, in my view, it should not be amended often. But in light of the disastrous Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision in the Citizens United case, I see no alternative but a constitutional amendment. I should add that a similar resolution has been offered in the House by Congressman Ted Deutch of Florida. This constitutional amendment is supported by such grassroots organizations as Public Citizen, People for the American Way, and the Center for Media and Democracy. Let me go on record as strongly as I can, and as clearly as I can, in stating that I strongly disagree with the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. In my view, a corporation is not a person. In my view, a corporation does not have first amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign. In my view, corporations should not be able to go into their treasuries and spend millions and millions of dollars on a campaign in order to buy elections. I do not believe that is what American democracy is supposed to be about. I do not believe that is what the bravest of the brave from our country, fighting for democracy, fought and died to preserve. Almost 2 years ago, in its now infamous Citizens United decision, the United States Supreme Court upended over a century of precedent, taking a somewhat narrow legal question and using it as an opportunity to radically change our political landscape, unleashing a tsunami of corporate spending on campaign ads that has just begun. Make no mistake, the Citizens United ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy, further tilting the balance of power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when already the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good. In my view, history will record that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is one of the worst decisions ever made by a Supreme Court in the history of our country. While there is no way of knowing for sure, since there are no disclosure requirements in place to track what was spent, it is no secret that already in the 2010 midterm elections, corporations and some very wealthy individuals spent a huge and unprecedented amount of money to further their political goals. There is no question this is just the beginning of their efforts. At a time when corporations have over $2 trillion in cash in their bank accounts and are making recordbreaking profits, the American people should be concerned when the Supreme Court says these corporations have a constitutionally protected right to spend, spend, spend shareholders' money to dominate an election as if they were real live persons. There will be no end to the impact corporate interests can have on our campaigns and our democracy if we do not end this Citizens United decision and its impact on our Nation. All of us in the Senate share one common characteristic. We all run for elections. We all live in the real political world. Let me speak for a moment what I think many of my colleagues in their heart of hearts know to be true; that is, that while the campaign finance system we had before Citizens United was, in my view, a disaster--there is no question it is a disastrous situation where candidates, Members of the Senate, spend huge amounts of time having to raise money, and I know that is distasteful not just for Democrats, it is distasteful to Republicans, it is distasteful for an Independent; that is what we do-- now, as a result of Citizens United, that bad situation has become much worse because infinitely more money is going to come into the political process through nondisclosed donations suddenly appearing on TV screens in our States. According to an October 10, 2011, article in Politico: The billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million--potentially much more--to conservative groups ahead of Election Day [2012]. What do we think? Do we think American democracy is about a couple of wealthy billionaires putting hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns without disclosure? Is that the democracy Americans fought and died for in war after war? I think not. It clearly is not just Republican operatives. There will be Democrats doing the same. So more and more money comes into the system. We do not know where it comes from, and in order to defend ourselves candidates are going to have to raise more money and become more and more dependent on big money interests. Does anybody believe that is what American democracy is supposed to be about? Let's talk about the practical impacts. What happens on the floor of the Senate? The six largest banks on Wall Street have assets equal to over 65 percent of our GDP, over $9 trillion--six banks. When an issue comes up that impacts Wall Street--some of us, for example, think it might be a good idea to break up these huge banks. Members walk to the desk up there and they have to decide am I going to vote for this, am I going to vote against it--with full knowledge that if they vote against the interests of Wall Street, 2 weeks later, there may be ads coming down into their State attacking them. Every Member of the Senate, every Member of the House, in the back of their minds, will be thinking: Gee, if I cast a vote this way, if I take on some big money interests, am I going to be punished for that? Will a huge amount of money be unleashed in my State? Everybody here understands that is true. It is not just taking on Wall Street, maybe it is taking on the drug companies, maybe it is taking on the private insurance companies, maybe it is taking on the military-industrial complex. But whatever powerful and wealthy special interest we are prepared to take on, on behalf of the interest of the middle-class and working families of this country, when we walk to that desk and we cast that vote, we know in the back of our mind we may be unleashing a tsunami of money coming into our State, and we are going to think twice about how we cast that vote. I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. I would like to acknowledge them very briefly. One is the Disclose Act, sponsored by Senator Schumer, which would force corporations spending money on campaign ads to disclose their identity, as candidates have to do. That is a good thing. I support it. Another is the Fair Elections Now Act, sponsored by Senator Durbin, which would move us to publicly financed elections. I think that is a very good idea. I support that. The third piece of legislation is a recent resolution for a campaign finance constitutional amendment, introduced by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, that would make it clear that Congress and the States have the authority to write laws to regulate campaign spending across the country and make sure our State and Federal elections are about what is right for our democracy, and I support Senator Udall's resolution. But even these excellent pieces of legislation are not enough. The Constitution of this country has served us well for more than 200 years. But when the Supreme Court says--for purposes of the first amendment--corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally protected speech, and that even attempts by the Federal Government and States to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger. Something more needs to be done. There needs to be something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision. We have to send a constitutional amendment to the States that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone--except five members of the U.S. Supreme Court--seems to understand; that is, corporations are not people. Bank of America is not a person. ExxonMobil is not a person. The resolution I am offering calls for an amendment to be sent to the States that would do that. It would make perfectly clear, No. 1, corporations are not persons with equal constitutional rights as real- life, flesh-and-blood human beings; No. 2, corporations are subject to regulation by the people; No. 3, corporations may not make campaign contributions, which has been the law of the land for the last century; No. 4, Congress and States have the power to regulate campaign finance as Senator Udall's amendment would also say. This amendment is cosponsored by Senator Begich of Alaska, and I would urge all my colleagues to cosponsor this amendment which, in fact, does what its title suggests, saves American democracy.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I am submitting a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution. I do not do this lightly, nor have I ever done something such as this before. The U.S. Constitution is an extraordinary document which has served our country well for over 200 years and, in my view, it should not be amended often. But in light of the disastrous Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision in the Citizens United case, I see no alternative but a constitutional amendment. I should add that a similar resolution has been offered in the House by Congressman Ted Deutch of Florida. This constitutional amendment is supported by such grassroots organizations as Public Citizen, People for the American Way, and the Center for Media and Democracy. Let me go on record as strongly as I can, and as clearly as I can, in stating that I strongly disagree with the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. In my view, a corporation is not a person. In my view, a corporation does not have first amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign. In my view, corporations should not be able to go into their treasuries and spend millions and millions of dollars on a campaign in order to buy elections. I do not believe that is what American democracy is supposed to be about. I do not believe that is what the bravest of the brave from our country, fighting for democracy, fought and died to preserve. Almost 2 years ago, in its now infamous Citizens United decision, the United States Supreme Court upended over a century of precedent, taking a somewhat narrow legal question and using it as an opportunity to radically change our political landscape, unleashing a tsunami of corporate spending on campaign ads that has just begun. Make no mistake, the Citizens United ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy, further tilting the balance of power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when already the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good. In my view, history will record that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is one of the worst decisions ever made by a Supreme Court in the history of our country. While there is no way of knowing for sure, since there are no disclosure requirements in place to track what was spent, it is no secret that already in the 2010 midterm elections, corporations and some very wealthy individuals spent a huge and unprecedented amount of money to further their political goals. There is no question this is just the beginning of their efforts. At a time when corporations have over $2 trillion in cash in their bank accounts and are making recordbreaking profits, the American people should be concerned when the Supreme Court says these corporations have a constitutionally protected right to spend, spend, spend shareholders' money to dominate an election as if they were real live persons. There will be no end to the impact corporate interests can have on our campaigns and our democracy if we do not end this Citizens United decision and its impact on our Nation. All of us in the Senate share one common characteristic. We all run for elections. We all live in the real political world. Let me speak for a moment what I think many of my colleagues in their heart of hearts know to be true; that is, that while the campaign finance system we had before Citizens United was, in my view, a disaster--there is no question it is a disastrous situation where candidates, Members of the Senate, spend huge amounts of time having to raise money, and I know that is distasteful not just for Democrats, it is distasteful to Republicans, it is distasteful for an Independent; that is what we do-- now, as a result of Citizens United, that bad situation has become much worse because infinitely more money is going to come into the political process through nondisclosed donations suddenly appearing on TV screens in our States. According to an October 10, 2011, article in Politico: The billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million--potentially much more--to conservative groups ahead of Election Day [2012]. What do we think? Do we think American democracy is about a couple of wealthy billionaires putting hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns without disclosure? Is that the democracy Americans fought and died for in war after war? I think not. It clearly is not just Republican operatives. There will be Democrats doing the same. So more and more money comes into the system. We do not know where it comes from, and in order to defend ourselves candidates are going to have to raise more money and become more and more dependent on big money interests. Does anybody believe that is what American democracy is supposed to be about? Let's talk about the practical impacts. What happens on the floor of the Senate? The six largest banks on Wall Street have assets equal to over 65 percent of our GDP, over $9 trillion--six banks. When an issue comes up that impacts Wall Street--some of us, for example, think it might be a good idea to break up these huge banks. Members walk to the desk up there and they have to decide am I going to vote for this, am I going to vote against it--with full knowledge that if they vote against the interests of Wall Street, 2 weeks later, there may be ads coming down into their State attacking them. Every Member of the Senate, every Member of the House, in the back of their minds, will be thinking: Gee, if I cast a vote this way, if I take on some big money interests, am I going to be punished for that? Will a huge amount of money be unleashed in my State? Everybody here understands that is true. It is not just taking on Wall Street, maybe it is taking on the drug companies, maybe it is taking on the private insurance companies, maybe it is taking on the military-industrial complex. But whatever powerful and wealthy special interest we are prepared to take on, on behalf of the interest of the middle-class and working families of this country, when we walk to that desk and we cast that vote, we know in the back of our mind we may be unleashing a tsunami of money coming into our State, and we are going to think twice about how we cast that vote. I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. I would like to acknowledge them very briefly. One is the Disclose Act, sponsored by Senator Schumer, which would force corporations spending money on campaign ads to disclose their identity, as candidates have to do. That is a good thing. I support it. Another is the Fair Elections Now Act, sponsored by Senator Durbin, which would move us to publicly financed elections. I think that is a very good idea. I support that. The third piece of legislation is a recent resolution for a campaign finance constitutional amendment, introduced by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, that would make it clear that Congress and the States have the authority to write laws to regulate campaign spending across the country and make sure our State and Federal elections are about what is right for our democracy, and I support Senator Udall's resolution. But even these excellent pieces of legislation are not enough. The Constitution of this country has served us well for more than 200 years. But when the Supreme Court says--for purposes of the first amendment--corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally protected speech, and that even attempts by the Federal Government and States to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger. Something more needs to be done. There needs to be something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision. We have to send a constitutional amendment to the States that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone--except five members of the U.S. Supreme Court--seems to understand; that is, corporations are not people. Bank of America is not a person. ExxonMobil is not a person. The resolution I am offering calls for an amendment to be sent to the States that would do that. It would make perfectly clear, No. 1, corporations are not persons with equal constitutional rights as real- life, flesh-and-blood human beings; No. 2, corporations are subject to regulation by the people; No. 3, corporations may not make campaign contributions, which has been the law of the land for the last century; No. 4, Congress and States have the power to regulate campaign finance as Senator Udall's amendment would also say. This amendment is cosponsored by Senator Begich of Alaska, and I would urge all my colleagues to cosponsor this amendment which, in fact, does what its title suggests, saves American democracy.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about an issue of enormous importance to the people of the State of Vermont and people all over this country; that is, the issue of making sure that in America this winter nobody goes cold, that nobody freezes to death, that children do not become ill because the thermostats in their homes are turned down so low. The issue I am talking about is to ask for support for legislation that is being introduced by Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine which would level fund the LIHEAP program at $4.7 billion. As most of my colleagues know, LIHEAP is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Here is the problem we face. We are in the midst of a horrendous recession. Unemployment is sky high. In many cases, wages are in decline, poverty is increasing, and at the same time the price for home heating oil and propane gas is going up. According to the Energy Information Administration, average expenditures for households that heat with oil or propane are forecast to be higher than in any previous winter. Heating oil prices are currently averaging about $3.90 a gallon. So what people in the Northeast and people all over this country are looking at are the highest home heating oil prices we have ever seen, coming in the midst of a terrible recession, with unemployment high and wages in decline. In Vermont, heating oil prices are already 34 percent higher than they were at the same time last year. It is currently $3.82 a gallon, compared to $2.85 a gallon last year. What is happening is that because of cuts--significant cuts--in LIHEAP funding, the average LIHEAP benefit in Vermont is 45 percent less this year than it was last year, and that is $474 per family as opposed to $866 last year. One thing that has to be understood about LIHEAP is that nearly 80 percent of funding from this program goes to our citizens who are elderly, families with preschool kids, and the disabled. So the people who benefit from this program are some of the most vulnerable people in our country. Eighty percent of the funding, once again, goes to senior citizens, families with preschool children, young children, and people who are dealing with disabilities. It is not uncommon in the State of Vermont and in other States for the temperatures to drop to 10 below zero or 20 below zero in the wintertime. When people do not have enough funds to heat their homes or their apartments, serious problems arise. What I want to do is take a moment to read some comments my office has received from Vermonters all over the State who are trying desperately to stay warm this winter. Josie Crosby, 81 years of age, of Brattleboro, VT, said this: We will have money for one more tank. After that, I don't know. That is a woman who is 81 years of age who has money for one more tank of oil. After that, she is not sure how they will stay warm in the winter. A 48-year-old from Orleans County in the northern part of our State wrote this: I was able to get 100 gallons of fuel last week, and for that I am grateful. The struggle begins now on how to stretch that fuel as long as possible. I had to buy a portable electric heater to keep halfway warm while waiting for fuel assistance. I don't even want to see how high my electric bill will be. I am an honorably discharged disabled veteran and have limited funds. I have already slashed my food bill, so what goes next? My meds, my electric service, my home? That is from a disabled vet in the northern part of Vermont. A 59-year-old woman in central Vermont writes: I have been keeping my thermostat as low as I can ``almost'' tolerate. I bundle up in the house with several sweaters, and even a coat and hat at times. When company arrives, I am embarrassed at how ridiculous I probably appear. I am just barely squeaking through each month. I have made cuts everywhere possible, including food. Wendy Raven, 62, from Whitingham, VT, writes: I had to drag my bed out of my bedroom and put it in the living room, then close off the bedroom for the winter. I will have to eat even less than I do now in order to pay my fuel bills. I have done everything I can to button up the place, but now all I can do is pray I get through the winter without a bill so large it will again take me until next fall to pay it off. Is that where we are in the United States of America--that we force people to live under those conditions? A 31-year-old woman from Bennington, VT, writes: We are now trying to stay warm by scraping up enough for a gallon or two of heating oil a week, and keeping the thermostat down very low. I turn the furnace off during the day when my child is in school and turn it on an hour before she gets home so that the house gets warm. We are hoping to qualify for crisis fuel assistance or we are in trouble, because there is nowhere to get the extra money needed to pay for the fuel, especially considering its continuously increasing cost. We have to choose what bills to pay each month and what ones not in order to put food on the table. In this great Nation, in the midst of a recession, in the midst of high unemployment, in the midst of growing poverty, we as the Senate must be very clear that nobody in this country is going to go cold this winter; that we are not going to pick up a paper in Maine or Rhode Island or Vermont or North Dakota and read that some senior citizen was found frozen to death. That is not what we are going to allow. That is why Senators Jack Reed, Olympia Snowe, I, and many others are working hard so that at the very least we can level fund LIHEAP so that nobody in our country goes cold this winter.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about an issue of enormous importance to the people of the State of Vermont and people all over this country; that is, the issue of making sure that in America this winter nobody goes cold, that nobody freezes to death, that children do not become ill because the thermostats in their homes are turned down so low. The issue I am talking about is to ask for support for legislation that is being introduced by Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine which would level fund the LIHEAP program at $4.7 billion. As most of my colleagues know, LIHEAP is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Here is the problem we face. We are in the midst of a horrendous recession. Unemployment is sky high. In many cases, wages are in decline, poverty is increasing, and at the same time the price for home heating oil and propane gas is going up. According to the Energy Information Administration, average expenditures for households that heat with oil or propane are forecast to be higher than in any previous winter. Heating oil prices are currently averaging about $3.90 a gallon. So what people in the Northeast and people all over this country are looking at are the highest home heating oil prices we have ever seen, coming in the midst of a terrible recession, with unemployment high and wages in decline. In Vermont, heating oil prices are already 34 percent higher than they were at the same time last year. It is currently $3.82 a gallon, compared to $2.85 a gallon last year. What is happening is that because of cuts--significant cuts--in LIHEAP funding, the average LIHEAP benefit in Vermont is 45 percent less this year than it was last year, and that is $474 per family as opposed to $866 last year. One thing that has to be understood about LIHEAP is that nearly 80 percent of funding from this program goes to our citizens who are elderly, families with preschool kids, and the disabled. So the people who benefit from this program are some of the most vulnerable people in our country. Eighty percent of the funding, once again, goes to senior citizens, families with preschool children, young children, and people who are dealing with disabilities. It is not uncommon in the State of Vermont and in other States for the temperatures to drop to 10 below zero or 20 below zero in the wintertime. When people do not have enough funds to heat their homes or their apartments, serious problems arise. What I want to do is take a moment to read some comments my office has received from Vermonters all over the State who are trying desperately to stay warm this winter. Josie Crosby, 81 years of age, of Brattleboro, VT, said this: We will have money for one more tank. After that, I don't know. That is a woman who is 81 years of age who has money for one more tank of oil. After that, she is not sure how they will stay warm in the winter. A 48-year-old from Orleans County in the northern part of our State wrote this: I was able to get 100 gallons of fuel last week, and for that I am grateful. The struggle begins now on how to stretch that fuel as long as possible. I had to buy a portable electric heater to keep halfway warm while waiting for fuel assistance. I don't even want to see how high my electric bill will be. I am an honorably discharged disabled veteran and have limited funds. I have already slashed my food bill, so what goes next? My meds, my electric service, my home? That is from a disabled vet in the northern part of Vermont. A 59-year-old woman in central Vermont writes: I have been keeping my thermostat as low as I can ``almost'' tolerate. I bundle up in the house with several sweaters, and even a coat and hat at times. When company arrives, I am embarrassed at how ridiculous I probably appear. I am just barely squeaking through each month. I have made cuts everywhere possible, including food. Wendy Raven, 62, from Whitingham, VT, writes: I had to drag my bed out of my bedroom and put it in the living room, then close off the bedroom for the winter. I will have to eat even less than I do now in order to pay my fuel bills. I have done everything I can to button up the place, but now all I can do is pray I get through the winter without a bill so large it will again take me until next fall to pay it off. Is that where we are in the United States of America--that we force people to live under those conditions? A 31-year-old woman from Bennington, VT, writes: We are now trying to stay warm by scraping up enough for a gallon or two of heating oil a week, and keeping the thermostat down very low. I turn the furnace off during the day when my child is in school and turn it on an hour before she gets home so that the house gets warm. We are hoping to qualify for crisis fuel assistance or we are in trouble, because there is nowhere to get the extra money needed to pay for the fuel, especially considering its continuously increasing cost. We have to choose what bills to pay each month and what ones not in order to put food on the table. In this great Nation, in the midst of a recession, in the midst of high unemployment, in the midst of growing poverty, we as the Senate must be very clear that nobody in this country is going to go cold this winter; that we are not going to pick up a paper in Maine or Rhode Island or Vermont or North Dakota and read that some senior citizen was found frozen to death. That is not what we are going to allow. That is why Senators Jack Reed, Olympia Snowe, I, and many others are working hard so that at the very least we can level fund LIHEAP so that nobody in our country goes cold this winter.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to say a word about two amendments I have offered, both of which I think are important and both of which should be agreed to. As I think you know, this country has a recordbreaking deficit and a $15 trillion national debt. What many people do not know is that one of the reasons our deficit is as high as it is is because there is a significant amount of fraud from defense contractors who sell their products to the Department of Defense. I think the American people are very clear that when we pay one dollar for a product that goes to our military, we want to get one dollar's worth of value; that we do not want to see the taxpayers of this country or the Department of Defense ripped off because of fraudulent contractors. Unfortunately, fraud within the DOD in terms of private contractors is widespread. During the last number of years, we have seen company after company engaged in fraud, including some of the largest defense contractors in the United States. For example, Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in our country, in 2008 paid $10.5 million to settle charges that it defrauded the government by submitting false invoices on a multibillion-dollar contract connected to the Titan IV space-launch vehicle program. That did not seem to sour the relationship between Lockheed and the DOD, which gave Lockheed $30.2 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2009--more than ever before. One of the patterns we see is that a company gets convicted or reaches a settlement with regard to charges of fraud, but next year they continue to get very significant contracts. In another case regarding one of the very large defense contractors, Northrop Grumman paid $62 million in 2005 to settle charges that ``it engaged in a fraud scheme by routinely submitting false contract proposals'' and ``concealed basic problems in its handling of inventory, scrap and attrition.'' Despite that serious charge of pervasive and repeated fraud, Northrop Grumman received $12.9 billion in contracts the following year, 16 percent more than the year before. It seems clear to me that we need to do a much better job in terms of attacking fraud within the Department of Defense. Several years ago, I offered an amendment--which was passed--which provided that the DOD list virtually all of the fraud committed within the DOD. We have that report, and it is rather astounding. People should read it. Right now what this amendment does is it says to the DOD: Get your act together, hire the necessary well-trained staff so they are monitoring the contracts and making sure we do not continue to see the pervasive amount of fraud committed against the taxpayers of this country or the Defense Department. I would hope very much that amendment gets widespread support and that we see it passed. There is another amendment we have offered, which I think is equally important, and that deals with making sure the Department of Defense-- which turns out to be the largest single consumer of energy in the United States of America. Obviously, the Department of Defense has huge resources, controls huge numbers of buildings, has enormous aircraft, and so forth and so on. It is by far the single largest consumer of energy in the United States, accounting for approximately 90 percent of Federal energy consumption, with an annual energy cost of up to $18 billion. So the Department of Defense spends $18 billion on energy costs alone. I think, in recent years, the Department of Defense has understood the importance of trying to move toward energy efficiency in terms of saving energy, but we have a long way to go. The major program to help cut energy consumption and costs at our military bases is called the Energy Conservation Investment Program. This is a very important program, although a relatively small program. This program has operated for more than 10 years, helping to invest in programs for more energy-efficient lighting, for example, at an Air Force base in Alaska, geothermal heating at Fort Knox Army Base in Kentucky, wind turbines for an Army base in Arizona, and solar power for the Air Force in Colorado. Historically, according to the Department of Defense, every $1 used by the Energy Conservation Investment Program yields $2 in savings. We invest in energy efficiency; we invest in sustainable energy. For every $1 invested, we save $2. This makes it a very positive program for the DOD. Some projects, such as energy efficiency improvements at a Navy base in California, achieve greater than $15 in savings for every $1 invested. The Department itself, the DOD, has stated this program achieves ``long-term public benefits by investing in technologies that increase economic efficiency and health benefits, build new sources of renewable energy, enhance job creation/retention, improve military facilities, and improve the quality of life for our troops and their families.'' Unfortunately, the authorization for this program in the current Defense authorization bill is $135 million, a relatively small amount of money for a Department of Defense which spends about $18 billion every year on energy. I think what we want to see is, A, the DOD save money through energy efficiency and sustainable energy and, secondly, become a model for the country as we attempt to break our dependence on fossil fuel, foreign oil, and we attempt to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. I can tell you that in the State of Vermont, we have our National Guard base, where we have worked with them to install a major solar installation which will pay a significant part of their electric bill. Frankly, I would like to see this done on National Guard bases all over the country and to the Active-Duty structures as well. The bottom line is, we are currently spending about $135 million, a relatively small amount of money compared to the $18 billion energy bill run up by the DOD. What this amendment would do is increase the authorization for the Energy Conservation Investment Program to $200 million, up from $135 million--not anywhere near as much as I think we should be doing, but it is a step forward in helping the Department of Defense save money on their energy bill, break our dependence on foreign oil, and help us cut greenhouse gas emissions. We know there remain many worthy projects at our military bases that have not yet been funded at today's funding levels that could be funded if my amendment were to pass. The amendment is fully offset and paid for by reducing expenditures on construction at overseas' bases, while still leaving nearly $300 million in funding for that purpose. I think that is a decent offset. I applaud the Department of Defense and the military for the strides they have made so far in investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy. There are some wonderful projects going on all over this country--in fact, all over the world--under the DOD, and they deserve credit for that. They can and should be a leader for our country, but we still have a very long way to go. I would ask for support from my colleagues for this amendment, which will save the Department of Defense money, will help break our dependency on foreign oil, move us to energy independence, and cut greenhouse gas emissions. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, there are two issues I would like to touch upon this afternoon which I think are significantly important to the people of our country. On Sunday, 2 days ago, I held a town meeting in Montpelier, VT, on the issue of saving the Postal Service. Frankly, I was stunned by the number of people who came. As you know, Vermont is not the largest State in the Nation, and yet we had about 350 people crowding into the cafeteria at Montpelier High School to say very clearly that they do not want to see the Postal Service dismembered. They do not want to see policies develop that will create a death spiral for the post offices of America. We heard a lot of testimony from many people, and the bottom line is that everybody in that room thought it was terribly wrong that in the midst of a recession the post office is talking about cutting 120,000 good-paying jobs in our country. It didn't make sense to anybody in that room. I find it ironic that at a moment when, appropriately enough--and I strongly support the effort--we are talking about creating jobs for veterans who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, with high unemployment rates, many of the people who work in the post office are, in fact, veterans. On one hand, we are trying to create jobs for veterans; on the other hand, if the Postal Service does what it wants, we may end up losing 120,000 jobs, including many veterans. I wanted to touch on some of the important issues that I think we have to deal with regarding the Postal Service. I want to just go over a letter that Senators Leahy, Gillibrand, Wyden, and myself sent to the chairpeople and ranking members of the Committee on Homeland Security and the subcommittee as well; that is, Senators Lieberman, Collins, Carper, and Scott Brown. These are the points we made in the letter. These are points that will be incorporated into legislation that I will be introducing this week--legislation that I think is commonsense legislation, legislation that will help us create a business model so the Postal Service can be successful, legislation that will save 120,000 jobs. This is what we wrote in the letter to the Homeland Security Committee. A lot of people don't know this. They say correctly that the Postal Service is having problems because we are in a digital age, and first class mail is going down because people are e-mailing. That is true. Second, we are in the midst of a recession and many businesses are facing problems. But the most important financial problems facing the post office today are not those issues; they are the issues of accounting approaches that have done great disservice to the Postal Service. The U.S. Postal Service uniquely has been forced to prefund 75 years' worth of future retiree health benefits in just 10 years. There is no other agency of government that comes close to that onerous requirement, nor do we believe there are any companies in the private sector that have been asked to do that. We are asking the Postal Service to come up with a huge amount of money and put it into a fund in a way that no other agency of government--and we think no other private company--has been forced to do. This mandate costs the Postal Service between $5.4 billion and $5.8 billion per year, and it accounts for 100 percent of the Postal Service's $20 billion debt. Without that onerous requirement, the USPS would still have significant borrowing authority with the U.S. Treasury to ride out the tough economic times we are seeing in the recession. Furthermore, it is not only future retiree health benefits they are being asked to come up with and fund, but the USPS needs to recoup the overpayments it has made to the CSRS and FERS, the Federal retirement system. According to studies by the Hay Group and the Segal Company, USPS has overpaid the CSRS by between $50 billion and $75 billion. If we look at those two issues, if we can deal with those issues and treat the Postal Service fairly, we will have gone a very long way toward addressing the immediate financial crisis the Postal Service is facing. Second, what we want to be very careful about as we develop business models for the future is to not start cutting, cutting, cutting, and creating a Postal Service that will no longer have customer support and lay the groundwork for literally a death spiral and the destruction and demise of the Postal Service in years to come. I come from a rural State. Post Offices are extremely important to the people of small towns above and beyond getting mail. They become, in a sense, in some ways, the identifying feature of a small town. It is where people come together and talk. It is very important, in my mind, that we not start cutting pell-mell hundreds and hundreds of small post offices in rural America. I think the legislation we will be offering this week addresses that problem in a sensible and reasonable way. Second of all, the Postal Service can never be competitive if when you drop a letter into a postal box it takes 5 days for that letter to get to its destination. One of the ideas that the Postal Service is talking about is making very significant cuts in what they call processing centers. That is where the mail is gathered and forwarded. If we cut those centers--in my State, we have two that are on the line, Essex Junction and Wright River Junction. If we cut those and other processing centers all over the country, what will happen is that when we drop that letter into a mailbox, it could take up to 5 days for that letter to reach its destination. When we have that poor service, people are simply going to stop using the post office, and that continues the death spiral. People are not going to want to use the service. Thirdly, and in the same vein, the Postal Service is now talking about cutting Saturday delivery. Again, that means there are a whole lot of folks who get prescription drugs on Saturday, and a whole lot of people who get a magazine or newspapers on Saturday--if we cut that back, people are going to say: No, I don't want to deal with the post office anymore. It is not worth it. So it seems to me the choice we have is to do what the Postal Service is now talking about; that is, cut and eliminate rural post offices, end Saturday mail delivery, cut and eliminate significant numbers of processing centers, which will slow down the delivery of mail--that is one approach--and lay off, by the way, some 120,000 American workers, including many veterans. That is a very bad idea. The other approach is to come up with a business model that recognizes that we are in the 21st century; that the post office has to evolve and change and give the post office the freedom to compete in a way that addresses the needs of its customers. I will give an example. The Presiding Officer comes from a rural State, as I do. A lot of people in our States want to get fishing licenses or hunting licenses. If they walked into a post office in rural New Hampshire or rural Vermont and said: Hey, can I fill out an application to get a fishing or hunting license, the post office would say they we don't do that, they are not permitted to do that. If an individual literally wants to walk into a post office--and postmasters tell me this happens every day--and say: I have a letter, and I want it notarized, they may be a notary public, but they are not allowed by law to notarize that. The issue of the digital revolution is obviously impacting post offices not only in the United States but around the world. Other countries are looking at these challenges in a way that we are not. I will give one more example. For a lot of reasons--legal and otherwise--there are people who would like to see a document delivered to somebody in writing and not simply in e-mail. There are post offices now in other countries where one can send an e-mail, say, from Vermont to California, it gets printed, and on the same day that document gets delivered to a business or a home. The post office in America is not allowed to do that. So by law our post office is restricted from entering the 21st century. If somebody walks into a post office now and says they want to print up 10 copies of a document, so where is the copying machine, the postmaster would say they don't have one, that they are not allowed to have a copy machine. There are a lot of ideas out there that people are talking about as to how the Postal Service can address the needs of customers in the 21st century. Last, but not least, on this issue, one of the people at the town meeting on Sunday got up and said: I want to say this. In our town, we know our letter carrier very well. Our letter carrier noticed that mail remained in the mail box of an elderly person, and the mailman got on the phone and called the police department because he suspected that something was wrong. It turns out that something was wrong and that person's life was saved. I expect that happens all over this country. We have hundreds of thousands of letter carriers who know people, interact with people. They do play and can more so play an important role in providing services. Bottom line, Madam President, I think it is a bad idea in the midst of a recession to slash 120,000 jobs, including jobs of many of our veterans. Second, I do believe if we use our brains and entrepreneurial spirit, we can create a post office that is very relevant and can be profitable in the 21st century. We will be introducing legislation addressing all of these issues, and I hope very much that my colleagues will cosponsor that legislation. Tax Fairness Madam President, there is another issue I want to talk about, and that is the work of the supercommittee. This country has a recordbreaking deficit. It has a $14-plus trillion national debt, and I think all of the American people--or virtually all--want to see the supercommittee come up with a proposal which makes sense and which helps us address our deficit crisis. My suggestion to the supercommittee is that they, in fact, can do that by simply doing what the American people want them to do. I have heard some of the ideas out there, where members of the supercommittee are talking about cutting Social Security, which has not contributed one nickel to our deficit and has a $2\1/2\ trillion surplus, and another idea being that we have to cut Medicare and Medicaid. Well, we have 50 million people without any health insurance. I don't think it is a brilliant idea to throw more and more people off health insurance. So I think those are bad ideas, and every single poll I have seen tells me the American people agree those are dumb ideas. Meanwhile, I have seen and talked to a whole lot of people who are asking me this question: How is it, when the wealthiest people in this country are becoming much wealthier, when the effective tax rates of the top 2 percent are the lowest in decades, that we are not asking those people who are doing phenomenally well to start paying their fair share of taxes? This is not just a progressive idea and it is not just a Democratic idea. The polls suggest that all across the political spectrum, the American people are saying: Yes, it is right and appropriate that the wealthiest people in this country start paying their fair share of taxes. I will just mention an ABC News-Washington Post October 5, 2011, poll reflecting that 75 percent of Independents support raising taxes on millionaires. In that same poll, 57 percent of Republicans support raising taxes on millionaires. In that same poll, 55 percent of tea party supporters--supposedly the extreme rightwing who want to abolish Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, which turns out not to be the case at all--agree with raising taxes on millionaires. According to a June 2011 Washington Post poll, 72 percent of Americans support raising taxes on incomes over $250,000. So I think we know what the American people want. They do not want, in poll after poll, to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid because they know how vitally important those programs are to the well- being of tens of millions of Americans. For example, according to a February 2011 NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 77 percent of Americans are opposed to cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit. So where are we as a country? We are pretty united. We are in agreement. What the American people are saying is that the rich are getting richer, their effective real tax rates have gone down, and they have to pay more in taxes to help us through deficit reduction and to create jobs. The American people also understand there are huge corporate loopholes out there, with oil companies making money hand over fist and getting huge tax breaks and Wall Street getting huge tax breaks. We lose $100 billion a year because large companies and the wealthy put their money into tax havens in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, and in Panama. The people of this country know that is wrong. I hope very much that the supercommittee will do nothing more than listen to the American people. That is all. If they do that, they will do the right thing. They will not suggest that we cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but they will suggest that the wealthiest people in this country start paying their fair share of taxes. They will recommend that we do away with these outrageous loopholes large profitable corporations enjoy. If they do that, we will, in fact, come up with an agreement that will help us reduce the deficit, and we will win the support of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, there has been a lot of discussion in the Senate, in the House, and in the media about what the supercommittee is doing and what they should be doing. The American people understand their responsibility in terms of trying to reduce our national debt and our deficit is difficult. I wish them the best of luck in coming up with a solution. My hope, simply stated, is that the supercommittee will do what the American people want them to do. The American people, through demonstrations all over this country and in poll after poll, have made it pretty clear what they want to see happen. The American people are becoming more and more aware that there is something very wrong in this country when we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth; when the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent; when in a recent 25-year period, 80 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent; and when the gap between the very rich and everybody else is wider today than it has ever been since 1928, the year before the Great Depression. If anyone thinks distribution of income in this country is unfair, then they should look at distribution of wealth, which is much more unfair. Today the wealthiest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people--400 people, 150 million Americans. That unbelievable inequality in terms of wealth, in my view, is not only morally wrong, it is very bad economics, and it is not sustainable. When the supercommittee deliberates as to where they should go, I think one direction is very clear. The American people of all political spectrums have made their point of view known very strongly on this issue. Whether Democrat, Independent, or Republican, poll after poll shows when the wealthiest people in this country are becoming wealthier; when, as Warren Buffett reminds us, their effective tax rate--i.e. real tax rate--is the lowest it has been in decades; yes, the wealthiest people in this country are going to have to pay more in taxes to enable us to go forward on deficit reduction. So any serious plan brought forth by the supercommittee must ask the wealthiest people in this country to pay more in taxes. Furthermore, as I think everybody knows, we have corporation after corporation that benefits from huge tax loopholes. A study just came out today that shows one out of four major corporations pays nothing in taxes. Recently, there are examples that major corporations made billions of dollars in profit and not only paid nothing in taxes but got rebates from the IRS. Many of these corporations stash their profits in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere to avoid U.S. taxes. I think the American people are very clear; if we are going to go forward with deficit reduction, large corporations are also going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes. This is across the political spectrum. I hope the supercommittee is hearing and understands that any agreement must contain significant revenue from the wealthiest people in this country and from the largest corporations. Furthermore, at a time when military spending has tripled since 1997, I hope as part of their agreement that the supercommittee takes a hard look at our defense budget and asks whether it is necessary that the United States of America spends more on defense than the entire rest of the world combined. Those are some of the areas I hope the supercommittee will explore: asking the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes, ending tax loopholes for large corporations, and taking a hard look at military spending which has tripled since 1997. Then there is another area the supercommittee must also look at; that is, to understand that in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, a recession caused by the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, the supercommittee must not cut Social Security, cut Medicare, or cut Medicaid. Social Security is the most successful Federal program in the history of our country. It has a $2.5 trillion surplus. It can pay out all benefits for the next 25 years because it is funded by the payroll tax. It has not contributed one nickel to our deficit. The supercommittee must not cut Social Security. Madam President, 50 million Americans have no health insurance and many others are underinsured. According to a study at Harvard University, 45,000 Americans die each year because they do not get to the doctor when they should. Under those conditions it would be immoral, it would be wrong for the supercommittee to cut Medicare and to cut Medicaid. I hope the supercommittee does what the American people have said very loudly and clearly--they have said it in demonstrations, they have said it in polls, they have said it in communications with their Members in the House and the Senate--we have an opportunity to make significant progress in terms of deficit reduction, but that deficit reduction should not take place on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. Those populations, the most vulnerable people in this country, are hurting enough right now. I hope the supercommittee has the courage to do what is right. I hope they have the courage to do what the American people want them to do. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to congratulate the members of the Senate who, by a very large vote today, passed the minibus legislation which, among many other important things, will provide $1.9 billion for the Department of Transportation's emergency relief fund. What that will do is help the Department deal with the backlog of disaster situations around the country that they previously were not able to deal with; and, from the perspective of the State of Vermont, it will help us deal with the devastation we experienced in terms of our roads and our bridges and our infrastructure as a result of Hurricane Irene. In many communities around the State, we saw washouts, we saw bridges destroyed or damaged, and roads disappear. While Vermont is certainly prepared to do everything it can to come up with funds to help, there is no question but that the Federal Government needs to be there, as it has always been in the past when disaster strikes a community in America. The name of our country is the United--U-N-I-T-E-D--States of America. What that means is if a disaster hits Minnesota or California, the people of Vermont are there to help. That is what we do as a nation. And when disaster hits Vermont or New Jersey, people in other parts of the country are there. We made good progress today. I want to congratulate Senator Leahy and the other members of the Appropriations Committee for coming up with this funding. Now the ball goes to our colleagues in the House, and now is the time for the House to stand tall, to support what we have done here in the Senate, and make sure that communities all over this country get the emergency funding they need in transportation in order to rebuild their communities.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I want to say a word on another interesting issue which took place today. You may have noticed that Bank of America has decided to withdraw its $5 fee for debit transfers. Let me tell you, the Bank of America, like the other banks that were going to go forward in imposing these fees, did not withdraw them because they were nice guys. They withdrew them because the American people said ``enough is enough'' in terms of the greed of Wall Street. Let us never forget that it was the Bank of America and the other huge financial institutions on Wall Street that caused the recession we are in, resulting in millions of people losing their jobs, their homes, their life savings. Let us never forget that when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, it was the American people and the Fed who bailed them out. And now that Wall Street and the large banks are making very handsome profits, paying their CEOs some of the largest compensation packages they have ever received, their thank you to the American people was to charge them a $5 a month debit fee. But do you know what happened? The American people said thanks but no thanks. It wasn't the Senate that turned this around. It wasn't the House that turned this around. It was the American people. I applaud the people on the Occupying Wall Street campaign who focused attention on the greed of Wall Street, and the millions of other Americans who have said enough is enough. The point here, which is a very profound point--which is ultimately what politics is all about--is that if the American people at the grassroots level begin to stand up and fight back, profound and positive changes can take place in this country. If the American people stand up and say: No, we are not going to cut Social Security, we are not going to cut Medicare, we are not going to cut Medicaid, or education, but we are going to move toward a balanced budget by asking the wealthiest people in this country, whose effective tax rate is the lowest in decades, to start paying their fair share of taxes, we can do that. We don't have to cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. If the American people say maybe we have got to end these outrageous tax loopholes that allow oil companies--which are making huge profits right now--in some years to pay nothing in Federal income taxes, we can end those loopholes as well. If the American people say, well, maybe before we cut programs for the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor, maybe we want to make sure those companies and individuals who stash their money in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, where we lose $100 billion a year because of the tax havens--when we rally the American people and they stand up and say enough is enough, we can change that too. So today I congratulate the American people. You did it. You took on the largest financial institution in the United States of America and you beat it. And that should be step one. We should go on from there. The American grassroots has to continue to speak out in the fight for social justice in this country. I yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 816.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Let me begin by concurring with much of what the Senator from Pennsylvania has said. I think he is right-on. Like him, I rise today in strong opposition to the unfettered free-trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Let's be clear. One of the major reasons why the middle class in America is disappearing and why poverty is increasing and why the gap between the very wealthy and everybody else is growing wider is directly related to our disastrous, unfettered free-trade policy. If the United States is to remain a major industrial power, producing real products and creating good-paying jobs, we cannot continue the failed, unfettered free-trade policies that have been in existence for the last 30 years. We need to develop trade policies--I know this is a radical idea-- that work for working people and not just the CEOs of large corporations. What we must do is rebuild our manufacturing sector and once again create millions of good-paying jobs where workers are producing real products made in the United States of America. Over the last decade, more than 50,000 manufacturing plants in this country have shut down. Let me repeat that. In the last decade, more than 50,000 factories in this country have shut down. Over 5.5 million factory jobs have disappeared. Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs, often paying workers a living wage, decent benefits, pensions. Today, that figure is down to just 9 percent. In July of 2000, there were 17.3 million manufacturing workers in this country. Today, there are only 11.7 million. According to a recent study conducted by a well-respected economist at the Economic Policy Institute, permanent normal trade relations with China has led to the loss of 2.8 million jobs. In fact, the United States has lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. I was in the House of Representatives when PNTR with China was passed. I can remember all of the fine speeches from the President on down, Republicans, Democrats: Permanent normal trade relations with China is going to open up that great market, going to create millions of jobs in America. It was not true. Free trade with China ended up costing us 2.8 million jobs. You don't have to be an economist to understand that; all you have to do is walk into any department store in America and buy a product. Do you know where that product is made? It is not made in the United States of America, it is made in China. We all now understand what that trade agreement was about. It was not to open markets in China for American products, it was to open China so corporations in this country could shut down here, throw American workers out on the street, and move there in order to pay workers pennies an hour. That is what those trade agreements are about. There is no doubt in my mind that--certainly to a much lesser degree because they are smaller trade agreements--trade agreements with Korea, Panama, and Colombia will continue that same process. The U.S. Department of Commerce has reported that over the last decade, U.S. multinational corporations slashed 2.9 million jobs. Now the biggest advocate of unfettered free trade, of NAFTA with Mexico, of PNTR with China, of these trade agreements, is corporate America. It is the chamber of commerce, it is the National Association of Manufacturing. They spend huge sums of money on lobbying and campaign contributions in order to make Congress vote for these great trade agreements. Let me repeat. Over the last decade, these very same corporations that want us to pass these disastrous trade agreements slashed 2.9 million American jobs. Furthermore, what we have learned is that during that same period of time--and here is the kicker--these same corporations have created 2.4 million jobs. The only problem is that those jobs were created in China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries. What we have here is that key advocates for continuing this disastrous trade policy are precisely the people who have been slashing jobs in America, closing down factories, and hiring people abroad. And I would suggest that Members of the Senate might want to think twice about listening to the advice of people who have been laying off millions of American workers. Oddly enough, again we have one of the leading advocates for these disastrous trade agreements--it is the chamber of commerce. Well, some years ago, the chamber of commerce, to its credit, was pretty up front. They said outsourcing is a good idea. They recommended to American corporations: Shut down in America and move abroad. It is good for your stockholders. Do you really want to take the advice of people who believe that outsourcing and throwing American workers out on the street is a good idea? I do not think so. Today we are hearing all of this talk about how these trade agreements are going to create new jobs. We heard it before. It is the same old movie. The American people understand it is a bad movie. It is an unfactual movie. During the Clinton administration, we were told by Republicans and Democrats and then-President Clinton that NAFTA would create 100,000 American jobs over a 2-year period. That is what we were told about NAFTA. Well, results are in on NAFTA. Instead of creating 100,000 American jobs, the Economic Policy Institute has found that NAFTA destroyed more than 682,000 American jobs, including the loss of 150,000 computer and electronic jobs. I do not understand why, when you have a policy that has failed and failed, you want to continue that policy. Football teams that have coaches with losing records get rid of those coaches. When you have a trade policy that has resulted in millions of American workers losing their jobs, you do not continue that same philosophy. The issue here is not just Mexico and NAFTA, it is not just PNTR with China, it is obviously what is going to happen with the trade agreements that are before us today, Korea, Panama, and Colombia. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that the Korea Free Trade Agreement will lead to the loss of 159,000 American jobs and will increase the trade deficit by nearly $14 billion over a 7-year period. Why would you want to go forward with those ideas? Why would you want to go forward with a trade agreement that will increase our trade deficit? President Obama has estimated that the Korea Free Trade Agreement will support at least 70,000 American jobs. But the headline of a December 7, 2010, article in the New York Times says it all: ``Few New Jobs Expected Soon From Free-Trade Agreement With South Korea.'' According to this article, the Korea Free Trade Agreement ``is likely to result in little if any net job creation in the short run, according to the government's own analysis.'' Let me touch on one particular aspect of the Korea Free Trade Agreement that I find especially troubling and that I think the American people, to the degree they understand this and learn about it, will also find troubling; that is, this particular free-trade agreement will force American workers to compete not just against the low-wage workers in China or Vietnam or Mexico, they are going to be forced to compete against the virtual slave labor that exists in North Korea, the most undemocratic country in the world and a country itself whose government will financially benefit from this, with the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il. We all know that under current law the United States has an embargo on all North Korean goods--for a very good reason. Workers in North Korea are the most brutalized in the world, have virtually no democratic rights, and are at the mercy of the most vicious dictator in the world. But after the South Korea Free Trade Agreement is signed into law, the United States would have a new obligation to allow South Korean products to come into our country tariff-free that contain major parts made by North Korean workers who make pennies an hour. According to a January 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service, ``There is nothing to prevent South Korean firms from performing intermediate manufacturing operations in North Korea and then performing final manufacturing processes in South Korea.'' In other words, there is a huge industrial park in North Korea. South Korean companies own that park. Workers there are paid horrendously low wages, and some of those wages go right to the North Korean Government. Products made in that industrial park in North Korea will go to South Korea and then will come back into the United States as part of that so-called free-trade agreement. Today, over 47,000 North Korean workers currently are employed by more than 120 South Korean firms, including Hyundai, at the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea. This facility is located just 6 miles north of the demilitarized zone, with direct road and rail access to South Korea and just an hour's drive away from Seoul. These North Korean workers officially make a minimum wage of 35 cents an hour, but they actually make less than that. Instead of paying these workers directly, Hyundai and the other South Korean firms pay the North Korean Government. How is that? South Korean companies--major companies--pay the North Korean Government. They take a piece of the action, which is going to the most undemocratic, vicious dictatorship in the world. The products then go to South Korea, and they are part of the free-trade agreement with South Korea. In 2007, Han Duck-soo, who was then the Prime Minister of South Korea and is the current South Korean Ambassador to the United States, said this: The planned ratification of the South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement will pave the way for the export of products built in Kaesong [North Korea] to the U.S. market. So what we have now is American workers being forced to compete against desperate people all over the world, who are making a tiny fraction of the wages that are paid in America, and forced to compete against countries where there are no environmental standards, where worker unions are not recognized or respected. But now it gets even worse. American workers are now being forced to compete against the virtual slave labor in North Korea as part of this trade agreement. What about the Colombia Free Trade Agreement? It is understandable why the CEOs of multinational corporations would like this free-trade agreement. After all, Colombia is one of the most anti-union countries on the planet. Since 1986, over 2,800 trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia--more than the rest of the world combined. Think about it for a moment. If we found out that 50 CEOs had been assassinated in Colombia last year instead of trade leaders, do you think we would be on the verge of approving a free-trade agreement with that country? Frankly, I don't think so. Lastly, let me say a brief word about Panama and the Panama free- trade agreement. Panama's entire economic output is only $26.7 billion a year or about two-tenths of 1 percent of the U.S. economy. Nobody can legitimately claim that approving this free-trade agreement will significantly increase American jobs. Then why would we be considering a stand-alone free trade agreement with Panama? It turns out that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. The Panama Free Trade Agreement will make this bad situation much worse. Each and every year, the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations evade about $100 billion in U.S. taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and other countries. According to Citizens for Tax Justice: A tax haven . . . has one of three characteristics: it has no income tax or a very low rate income tax; it has bank secrecy laws; and it has a history of non-cooperation with other countries on exchanging information about tax matters. Panama has all three of those. . . . They're probably the worst. Let me conclude--and I will be back on the floor later to amplify on these remarks. I will conclude by saying this: If you go out to any community in America and you ask the people in those communities-- especially working people--do you think our current free-trade agreements, such as NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China, have worked, and have they been creating jobs in your community or have you seen factories shut down, I suspect that in almost every instance people will say these free-trade agreements are not working for American workers. They are costing us jobs. That is what the American people understand to be true because it is true. So it seems to me that when you have a history of failed trade policies--policies that have enabled and encouraged large corporations to shut down in this country and move abroad, it is insane to continue that policy if you are serious about creating jobs in America, rebuilding our manufacturing sector, and trying to address the crises facing the middle class today. We need new trade policies. Trade unto itself is a good idea. Everybody believes in trade. But you need trade policies that are designed to help ordinary working people and not just wealthy CEOs. I feel very strongly that the policies we are debating today--trade policies with Korea, Panama, and Colombia--are nothing more than extensions of disastrous trade policies of the past. They should be defeated. We should come together and develop new approaches to trade, which will benefit all our people and not just CEOs or multinational corporations. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I always enjoy the Senator's remarks. However, I cannot quite agree with the thrust of his statement. In my view, the current trade policies in this country are a disaster. The evidence is very clear that they have cost us many millions of jobs and to continue that same unfettered free-trade philosophy, in terms of trade agreements with Korea, Panama and Colombia, makes absolutely no sense at all. When we have a policy that is failing, we change it; we don't continue it. Let us be very clear. I think most Americans understand that our economy today is in disastrous shape. Our middle class is disappearing. Recent statistics have told us poverty levels are at an alltime high, and the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. In my view, one of the reasons--not the only reason--for the collapse of the middle class has to do with the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs, attributable to these disastrous trade policies. If we are serious as a nation in wanting to rebuild the middle class, lower our poverty rate, what we have to do is move forward in a new direction in trade, based on fair trade principles, and end this unfettered free trade, which has been such a disaster for American workers. Over the last decade, we as a nation have lost 50,000 manufacturing plants in our country. I will repeat that because that is such a staggering number that it needs to be said over and over. Fifty thousand manufacturing plants in this country have shut down over the last 10 years alone. We have lost, during that same period, 5.5 million factory jobs. Many of those jobs were good-paying jobs. They were jobs that provided people with good wages and good benefits. Those jobs are gone and, in many cases, have been replaced by Walmart and McDonald's- type jobs, with low wages and minimal benefits. To give us a sense about how significant the decline of manufacturing in this country is, the reality is, in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, that number is just 9 percent. In July of 2000, there were 17.3 million manufacturing workers in this country. Today, there are only 11 million manufacturing workers. In my small State of Vermont--which is not as big as Ohio or Michigan and has never been one of the great manufacturing centers in the country, but even in a small State such as Vermont, what we have seen is a huge decline in good-paying manufacturing jobs, which have certainly impacted our middle class. Mr. President, 10 years ago, we had approximately 45,000 manufacturing jobs in Vermont. Last year, we had 31,000 manufacturing jobs in Vermont. We have lost about one-third of our manufacturing jobs. I should tell everyone that 7,800 of those jobs were lost as a result of the trade agreement with China and another 1,300 were lost as a result of NAFTA. The key issue is whether we continue our disastrous trade policy, which includes NAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China, and CAFTA. Do we add on to trade policies that have failed? For the love of me, I cannot understand why anybody would want to do that. The facts are very clear: Our current trade policies have failed, have been a disaster for working families. According to a recent study conducted by well-respected economists at the Economic Policy Institute, permanent normal trade relations with China led to the loss of 2.8 million American jobs--2.8 million American jobs. I remember because I was in the House when that debate took place. I heard the same thing then as I hear now--Members of Congress getting up and talking about all the new jobs that were going to be created. It wasn't true then and it is not true now. How could we defend a trade policy based on the same principles as PNTR with China when that policy cost us 2.8 million jobs in the last year alone? Then we have NAFTA. Many of us remember the rhetoric around NAFTA. My goodness, we were going to open the entire Mexican economy for products made in the United States of America. We were going to be selling it in Mexico. Does anybody in America believe that policy has worked--that NAFTA has worked? The facts are very clear. Again, according to the EPI, they found that NAFTA has led to the loss of 680,000 jobs. So the simple reality is--and one doesn't have to be a Ph.D. in economics to figure this out--that if a company has the option of hiring somebody in a low-wage country at 50 cents or 70 cents an hour and they don't have to deal with unions or with environmental standards, why would they not go to those countries? The answer is they would go. The answer is they have gone. That is what these trade policies are about--not selling American- produced products abroad but creating a situation where companies can shut down in America, move factories abroad, and bring those products back into this country tariff free. We have quote after quote after quote from Members of Congress who got up on the floor during the NAFTA debate, during the China debate, and told us about all the jobs that would be created. I keep hearing that rhetoric, when, in fact, nothing said in the past has proven to be true. Let me quote my good friends--and they are not good friends--from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They tell us this, and this is the discussion about Korea, Panama, and Colombia: This is foremost a debate about jobs. At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, these agreements will create real business opportunities that can generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs. But wait a second. Is this the same Chamber of Commerce that, on July 1, 2004, according to the Associated Press, said this--this is the headline: ``Chamber of Commerce leader advocates offshoring of jobs.'' Here is what the article stated about the Chamber of Commerce, a strong advocate for these trade policies: U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donahue urged American companies to send jobs overseas as a way to boost American competitiveness. . . . Donahue said that exporting high-paid tech jobs to low-cost countries such as India, China and Russia saves companies money. . . . Let's see, the Chamber of Commerce is leading the effort for these trade agreements, but they tell us the outsourcing of jobs is a good thing. Maybe we want to think twice before we accept the advice of the Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Department of Commerce has reported--and this is very interesting, not only as information unto itself but about the politics of this whole trade agreement. We have the Chamber of Commerce and we have every major multinational corporation in the country telling us how good this unfettered free trade policy is. But now we have the U.S. Department of Commerce reporting that over the last decade, U.S. multinational corporations slashed 2.9 million American jobs. Let's digest that. Large corporations and multinationals come in here and say the trade agreements are great and will create American jobs. At the same time, over the last decade, they have slashed 2.9 million American jobs. Here is the other side of the story. The truth is, these same multinational corporations that are telling Members of Congress to vote for these trade agreements--the truth is, they are creating jobs. The only problem is, the jobs they are creating are not in the United States of America; they are in China and other low-wage countries. Over this last same period, the last decade, while they laid off 2.9 million American workers, these same multinational corporations created 2.4 million new jobs abroad. So they laid off 2.9 million American workers and created 2.4 million jobs in China and other low-wage countries. That, in a nutshell, is what these trade agreements are about-- enabling corporations to shut down in America, move to low-wage countries, and bring their products back into our country. The results are very clear. We don't need a great study done by the Department of Commerce or the Economic Policy Institute; all we have to do is walk into any department store in America. When we buy a product, we know where that product is manufactured. It is not manufactured in Vermont, it is not manufactured in California, and it is often manufactured in China, Mexico or other developing countries. That has been the whole goal of these trade agreements--shut down plants in America, move them abroad, hire low-wage workers there, and bring the products back into this country. The idea that we would be extending this concept to Korea, Panama, and Colombia makes no sense to me at all. Since the year 2000, 2.8 million American jobs have been eliminated or displaced as a result of the increased trade deficit with China. After all the talk on the floor of the Senate and the floor of the House, at the editorial boards of major newspapers and by leading politicians about how the China Free Trade Agreement would create jobs in America, it is very interesting to hear what these corporations had to say a few years after the trade agreement was passed. In other words, before it is passed, they will tell us about how we are going to create all these jobs in America. The day after it is passed, their line changes. The China Free Trade Agreement was passed in the year 2000. A couple years later, Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, was quoted on this subject at an investor meeting, just one year after China was admitted to the World Trade Organization. This is after the Chinese-American free-trade agreement. This is what Mr. Immelt said: When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. That is him, not me--five Chinas. You need to be there. You need to change the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive. You can take an 18 cubic foot refrigerator, make it in China, land it in the United States, and land it for less than we can make an 18 cubic foot refrigerator today, ourselves. This is the head of General Electric, who, by the way, I guess is President Obama's great adviser on creating jobs in America. So that was 2 years after the China agreement was signed. And on and on it goes. It is not just Mr. Immelt, it is major corporation after major corporation. Before the agreement, it is jobs were doing great in America. After the agreement, it is all of the advantages of outsourcing. Let me tell you how bad the situation is. By the way, I think most Americans know that not only is it a disaster for our economy that we are not producing the products we consume, but it is really an embarrassment. I will cite an example. Last year, during the holiday season, I walked into the Smithsonian's very beautiful American History Museum. It is a great museum, and I urge everybody who comes to Washington to visit. I walked into the gift shop of the Smithsonian museum, owned by the people of America, paid for by the people of America, and do you know what their gift shop had? Most of the products in the gift shop were not made in America. It turns out they were made in China or made in other low-wage countries around the world. I went to a section where they had little busts of Presidents of the United States--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Barack Obama--and when you turned them over, do you know where these busts of Presidents of the United States were made? Yes, you guessed it--in China. We have since been having some discussions with the Smithsonian. They are in the process of changing their policies. And we are working with other people as well. But that is how bad the situation is, that busts of American Presidents, sold in a museum owned by the people of the United States of America, talking about the history and culture of America, are made in China. That is just one example of how pathetic this whole situation is. And on and on it goes. By the way, when we talk about trade, we often focus on blue-collar jobs and manufacturing jobs, but it is also increasingly information technology jobs and white-collar jobs. Just think for a moment that during the past 4 years the cumulative trade deficit with China in advanced technology--not talking about sneakers but advanced technology products--totaled more than $300 billion. Last year, our trade deficit with China on advanced technology products was a staggering $92 billion--in 1 year alone. I just bought one of these very nice iPhones. It is very nice. Do you know where that product is made? It is made in China. And the iPad is made in China, and the iPod and the Blackberry and IBM computers and Dell computers and the Microsoft X-Box and big-screen TVs. None of these American inventions we pride ourselves on inventing, none of the technologies we pride ourselves on developing--and Steve Jobs recently passed away, a great businessperson--none of these are made here. Where are they made? More often than not, they are made in China. Let me quote from a December 15, 2010, article in the Wall Street Journal: One widely touted solution for current U.S. economic woes is for America to come up with more of the high-tech gadgets the rest of the world craves. Yet two academic researchers estimate that Apple's iPhone--one of the best selling U.S. technology products--actually added $1.9 billion to the U.S. trade deficit with China last year. So we develop these products, but we can't manufacture them here because these companies prefer the low wages in China. And on and on it goes--not just blue-collar jobs but white collar jobs as well. Today, we are not talking about China and we are not talking about Mexico. We are talking about Korea and Panama, and we are talking about Colombia, but it is the same old story. The chamber of commerce is back again suggesting the creation of all of these jobs, until the day after the agreement is signed, and then they will be talking about how they can throw American workers out on the street. It is interesting that poll after poll shows that, to say the least, the American people do not have an enormous amount of respect for the U.S. Congress and they see Congress as living in a very different world than working-class people are living in. I don't know of any example where that schizophrenia is greater than in terms of trade. I don't know what it is like in Rhode Island, but I will tell you what it is like in Vermont when you ask people what they think about these trade agreements with China. When you ask constituents if they think they are creating jobs in America, they reply: What, are you nuts? Of course they are not. And the polls tell us that. In a September 2010 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 69 percent of Americans said they believe ``free trade between the United States and other countries cost the U.S. jobs.'' I think every group in America except the Congress seems to get that point. But then again, the Congress is surrounded by lobbyists and campaign contributors who come from big-money interests, and they like these unfettered free- trade agreements. Let me say a word or two about Korea. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that the Korea free-trade agreement will lead to the loss of 159,000 American jobs and will increase the trade deficit by nearly $14 billion over a 7-year period. Why would we want to go forward in a trade agreement that will cost us jobs? President Obama has estimated that the Korea Free Trade Agreement will ``support at least 70,000 American jobs.'' But the headline of a December 7, 2010, article in the New York Times says it all: ``Few New Jobs Expected Soon From Free-Trade Agreement with South Korea.'' According to this article, the Korea Free Trade Agreement ``is likely to result in little if any net job creation in the short run, according to the government's own analysis''--our government's own analysis. That analysis was done by the U.S. International Trade Commission, which projects our overall trade deficit will increase, not decrease, if the Korea Free Trade Agreement is implemented. This is our own International Trade Commission. So what are we doing? What are we doing? Let me touch on one aspect of the Korea Free Trade Agreement that deserves a lot of focus, and I fear very much it is not getting it; that is, the Korea Free Trade Agreement will force American workers not just to compete against low-wage workers in South Korea but also to compete against the virtual slave labor conditions that exist in North Korea, a country which is certainly one of the most undemocratic countries in the world. To add insult to injury, not only are our workers going to be competing against slave labor in North Korea, some of the proceeds from this free-trade agreement are going to the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il, certainly one of the more vicious dictators in the entire world. What that is about is that a number of companies in South Korea, including Hyundai and many others, own companies that are doing business in a large industrial area in North Korea. This agreement will allow products made in North Korea to go to South Korea and then come back into the United States. I know there has been a little confusion on this, but there shouldn't be. Let me quote from a January 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service, and I hope everybody who plans on voting for this free-trade agreement with Korea hears this: There is nothing to prevent South Korean firms from performing intermediate manufacturing operations in North Korea, and then performing final manufacturing processes in South Korea. For example, as much as 65 percent of the value of a South Korean car coming into the United States could actually be made in North Korea if this trade agreement goes into effect. Today, we have almost 47,000 North Korean workers currently employed by more than 120 South Korean firms, including Hyundai, at the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea. What an agreement. What an agreement. Slave labor in North Korea manufacturing products that go to South Korea and then come into the United States of America. Meanwhile, the dictatorship of North Korea gets a significant piece of the action on top of the pennies an hour the North Korean workers get. In 2007, Han Duck-soo, who was then the Prime Minister of South Korea and is now the current South Korean Ambassador to the United States, said: The planned ratification of the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will pave the way for the export of products built in Kaesong [North Korea] to the U.S. market. Isn't that wonderful. Isn't that wonderful. Bad enough for workers in our country to have to compete against people in China and in Vietnam-- people making 20 cents, 30 cents, or 40 cents an hour--but now we are asked to compete against slave labor in Korea. And that is the treaty people will be voting for today. Mr. President, I think a lot of folks have mentioned, in terms of Colombia, the assault on trade unionists there. Since 1986, some 2,800 trade unionists have been assassinated. Less than 6 percent of these murders have been prosecuted by the Colombian Government. Last year alone--last year alone, in a small country--more than 50 trade unionists were assassinated in Colombia. That is up 9 percent from 2009. I ask, if in Colombia 50 CEOs of companies were killed last year, were murdered last year, do you think people here would be voting for a free-trade agreement with Colombia or would they say: Why would we want an agreement with a country that is so unlawful, that is so brutal, where so many CEOs are being killed? But it is not CEOs, it is just trade union leaders, so I guess it is OK to have an agreement there. I would also say that President Obama had a different view on Colombia when he was a candidate for President in 2008. In October of 2008, candidate Barack Obama said: The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions. Candidate Obama in 2008 was right in opposing this trade agreement. Unfortunately, as President, he is wrong to support it right now. Let me say a word about the Panama Free Trade Agreement. Panama is a very small country. Its entire annual economic output is only $26.7 billion a year or about two-tenths of 1 percent of the American economy. So I think no one is going to legitimately stand here and say that trading with such a small country is going to significantly increase American jobs. Then why would we be considering a trade agreement with Panama? What is going on there? Well, it turns out Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. And the Panama Free Trade Agreement would make this bad situation much worse. I am a member of the Budget Committee, as is the Presiding Officer, and we have heard testimony time and time again that our country is losing up to $100 billion every year as corporations stash their money in postal addresses in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, and in Panama. This trade agreement makes that situation even worse. According to Citizens for Tax Justice: A tax haven . . . has one of three characteristics: It has no income tax or a very low-rate income tax; it has bank secrecy laws; and it has a history of noncooperation with other countries on exchanging information about tax matters. Panama has all three of those. . . . They're probably the worst. That is according to Citizens for Tax Justice. The trade agreement with Panama would effectively bar the United States from cracking down on illegal and abusive offshore tax havens in Panama. In fact, combating tax haven abuse in Panama would be a violation of this free-trade agreement, exposing the United States to fines from international authorities. At a time when we have a 14-trillion-plus national debt and at a time when we are frantically figuring out ways to try to lower our deficit, some of us believe it is a good idea to do away with all of these tax havens by which the wealthy and large corporations stash their money abroad and avoid paying U.S. taxes. The Panama trade agreement would make that goal even more difficult. I want to say another word on an issue that I think is important as we look into the future. The proposed Korea Free Trade Agreement threatens both the 340B drug program, which requires drug companies to provide discounts on covered outpatient drugs purchased by federally funded health providers, such as community health centers and other safety net providers, and the ability of Medicare Part B to hold down the prices of outpatient drugs. The Korea Free Trade Agreement would potentially allow Korean drug manufacturers to challenge the pricing under these programs on the grounds that the prices are not market driven--in other words, forcing prices up in this country. That is something that was pushed, by the way, by our trade representative, not theirs. In essence, the pharmaceutical industry's lobbyists, with complete indifference to the plight of millions of the most frail and vulnerable Americans, have succeeded in inserting provisions into the Korea Trade Agreement that would allow Korean companies to maximize their profits by challenging the cost control measures under the 340B and Medicare Part B programs. But, unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Right now, the pharmaceutical lobby--and they are a very powerful lobby--and the U.S. Trade Representative are negotiating a new trade agreement, the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership, that I fear very much will make a bad situation in terms of drug access for the developing world, for poor people all over the world, much worse than it already is. Their aim, yet again, is to maximize drug company profits at the expense of the most vulnerable populations by tying the hands of health authorities here and in other developed and developing countries abroad who seek to provide access to low-cost generic pharmaceutical drugs for their citizens. In negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, our government is actively pushing intellectual profit laws for medicines that are more restrictive than we impose even here in the United States, with the effect of making it far more difficult to get generic drugs on the market in those countries. One of them, Vietnam, is a good example. Vietnam obviously is a very poor country. Vietnam has received more than $320 million from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, created under President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama since 2004. The function of this program is to make sure the poorest people in the world who have diseases such as AIDS are able to get the drugs they need at a price they can afford to pay, and that means making generic treatments available. The PEPFAR program has actually had significant success. As somebody who is not a great fan of President George W. Bush, this is an area where he actually did something quite positive, and that program is credited with saving millions of lives in 15 developing nations over the last 7 years. In the face of one of the most severe humanitarian crises in modern history, the United States put billions of dollars into doing something about it, and we are doing that today. So why, in the face of this success by one arm of our government, would another arm work to pull the rug out from underneath it? Yet that is what the U.S. Trade Representative's Office is doing now. In other words, on the one hand what we are trying to do is the right thing, the humanitarian thing, to make sure that poor and sick people around the world are able to get the medicines they desperately need to stay alive at a price they can afford to pay; and, on the other hand, another part of the U.S. Government is saying, wait a second. We have got to protect the interests of the drug companies and make sure they can make as much money as possible so they can charge and force poor countries to pay outrageously high prices for drugs even if that means many people die because they can't afford those drugs. So this is a contradiction. This is what our new trade policies are about. I will be back on the floor at some point in the not too distant future to be talking about this very important issue, but let me conclude by saying this country is in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s; the middle class is disappearing; poverty is increasing; millions of Americans have seen a decline in their standard of living; the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. That is the reality of the American economy today. One of the reasons for the collapse of the middle class is the loss of millions and millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs, and one of the key reasons--not the only reason but one of the key reasons--we are losing millions of manufacturing jobs is disastrous trade policies designed to allow American corporations to shut down here, move to low- wage countries, hire people there for pennies an hour, and bring their products back. That is a policy I suppose you could say has worked if you are the CEO of a large corporation. You make a lot more money paying people 50 cents an hour than $20 an hour. You make a lot more money working in a country where there are no environmental standards rather than in a country where you have to have some standards protecting air and water. That is what our trade policy has been, and it seems to me to be enormously foolish for us to continue this failed policy of NAFTA, of CAFTA, of permanent normal trade relations with China, and extend them to Korea, Panama, and Colombia. I urge my colleagues to stand up to the big money interests which want us to pass these trade agreements, stand up for American workers, and say: No. Trade is a good thing, but it has to be based on principles that protect ordinary Americans, working people, not just the CEOs of large corporations. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this country faces many problems. But I think if we go out on Main Street, if we go out to rural America, if we go to my State of Vermont, what people will tell us is, the major crisis we face is we have a massive problem with unemployment. Some people will suggest that unemployment is 9 percent in this country. That is not quite accurate. If we look at the numbers for those people who have given up looking for work, if we look at the numbers for those people who are working part time when they want to work full time, we are looking at a situation where 16 percent of the American people are unemployed or underemployed. That is 25 million Americans. The job of the Congress now is to start putting those people back to work. That is what we have to do. There is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done. Virtually every American who gets into his or her car understands that our infrastructure is crumbling; that is, roads and bridges. Talk to mayors all over Vermont and in the United States of America, and they will say they are having major problems with their water systems. If we look at our rail system in this country, it is way behind Europe, Japan, and China. We need to rebuild public transportation and have a 21st-century rail system. So if you put people to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, rebuilding our transportation system, you are going to make the United States of America more productive, you are going to make us more competitive internationally, and you are going to create the millions of jobs we desperately need. It is stunning to me that we have not moved aggressively in terms of job creation. That is exactly what we have to do. If we put $400 billion into infrastructure, we can create millions and millions of good-paying jobs, we can make our country more productive and more internationally competitive. Every single year we are importing and spending about $350 billion on foreign oil, bringing that oil in from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries. As we move to energy independence, as we break our dependence on fossil fuels, moving to energy efficiency and sustainable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, we can create millions more jobs. It seems to me at a time when the middle class is disappearing, at a time when poverty is increasing to a record-breaking level, at a time when people in every section of the country are saying we need to put our people back to work, now is the time to do that. Last year I introduced the concept which said, let's have a surtax on millionaires. The reason I said that is the wealthiest people in this country are becoming wealthier. Their real effective tax rate is the lowest in decades. I am very pleased to see that the Democratic leadership is moving forward in that direction. As we create the jobs we need by rebuilding our infrastructure, by transforming our energy system, it is absolutely appropriate that at a time when the gap between the very wealthy and everybody else is getting wider that we ask the wealthiest people in this country to help us fund job creation so we can pull the middle class out of the terrible recession they are suffering. I think the job is a major jobs program now for our country, rebuild our infrastructure, transform our energy system, ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. Let's end many of these tax loopholes and breaks that large corporations have. We can fund a serious jobs program and put millions of our people back to work, which is something we absolutely have to do. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan.) The Senator from Missouri. Jobs Creation

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, my State of Vermont has been hit very hard by Hurricane Irene. Widespread flooding caused a number of deaths, the loss of many homes and businesses, and hundreds of millions-- perhaps $1 billion--in damage to property and infrastructure. I have visited many of the most hard-hit towns, and I have been shocked and moved by the extent of the damage I saw. Irene will go down in history as one of the very worst natural disasters ever to hit the State of Vermont. Let me share a few facts with you about the extent of the damage. Already, more than 5,200 Vermonters have registered with FEMA. Remember, we are a State of only 630,000 people and approximately 200,000 households, and yet more than 5,200 Vermonters have already registered with FEMA. More than 700 homes were severely damaged or completely destroyed-- 700 in a State which has about 200,000 households. Between 1,500 and 2,000 families have been displaced, their housing uncertain as we approach Vermont's brutally cold winter season. It is beginning to get cold in Vermont. More than 73,000 homes were left without electricity--one-third of all of the homes in our State. Tens of thousands of Vermonters lost their phone service, and in some areas these services still have not been fully restored. More than 2,000 roads were badly damaged--2,000 roads--including 135 segments of State highways. More than 300 bridges--300 bridges--were damaged. Hundreds of roads and bridges remain closed, while many others are only open to emergency vehicles today. Some towns still have limited access because the roads and bridges that link them to the outside world were destroyed. Further, dozens of town libraries, townhalls, and municipal and volunteer fire departments have been damaged or destroyed. Ninety public schools could not open on time. The last one is just now opening for the year. Hundreds of businesses and more than 360 farms with more than 15,000 acres of farmland have been damaged, tearing at the fabric of our rural economy. Our Amtrak and freight services were completely suspended, as railbeds literally washed into rivers. One Amtrak line is still down today. The largest State office complex was completely flooded and is closed until further notice. Mr. President, 1,600 State employees cannot go to work in that building. Important files and computer systems have been ruined, disrupting the ability of the State to deliver critical State functions. I know that, as in times past, we will pick up the pieces in Vermont and restore our homes and businesses. And I have to tell you that if there is any silver lining out of that disaster, it is the fact that in community after community, people came out, worked together, and participated in cleanup efforts, supported each other. People from the northern part of the State, which was hit less severely, came down to the southern part of the State to help. Strangers helped strangers. It was an extraordinary effort of people coming together. But the simple fact is, if a State such as Vermont has communities that are devastated, a State such as New Jersey has communities that are devastated, we cannot do it alone. The scale of this disaster is too overwhelming for a State of the size of Vermont. The Federal Government has long played an important role in disaster recovery. That is something we have known for many years and we have seen time after time after time. When our fellow citizens in Louisiana and the gulf coast suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, people in Vermont were there for them, and I can tell you how many people told me we have to do everything we can to protect the people who were devastated by Katrina. When the citizens of Joplin, MO, were hit by deadly tornadoes, people on the west coast were there for them. And, of course, when terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, we were all there for New York City. That is what being a nation is about. The name of our country is the United States of America--``united,'' u-n-i-t-e-d--and if that name means anything, it means when disaster strikes one part of the country and communities are devastated, people are hurt, bridges and roads are out, farmers cannot produce the food, we as a nation rally together to support those communities. That is what States impacted by Irene expect from Congress because that is what being a nation is about. Disaster relief, funded on an emergency basis, is what Congress has done for decades, and it is what Congress must do now. The Senate did the right thing in quickly passing a $6.9 billion disaster relief supplemental appropriations bill, and I wish to thank all of the people active in that, from Senator Reid, to Senator Landrieu, to Senator Leahy--all of the people who made that happen. They did a great job. Does that bill have everything I would like to see in a disaster relief bill for the State of Vermont? No, it does not, quite frankly. But it is a very good bill. It is an urgently needed bill. It is an important step forward in the right direction. I commend, again, all of those Senators who played an active role in moving that bill along, including 10 Senate Republicans. Disaster aid should not be a partisan issue, but it seems the House Republicans are intent on making it one. The disaster funding the House is likely to pass this week is totally inadequate and will not address the magnitude of the damages inflicted by Hurricane Irene or the backlog in FEMA funding that existed before it. To my mind, it is an outrage that for the first time in modern American history House Republicans want to have a budget debate over disaster assistance. They threaten to block urgently needed aid unless the cost of that help is offset by cuts in other needed programs. They want to use Hurricane Irene as another excuse for a budget fight. And think about the precedent that sets. What happens if tomorrow there is, God forbid, a disaster in New Mexico or a disaster in Colorado? Does that mean we should be cutting education or environmental protection in order to pay for help to New Mexico or Colorado or California? If there is a major earthquake someplace in this country and communities are devastated, do we cut back on the needs of the children? Do we cut back on Medicare and have that huge debate in order to pay for disaster relief? Historically, the U.S. Congress has said--and what they said was right--that when disaster strikes, we as a nation come together and we provide the support to those communities which have been hurt to get them back on their feet. That is what we have done in this great country, and I am offended that some of my Republican colleagues in the House suddenly start thinking we need a major budget debate for every disaster that is hitting this country. That is wrong. That is extraordinarily bad public policy. That is, frankly, unpatriotic and not what the United States is about. Yes, of course, we must continue to address our deficit problem but not on the backs of communities in Vermont, New Jersey, North Carolina, or other States that have been devastated by Hurricane Irene. For those States and communities, we must get them emergency help, and we must get it to them as quickly as possible. Amazingly--I must say this--this talk about budget offsets for disaster relief comes from some of the same people who repeatedly and conveniently ignore their own actions when it suits them. Congress provided $800 billion to bail out Wall Street banks. I did not hear any discussion about offsets when it came to bailing out Wall Street. Congress extended huge tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthiest people in this country, driving up the deficit. I did not hear any call for offsets when we gave tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations. The United States is spending today $10 billion a year on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including billions to rebuild those countries. I did not hear any call for offsets when it came to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let me conclude by saying this: This country has its share of problems. We all know that. But if we forsake the essence of what we are as a nation; that is, we stand together when disaster strikes, if we forgo that, if we no longer live up to that ideal, I worry very much about the future of our great Nation. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as you no doubt know, the State of Vermont has been hit very hard by Hurricane Irene. The storm caused widespread flooding, resulting in a number of deaths, the loss of many homes and businesses, and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to our property and our infrastructure. I have visited many of the most hard hit towns, and I was shocked and moved by the extent of the damage. Many of these towns still today have very limited access because the roads and bridges that link them to the outside world have been destroyed. Irene will go down in history as one of the very worst natural disasters ever to hit the State of Vermont. Let me take this opportunity again to thank everybody who has lent a hand to help their friends and neighbors stricken by this disaster. I especially wish to commend and thank our emergency responders--they did a fantastic job--the Vermont National Guard and our local officials for all they are doing to assist communities and individuals in getting back on their feet. We still do not know the cost of this disaster, but let me share with you just a few preliminary figures, and really this is quite remarkable, remembering that Vermont is a State of about 630,000 people, with approximately 200,000 households. Today, already more than 4,200 Vermonters--and by and large, those are households--have registered with FEMA. With 200,000 households, we have over 4,000 that have already registered with FEMA. To date, there have been more than 700 homes confirmed as severely damaged or totally destroyed. Again, we have about 200,000 households and 700 homes have been confirmed as severely damaged or completely destroyed. More than 72,000 homes across the State were left without electricity. That is about one-third of the total. Thousands lost phone service. And in some areas, these services have still not been restored. The storm knocked out 135 segments of the State highway system as well as 33 State bridges. Thirteen communities were completely isolated for days. Thirty-five roads and bridges are still shut down, while many others are only open for emergency services. Hundreds of farms and businesses have been destroyed, undermining the fabric of our rural economy. Our Amtrak and freight rail services were completely suspended, as tracks literally washed into rivers. One of our two Amtrak lines is still down today. The State's largest office complex--we have a very large office complex in Waterbury, VT, near our State capital, in which 1,600 State employees go to work every day. It is the nerve center of the entire State. That complex was flooded. Those 1,600 workers have not been able to return to their offices, disrupting the ability of the State to deliver critical State functions. At least 90 public schools were either directly damaged or inaccessible because roads washed out and could not be opened on time. Five public schools remain closed until further notice. This is but a short list of the devastation experienced by the State of Vermont as a result of Hurricane Irene. I know that, as in times past, we will pick up the pieces and restore our homes and businesses. That is what Vermonters will do. Vermont communities stick together in hard times, and it has been absolutely amazing to see the volunteer efforts taking place from one end of the State to the other. What comes to mind now: police officers from the northern part of the State relieving their brothers and sisters in the southern part of the State who are under stress. We are seeing that in almost every area-- strangers coming to help people whose homes and businesses were flooded. But the simple fact is, Vermont can not do it alone, nor can any other State hard hit by disasters. The scale of what Hurricane Irene did is overwhelming for a State of our size. The Federal Government has an important role to play in disaster relief and recovery. Historically it has, and today it has. When our fellow citizens in Louisiana--and I see the Senator from Louisiana here--suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, people in Vermont, in a very deep sense, were there for them. When the citizens of Joplin, MO, were hit by the deadly tornadoes, people on the west coast were there for them. When terrorists attacked on 9/11, everybody in America was there for New York City. That is what being a nation is about. The name of our country is the United--U-n-i-t-e-d--States of America, and if that name means anything, it means that when disaster strikes one part of the country, we rally as a nation to support our brothers and sisters. I would like to thank, in that context, Majority Leader Reid and Senator Landrieu for their commitment to drafting a disaster relief supplemental appropriations bill to provide $6.9 billion in disaster relief funding. At a time when funding is tight and every appropriation is subjected to even more intense scrutiny, the majority leader and Senator Landrieu are doing exactly the right thing in addressing these needs now. Senator Reid has my full support. While it is imperative for Congress to adequately fund FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund, the Federal response, in my view, should be more comprehensive, as it has been for past disasters of this scale. In particular, it is imperative to address the severe damage to roads and bridges by providing funding for the Federal Highway Administration's Emergency Relief Program. In Vermont alone, preliminary estimates to the federal-aid highway system are well in excess of $500 million and likely will be much more. That is an incredible amount of money for a small State such as Vermont. For a State that receives a total Federal apportionment of $210 million annually, the scale of damage relative to our State's ability to pay for it cannot be overstated. Similarly, it is important to provide sufficient emergency funding for programs such as community development block grants, the Economic Development Administration, the Emergency Conservation and Emergency Watershed Protection Programs at the Department of Agriculture, and the Disaster Loan Program at the Small Business Administration. Additionally, given the significant impact of the floods on the stock of affordable housing, it is very important to include an appropriation for the HOME program, as well as an additional disaster allocation of low-income housing tax credits. In Vermont, more than 350 mobile homes were destroyed or severely damaged, and many trailer parks will never reopen. In other words, we are going to have to make up for a lot of lost affordable and lower income housing. Let me conclude by saying this country has its problems. We all know that. But if we forsake the essence of what we are as a nation--and that is standing together when disaster strikes--if we forgo that and no longer live up to that, I worry very much about the future of America as a great nation. With that, I yield the floor.