Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, one of the major reasons the middle class of this country is in decline and why the working class is being decimated and why real wages are going down for millions of American workers who are working longer hours for low wages is that for a number of years now we have been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs. While this trend has in fact been going on for decades, it accelerated during the 8 years of the Bush administration. During that period, those 8 years, we went from 17 million manufacturing jobs to about 12 million. We lost somewhere near 5 million manufacturing jobs during that 8-year period, a decline of about 30 percent in manufacturing jobs. Today, here in the United States, we now have the fewest number of manufacturing jobs since the beginning of World War II. As Senator Durbin pointed out on the floor today, from 1999 to 2008, multinational corporations based in the United States laid off nearly 2 million American workers at exactly the same time period as they were hiring over 2 million workers abroad. They laid off 2 million workers in this country and hired 2 million workers abroad. Under President Bush, our trade deficit with China more than tripled, and our overall trade deficit nearly doubled. Today our trade deficit is over $370 billion. In other words, we are importing $370 billion more than we are exporting. There are a number of reasons why manufacturing jobs are disappearing, but a very major one is that corporate America continues to increase its bottom line by hiring workers in China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other developing countries instead of employing American workers at decent wages in this country. In my view, if large corporations want us to buy their products--and they certainly do; you cannot turn on television without corporate America telling us how much we should be buying their products--the time is long overdue for them to reinvest in the United States and build manufacturing plants here and not in China. A country that cannot produce the goods its consumers require and becomes more and more dependent on other countries for what it needs is not a country that will remain a major economic power in this global economy. The legislation we are debating today, the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act, is a good first step. This bill uses the Tax Code to begin to bring more manufacturing jobs back into America. But let us be clear: This is just a beginning. Much more needs to be done. The simple truth is that American workers cannot and should not be asked to compete against desperate people in developing countries, people in China, Mexico, Vietnam--other countries, where workers there are paid pennies an hour, where they may go to jail if they try to form a union, and where there are very few environmental standards. It seems to me to be absolutely unacceptable that our people are forced to compete against folks who are earning so little. What we should be engaged in is a race to the top, not a race to the bottom. Yet that is exactly what is happening. If the United States is to remain a major industrial power, producing the products our people need and creating good-paying jobs, we must develop a new set of tax and trade policies that work for the American worker and not just for the CEOs of large corporations. The American people are sick and tired of losing decent-paying jobs to China, to India, to Mexico, as multinational companies throw American workers out on the street, go abroad, produce their products for pennies an hour, and then bring those products back into the United States. In August I had about a dozen town meetings throughout the State. In every single town meeting I had in Vermont, people stood up and they said: It is becoming increasingly difficult to buy a product manufactured in the United States of America. How are we going to create jobs for our kids if we don't have a manufacturing sector? I very much agree with that sentiment. We have to stop giving large profitable corporations tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas and start giving immediate tax relief to businesses that bring jobs back to the United States. That is exactly what this bill would do and that is why I am a strong supporter of it. But let's let there be no doubt, much more needs to be done. As somebody who voted against NAFTA when I was in the House, as somebody who voted against Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, I think the evidence is now overwhelming that we need to fundamentally rewrite our trade policy to benefit the middle class of this country and to raise the living standards of people around the world instead of promoting a destructive race to the bottom, which is what we are seeing now. Supporters of unfettered free trade told us over and over how their policies were going to lead to more jobs and a better life for the majority of Americans. Unfortunately, they have been proven dead wrong. NAFTA turned a trade surplus with Mexico into a huge trade deficit and we lost over 1 million jobs as a result. That is what NAFTA has done. As a direct result of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, we lost over 2 million jobs to China and our trade deficit with that country nearly tripled. Anyone who has shopped at a Wal-Mart or any other large store in this country knows it is almost impossible to find anything made in the United States of America today. We are not just talking about sneakers; we are talking increasingly about high-tech products. Let me give a few examples. Today, 80 percent of toys sold in the United States are made in China. Today, about 90 percent of vitamin C sold in the United States is made in China. Today, 85 percent of bicycles sold in the United States are made in China. Today, over 80 percent of all shoes sold in the United States are made in China. Today, about 90 percent of U.S. furniture production has moved to China. On and on it goes. We have to recognize that if this country is going to remain a major economic force in the global economy, if we are going to have decent jobs for our kids and our grandchildren, we must rebuild the manufacturing sector of this country. We must demand and develop policies that enable corporate America to start rebuilding our manufacturing sector rather than moving abroad in underdeveloped countries. The legislation we have before us is a good start but, as I have indicated before, much more has to be done. I hope when we come up with a cloture vote tomorrow we can at least get the support of several Republicans, just a couple who are prepared to stand with the American worker, who are prepared to help us rebuild our manufacturing base so we can create the desperately needed good jobs we have to build. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS. I will be delighted to, when it is your time.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I think most people understand that the United States today is in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. What I want to do is take a very few minutes to talk about how we got to where we are today and what policies we need, in my view, to move this country forward in a very bold way so that we begin to create the millions of jobs the middle class of this country desperately needs. Let me begin by taking a quick look back to where we were in January of 2009. It is important that we take that look back because if we don't know how we got to where we are today, it is going to be very hard to move us in a different direction. January 2009 was, as we all recall, the very last month of the Presidency of George W. Bush. In that month we lost over 700,000 jobs. That is an extraordinary number, almost unprecedented. In fact, for the last months of the Bush administration, this country was hemorrhaging jobs as a result of the financial collapse brought about by the greed, the recklessness, and the illegal behavior on Wall Street. During that period, our gross domestic product, the total sum of all that our economy produces, had gone down by nearly 7 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008--a 7-percent reduction. That was the biggest decline in more than a quarter century. Some $5 trillion of Americans' household wealth evaporated in a 12-week period as people in Vermont and all over this country saw the value of their homes, their retirement savings, and their stocks plummet. We were at a moment where some economists thought we might enter the worst depression in history, that the entire world's financial system would collapse. In January of 2009 we were hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs. That is where we were. Of course, as a result of the collapse on Wall Street, the last months of the Bush administration were a total economic disaster, but let us be clear about the cumulative 8 years of the Bush administration. What happened over that 8-year period? From 2001 when President Bush came into office, until January 2009 when he left, this country lost over 600,000 private sector jobs. Let me repeat that. During the Bush 8-year period, this country lost over 600,000 jobs. The reason it is important to understand that is there are folks in this Chamber, throughout this country, who want to go back to those policies. I am not quite sure why anyone would want to go back to a set of economic policies which resulted, in an 8-year period, in a loss of 600,000 jobs. Net, there was a gain during the Bush administration of 1 million jobs--a very poor record--all of them government jobs, many of them in the military, in Homeland Security. That is, under anybody's definition, a horrendous record of job creation. In fact, it is a record of job loss. During the Bush years, not only did we lose 600,000 private sector jobs, median income--median family income dropped by $2,200. In other words, middle-class Americans earned significantly less income at the end of the Bush era than they did when he first came into office. During those 8 years, over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class into poverty; over 3 million lost their pensions; and nearly 8 million lost their health insurance. During that period, 4.5 million manufacturing jobs disappeared as companies shut down in the United States and moved to China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries. In the year 2000 we had over 17 million manufacturing jobs in this country. At the end of the Bush era, in 2008, we had less than 12 million. That is a huge reduction in good- paying manufacturing jobs--in fact, the fewest number of manufacturing jobs since the beginning of World War II. Under President Bush our trade deficit with China more than tripled and our overall trade deficit nearly doubled. I raise those issues once again because it is very important to understand that there are a number of people in this Chamber who want to go back to those policies--policies which were a demonstrative failure. But here is another important point, and we should understand this very clearly. While the middle class was battered during the Bush years and median family income went down, while poverty increased, not everyone did badly. In fact, during the Bush administration, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their incomes more than double. The middle class was battered, median family income was down, poverty increased, people lost their health insurance, people lost their pensions, but the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their income more than double. In 2007, these wealthiest 400 Americans earned an average of $345 million in 1 year--on average, $345 million. In terms of wealth, as opposed to income, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw an increase in their wealth of some $400 billion during the Bush years--400 people, an increase of $400 billion during the Bush years. Let me talk for a moment about something I consider to be very important, but we do not talk about it very much in the Senate. We do not talk about it very much in the media. It is not something we engage in polite conversation, but it happens to be one of the important economic issues facing our country; that is, the issue of distribution of income and distribution of wealth. All over America, whether it is in Minnesota or Vermont, everyone wants to know--in New England, everyone loves the New England Patriots or the Boston Celtics, and what people want to know is, at the end of the day, who won and who lost and what was going on in the game. Well, in terms of income distribution, that is the result of income as economic activity. Who won? Who lost? And let's be very clear that when we talk about winners and losers, the United States today has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth, and that inequality is getting worse. I know many people choose not to talk about it, but I think it is imperative that we do talk about it. Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. Let me repeat that. The top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. In 2007, which is the last year for which we had good statistics, the wealthiest 1 percent, the top 1 percent of income earners, took in 23\1/2\ percent of all of the income earned in the United States. Let me repeat that. The top 1 percent earned over 23 percent of all income earned in the United States. Here is an even more amazing statistic. The top one-tenth of 1 percent--top one-tenth of 1 percent--took in 11 percent of total income, according to the latest data available. The problem we are having in terms of income is that the situation is becoming more and more unequal. We see that in the statistics, which are very clear. In the 1970s, the top 1 percent only made 8 percent of total income earned in this country, and now that number is 23\1/2\ percent--almost four times as much. I would point out that the last time income was this concentrated was in the year 1928, and I think we all know what happened in 1929. When you have such an unequal distribution of income and wealth, it is not only, to my mind, immoral and wrong that so few have so much and so many have so little, it is bad economics because the economy grows when all people have money to spend, when consumers can spend money. When so much of our income and wealth is concentrated on the top, we run the significant likelihood of major economic recessions, and that is what is happening right now. Also, incredibly, in the midst of this growing inequality and while the very wealthiest people in this country became much richer and at the same time as our deficit soared, the tax rates for the people on top went down. Middle class declines, poverty increases, the rich get richer, and the tax rate for the very wealthy goes down. This was a result of not only tax breaks for the wealthy initiated during the Bush administration but also, quite frankly, tax policy that took place before Bush. The result is that from 1992 to 2007, the latest statistics that we have, the effective Federal tax rate--effective Federal tax rate, and that is what people really pay-- for the top 400 income earners in our country was cut almost in half. The rich get richer, their effective tax rates are cut almost in half. Today, we have a Federal Tax Code that is so unfair, that it is so absurd that Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, often points out that he pays a lower effective tax rate than does his secretary. Hedge fund managers who make $1 billion a year now pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers. I should also add that in terms of wealth, as opposed to just income, inequality, of course, is also growing. Today, the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and during the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion. When a few people have incredible wealth and incredible income, they do not tuck that money under the mattress; they use that money. The point Senator Murray of Washington was making a few moments ago on the DISCLOSE Act is a very good example of how some of those folks are making money. Not content to have the top 1 percent earning more than 23 percent of all income in America, these folks want more. Their greed has no end. And what they are now doing as a result of the DISCLOSE Act, a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision, they and their corporate friends are now free to put as much money as they want into the political process, into television ads, into radio ads, and they do not have to disclose who they are. So you are going to have corporations with foreign interests getting involved with the American political process. You are going to have corporations putting all kinds of money into the political process, setting up phony institutions and front groups, and they do not have to tell the American people who they are. In addition to the DISCLOSE Act and the huge amount of money now flooding into the political process, we have an enormous amount of lobbying and campaign contributions that are going right into the whole tax issue, that which we are debating now. As you know, some of our Republican friends think, apparently, that the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent is not quite enough, that the fact that we have given huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires for the last 15 years is not enough; they need more. So what some of our Republican friends are doing and what their friends on Wall Street and big money interests are doing is pouring huge amounts of money into the political process which says that we should provide, over a 10-year period, $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent; that millionaires, those people making $1 million or more, should receive on average a $100,000 tax break. And they are fighting for tax breaks for the rich at the same time as they are saying: Oh, isn't it terrible that we have a $13 trillion national debt. So they wanted to give $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent, and then they say: Oh my goodness, isn't it awful that we have a recordbreaking deficit and a large national debt, and they want to pass on those tax breaks to our kids and grandchildren--increase the national debt so that we can give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. That makes zero sense to me. I think that is an incredibly dumb and irresponsible idea. What I think we should do, what I believe we should do is that half of that $700 billion, instead of being given in tax breaks to the top 2 percent, should be used for deficit reduction. Let's do it now. And the other $350 billion should be invested in our infrastructure--rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our schools, our transportation systems--and putting people back to work. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Everybody knows that. We are going to have to address it now or later. Let's address it now. In the middle of a recession, let's put millions of people back to work rebuilding America to make us more competitive in the global economy and make our economic system more efficient. I think, frankly, it makes a heck of a lot more sense to put millions of people to work rebuilding America's infrastructure and using $350 billion to lower the deficit than it does to give $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent. I hope that a majority of my colleagues or, in fact, 60 of my colleagues agree with that because, to me, that is the policy this country desperately needs. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich.) The Senator from Oregon is recognized.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, just yesterday the Republican minority leader indicated that every Republican in the Senate would join him in filibustering legislation that would provide middle-class tax relief to over 97 percent of American workers and their families unless the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent were extended as well. In my view, what we have to do is stand up to that filibuster no matter how long it takes. If it means being in here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that is what we have to do. Senate Republicans should not be allowed to hold middle-class tax cuts hostage in order to give even bigger tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires at a time when this Nation has a $13 trillion national debt and a widening gap between the very rich and everyone else. In fact, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. The dumbest thing we could probably do at this moment is to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to some of the wealthiest people in this country. That would be totally absurd. Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. We have the dubious distinction--not a good distinction--of having, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. In 2007, the wealthiest 1 percent took in 23\1/2\ percent of all income earned in the United States. That is not an issue we talk about in the Senate. Apparently, in polite organizations, polite groups, we are not allowed to talk about that. But let me repeat it. The top 1 percent in 2007 earned 23\1/2\ percent of all the income earned in the United States. That is the latest data available. There is no reason to believe that income is not even greater right now. It is not a coincidence that the last time that income was this concentrated was in the year 1928. 1928. Those of us who remember history know what happened in 1929. The stock market crashed, and we plunged into the Great Depression. Louis Brandeis, one of the great Supreme Court Justices in the history of this country who served on the Supreme Court during both the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression once said: ``We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.'' Mr. Brandeis was right then and his words ring true today. Today, the wealthiest 400 Americans make an average of $345 million a year--$345 million a year, on average, for the top 400 American earners. Under the Bush administration, these 400 individuals saw their incomes double--double--while their Federal tax rate was cut almost in half over the last 15 years, before Bush, through Bush. So during the Bush years their incomes doubled while their tax rates went way down. Now our Republican friends, and maybe some Democrats, are saying: We should give these people huge tax breaks at this moment. We have a Federal Tax Code that is so absurd, that is so unfair that Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest Americans and certainly one of the wealthiest people in the entire world, who is worth tens of billions of dollars, himself, what he has often stated is that he, one of the richest people in the world, pays a lower effective tax rate than does his secretary. Hedge fund managers who made $1 billion last year now pay a lower effective--by ``effective'' I mean real because of all the loopholes--a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers, and our Republican friends want to make that absurd situation even worse by maintaining huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. During the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion. Let me repeat that. Four hundred families--not a whole lot of people--saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion, and all the while, while the people on top have seen an explosion in their incomes and in their wealth, the middle class is rapidly disappearing, poverty is increasing, and we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, where so few have so much, so many have so little. Our Republican friends have argued that these massive tax breaks, some $700 billion in a 10-year period for the top 2 percent, would trickle down, trickle down to all Americans. Give tax breaks to billionaires and it is going to trickle down and improve our economy and do well by everybody. We have been told over and over by Republican colleagues that millionaires and billionaires would use the massive tax breaks they received under President Bush to create jobs in the private sector. Well, guess what. The results are in. During the 8 years of the Bush administration, a time in which the wealthiest Americans received one of the largest tax cuts in this Nation's history, the United States of America lost over 600,000 private sector jobs and only gained, over that 8-year period, a net total of 1 million new jobs, all of them, by the way, government jobs. So we saw the experiment in action. We gave huge tax breaks to the rich, and we ended up having one of the worst job creation records in the history of the United States--losing over 600,000 jobs. It is an interesting theory. We have seen it in practice. It does not work. In addition, under President Bush, median family incomes went down by over $2,000. Let me repeat that. Do you know why people are angry in North Carolina, Vermont or all over this country? They are angry because during an 8-year period, their median family income went down by $2,000 a family, and we lost 600,000 private sector jobs. During those same 8 years, more than 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty, over 7 million lost their health insurance, more than 4 million manufacturing jobs were lost, and over 3 million Americans lost their pensions. In other words, we went through that exercise. It failed. How could anybody want to go back to those policies? Our Republican friends do. That is what they want. That is what they want to see us move toward--more tax breaks for the wealthy, more inequality, more power concentrated in the hands of a few, and more middle-class Americans slipping into poverty. Do we provide tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires or do we invest in the middle class? That is what this debate is all about. My Republican friends have told us the worst thing you can do in a recession is to increase taxes on the wealthy. Well, the Republicans told us the same thing when Bill Clinton was President. When Bill Clinton's economic plans were signed into law in 1993--as a Member of the House I voted for it, it won by one vote--a plan which increases taxes by a few percentage points, guess what happened. We raised taxes on the wealthy. We lowered the deficit. Guess what happened. Unlike the Bush years, where we lost 600,000 private sector jobs, during the Clinton years, over 22 million jobs were created. We had the longest peacetime expansion in our economy in our Nation's history, and budget deficits turned into budget surpluses. Those are the facts. No one can deny them. Further, what conservative and progressive economists of all stripes have told us is that providing tax breaks for the rich is the least effective way--the least effective way--to stimulate or improve the economy. That is not Senator Bernie Sanders talking. That is what both the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Senator John McCain's top economic adviser during the Presidential campaign, Mark Zandi, have told us. According to Mr. Zandi, again, an economic adviser to Presidential Candidate McCain, every $1 provider in tax breaks to the wealthy pumps only 32 cents into the economy. On the other hand, we know that one of the best ways to grow the economy and to create decent-paying jobs is to invest in our Nation's crumbling infrastructure so we build the roads, the bridges, the railways, the culverts, the tunnels we desperately need. According to Mr. Zandi, for every $1 invested in infrastructure, it generates $1.57 in economic activity. Without a strong and vibrant transportation system, businesses fail, the Nation fails. Increasingly, as people travel around the world, go to airports, ride on trains, use roads, they tell us the United States has an infrastructure which is falling way behind much of the rest of the world. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave us a D several years ago and has told us we need to invest trillions of dollars in our crumbling infrastructure in order to bring us to the level we have to be. Not only is rebuilding our infrastructure good for our future, it is also good for the moment in dealing with the need to create jobs in this terrible recession. Every $1 billion invested in infrastructure creates or saves over 45,000 American jobs. Not only is investing in infrastructure good for the economy, it is something we have to do sooner or later. I am a former mayor. What I can tell you is, you can ignore your roads and bridges this year or the next year, but at some point you are going to have to deal with them. They do not get better by not rebuilding them. In fact, it is often more expensive to have to rebuild them than it is to maintain them. As I mentioned a moment ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers tells us that over the next 5 years we need to invest $2.2 trillion in our Nation's infrastructure. Why not do this work now when we have millions of Americans who desperately want to go back to work? We are going to have to do it sometime. Let's do it now. Allowing the Bush tax breaks to expire for the wealthiest 2 percent will bring in $700 billion in revenue over the next 10 years--$700 billion. In my view, what we should do with that $700 billion is pretty simple. I would take half of that--$350 billion--and use it for deficit reduction so that we begin to cut back on our national debt and our deficit. The other thing I would do is invest the other half--$350 billion--in our infrastructure so we create the desperately needed jobs that our economy calls for. Our Republican friends are dead wrong, are irresponsible, are not keeping faith with our kids and grandchildren when they want to maintain these tax breaks for the top 2 percent, for many millionaires and billionaires, which would result in increasing the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over a 10-year period counting interest and that would provide an average break of over $100,000 a year to some of the wealthiest people in this country. So that is what the choice is: Do we put money into deficit reduction, lowering our interest costs, helping our kids and grandchildren a little bit in terms of the kind of debt they are going to have to assume--$350 billion over a 10-year period for deficit reduction is significant--do we use another $350 billion to invest in our infrastructure so we can create millions of jobs rebuilding America or do we make the richest people in this country even richer? I think the answer is pretty clear. I think the American people have spoken out with their views on this issue. They do not believe, when the middle class is collapsing, the wealthiest people are becoming richer, and when we have a $13 trillion national debt, it makes any sense at all to give huge tax breaks to the rich. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan.) Without objection, it is so ordered. Tax Cuts

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, even before the Supreme Court issued its disastrous opinion in Citizens United, the influence of large corporations and other powerful special interests in our electoral process was overwhelming. There is a reason why the middle class is disappearing and why poverty is increasing while the people on top are making out like bandits. One of the reasons is the enormous influence big money interests have over the political process and the way they are able to use that influence through campaign contributions and through lobbying efforts. They are all over the place. Whether it is Wall Street, the oil companies, the coal companies, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the military industrial complex, all these very powerful and wealthy special interests contribute huge amounts of money into the political process, making it harder and harder for the significant needs of working families to be heard outside the din and the power of big money. So, in other words, before this Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, we already had a very bad situation. It was a situation in which it required enormous sums of money on the part of a candidate to run for office, a situation in which it became increasingly common for millionaires and billionaires to be the only candidates able to finance a Federal campaign without heavy reliance on contributions from corporate interests. It is no secret both political parties look very favorably on so-called self-funded candidates. They don't have to raise any money for those candidates because they are multimillionaires and they are billionaires; they can write their own checks--checks which are often very large--in order to run for the House of Representatives or especially the Senate. So what we had before Citizens United, that disastrous Supreme Court decision, was already a very bad situation. But that decision made a horrendous situation even worse. The Supreme Court decided, at the beginning of this year, that it was acceptable and legal for the largest corporations in our country to spend unlimited resources supporting candidates who represent their interests, elevating corporations to the status of flesh-and-blood persons for constitutional purposes. So let me make a very bold and radical statement right now. I know many corporations. I know who they are. Let me tell my colleagues: A corporation is not a person. A corporation is not a person. It is totally absurd to suggest that a corporation should have the first amendment rights of individual Americans. What the Supreme Court decision has done is to turn our media during campaigns into even more of a circus and undermines State election laws across the country that provide some small buffer between wealth and power. They have unleashed the vast coffers of corporate America by allowing them to spend whatever they want--unlimited sums of money-- from their general bank accounts, not just their PACs and not just on sham issue ads but on telling people outright which candidate to vote for, something this country has not seen since 1947. Big money corporate interests from Wall Street to oil giants, from drug companies to the military industrial complex, already dominate the political process in Washington. It is inconceivable to me that not one Republican--not one Republican today--voted to minimize the horrendous Supreme Court decision which will allow corporations to put unlimited funds into campaign advertising with no disclosure whatsoever--no disclosure whatsoever. I think the American people must be wondering this afternoon what, to our Republican friends, could be wrong with some simple checks on campaign spending such as the following: requiring the CEO of a corporation that spends on campaign-related activity to stand by the ad they have produced and say that he or she ``approves this message.'' If the Presiding Officer was running for office or I am running for office and we put an ad on television, that is what we have to say. I think it is a good idea. If you put something ugly on television, you say: I approved this message. If you put something dishonest on the air, people have a right to know that you are the person responsible for that ad. If you have to be responsible for that ad, if I have to be responsible for that ad, if every other candidate for the Senate has to be responsible for that ad, why should not the CEO of a large corporation that is paying for that ad also have to say that he or she approves this message? It is no great secret that a lot of money from abroad is being invested in American corporations. In a situation where a company which has a lot of foreign money in it, why should we allow that company to get actively involved in American politics? What the legislation that we voted on today does, which I think makes a lot of sense, is it prohibits a corporation that is under the direction or control of a foreign entity from spending money on our elections. I don't think that is an unreasonable provision. I don't think we want our political process to be dominated by people who may not have the best interests of the people of the United States of America at heart. Another provision requires disclosure of political spending by corporations and other entities to their shareholders and members and requires these groups to make their political spending public on their Web sites within 24 hours after filing with the FEC. Why should the people who actually own the stock in those companies not be able to know in a timely manner what the CEOs of these corporations are doing so they can say: Excuse me, you can't do that with my money. I don't like that. I think what you are doing is wrong. Another provision in this legislation would ban coordination between a candidate and outside groups on ads that reference a candidate from the time period beginning 90 days before a primary and running through the general election. Another provision would avoid the appearance of corruption and possible misuse of taxpayer funds by banning government contractors with a contract worth more than $10 million from spending money on elections. I think these are simple, straightforward provisions. I think they are right. I have a very hard time understanding how we could not get one Republican vote in support of these provisions. My hope is that the Democratic leadership will not give up on this issue. I think the American people, before Citizens United, were frustrated and disgusted with the role big money plays in the political process, disgusted with the power big money interests have on influencing legislation, and I think they are now even more disgusted as a result of the Citizens United decision. We have brought forth legislation which I think is straightforward, I think it is sensible, I think it needs to be passed, and I hope we will continue that effort to get it passed. With that, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is an absurd amendment. This amendment would provide $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top three- tenths of 1 percent, and 99.7 percent of the American people do not get a nickel. Despite all the rhetoric we hear around here about fiscal responsibility, this isn't paid for. It is another $1 trillion over 10 years to our national debt. I yield to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, every day it becomes harder and harder for me to listen to my Republican friends who race down to the Senate breathlessly telling the American people how concerned they are about the $13 trillion national debt we have and how ``we have to get our financial house in order.'' That is what they tell us every single day. But a funny thing happened: under the leadership of President George W. Bush, these very same Republicans turned a recordbreaking Federal surplus left by President Clinton into recordbreaking deficits. Back then, as we all recall, not so many years ago, their rallying cry was ``deficits don't matter.'' That was articulated by Vice President Dick Cheney. This ``deficits don't matter'' philosophy gave us two wars that were not paid for, including the war in Iraq, which may end up costing us $3 trillion. It gave us $700 billion in tax breaks--no worry about paying for those tax breaks that went to the very wealthiest people in our country. It gave us $400 billion in an unpaid-for prescription drug Medicare Part D bill. And, of course, it gave us a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street developed by President Bush and his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Paulson. No worry; in those days, we did not have to pay for any of that. It is OK, just add it onto the debt of our kids and our grandchildren. But it seems our Republican friends recently, about a year and three- quarters ago, had a change of heart. Coincidentally, that was when President Obama came into office. I am sure it was just a coincidence, but now it appears that deficits do matter. For 8 years, deficits didn't matter. Now they do matter. Now they are telling us we cannot afford to extend unemployment benefits to over 2 million Americans who lost their jobs in the worst recession in modern history. They tell us we just cannot afford to invest in our economy to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure or transform our energy system, which would create, over a period of years, millions of good-paying jobs. We can't do that. We don't have the money to do that. The Republican hypocrisy is about to reach a whole new level, literally, today. In the name of fiscal responsibility, while they oppose every effort to help the middle-class and working families of our country, today an amendment is going to come onto the floor which is specifically designed to provide huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. In other words, there is no money available to help desperate families who have lost their jobs, but there is all kinds of money to provide huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. Finally, last night, as a result of the appointment of a new Senator from West Virginia, we got the 60 votes we needed to end the Republican filibuster so that we can extend unemployment benefits. But instead of allowing this bill to pass yesterday, as common decency would allow, so we can begin to get the money out to those families who are wondering right now how they are going to buy the food they need, pay the rent, pay the mortgage, the Republicans are forcing the Senate to wait another 30 hours before final passage. Adding insult to injury, my good friend from South Carolina, Senator DeMint, wants to suspend the rules so the Senate can take up legislation to permanently repeal the estate tax. This, even for the Senate, is really weird and really extraordinary. In the midst of telling us how serious the deficit is, how serious the national debt is, these folks want to give tax breaks to billionaires by permanently repealing the estate tax and, as this chart shows, adding more than $1 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. That is a very unusual way to deal with our deficit crisis, by adding $1 trillion to the national debt over a 10-year period. Furthermore, as this chart shows--and maybe this is the most important point I want to make in my brief remarks-- only a tiny fraction of estates from death in 2009 owed any estate tax. In fact, 99.7 percent of Americans would not receive a nickel from Senator DeMint's legislation. Four years ago, every Republican except two voted to completely eliminate the estate tax, a tax that has been in existence since 1916 and impacts only the very richest families in America, the top three- tenths of 1 percent. Let me tell you who the major beneficiaries of this huge tax break would be. Would it be the average middle-class worker who during the Bush years saw a $2,200 decline in his income, people who really need the money? No, they are not being helped by Mr. DeMint or the repeal of the estate tax. Would it be a small businessperson, the people who are creating almost all of the new jobs in our economy? Would small business be helped when we repeal the estate tax? No, not those guys. Would it be a single mom who wants to send her kid to college for the first time in their family's lifetime? No, that single mom is not going to be helped, not anybody on Social Security, not the people who need the help the most. They don't get one penny from the repeal of the estate tax, as Senator DeMint is proposing. Who benefits? Who are the beneficiaries of the estate tax or, as my Republican friends and their pollsters like to refer to it, the death tax? If we pass what Senator DeMint wants us to do today, completely repeal the estate tax, it would provide an estimated $32.7 billion tax break for the Walton family, the founders and owners of Walmart--a $32.7 billion tax break for a family that is worth almost $87 billion. Some people here may think the Walton family--worth almost $100 billion--is in desperate need of a tax break at a time when we have a $13 trillion national debt. I am not one of those people. I do not think they do. But it is not just the Walton family, obviously, who will benefit. Other very wealthy families will. Do you remember those hedge fund managers on Wall Street who made $1 billion a year or several billion a year? They are going to benefit. Those are the guys--the people who drove us into the recession, who made huge amounts of money gambling on Wall Street. They will be very happy if that amendment passes. They benefit. The Mars candy family will get an $11 billion tax break; the Cox cable family, $9 billion tax breaks. Remember, this law has been in existence since 1916. And remember again, it only benefits the top three-tenths of 1 percent, and 99.7 percent of the American people, working people, middle-class, lower income people, upper middle-class people, don't benefit one nickel from this tax break which costs us $1 trillion over a 10-year period. At a time when our country has a $13 trillion national debt, the highest level of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, a crumbling infrastructure, a desperate need to transform our energy system--I see Senator Boxer, who has been a leader in that effort--it is beyond comprehension to me that anyone at this moment in American history would advocate huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. This concept of the estate tax was developed by Teddy Roosevelt. He was concerned about two things. He was obviously concerned about raising revenue for the Federal Government, but he was also concerned about making sure we did not maintain an oligarchy in the United States where billionaire families--people worth tens of billions of dollars now--are able to give away their fortunes to their own heirs. He believed in a meritocracy and that it was appropriate that those people pay a fair share of taxes. This is what he said: The absence of effective state and especially national restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power . . . Therefore I [Teddy Roosevelt] believe in a . . . graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing in amount with the size of the estate. Teddy Roosevelt, 1910. I think our Republican friends have kind of disowned Teddy Roosevelt, and we don't hear him quoted terribly much anymore. In order to sell this concept of repealing the estate tax to the American people, Republican pollsters--I have to admit, we have to be honest about this--have done a very good job. They framed this tax break for billionaires into a death tax. So people on the street in Burlington, VT, come up to me and say: Bernie, I want to leave my kids $20,000. Why are they going to tax me? The Republican pollsters have done a very good job and their lobbyists have done a very good job in misleading the public. As usual, Republicans are using the old tactic of pretending to worry about the needs of ordinary people as a smokescreen to serve the wealthy special interests. That is what they do very well. If you are in the middle class and you want to leave your family $1 million or $2 million or $100,000, this doesn't apply to you; you don't benefit one nickel. This is for millionaires and billionaires. The other thing they talk about is, we have to preserve the family farm and the estate tax is wiping out family farms. I am a strong advocate of family-based agriculture, and in terms of the preservation of family farms, the American Farm Bureau was asked to come up with an example of one single family farm being lost as a result of the estate tax. They could not find one farm that had to be sold as a result of the estate tax. This is not legislation to help family farmers. This is legislation to help provide tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Let me quote from an article that appeared in the New York Times July 8, 2001: Neil Harl, an Iowa State University economist whose tax advice has made him a household name among Midwest farmers, said he had searched far and wide but had never found a case in which a farm was lost because of estate taxes. ``It's a myth,'' Mr. Harl said. As it happens, I called up Professor Harl this afternoon, just a few hours ago. Interestingly, he told me he has conducted over 3,000 seminars on the estate tax and agriculture. This guy is an expert on the issue. I just wanted to get an update from him. What he told me 2 hours ago is that after studying this issue for decades, he has not heard of one family farm that had to be sold because of the estate tax--not one. When my Republican friends talk about preserving the family farm-- something we have to do--this estate tax issue has nothing to do with that. In terms of small business, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, as this chart indicates, has estimated that only 80 small businesses and farm estates throughout the country paid an estate tax in 2009, representing 0.003 percent of all estates. This legislation is not for the family farmer. This legislation is not for small business. This legislation is specifically designed to provide huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, millionaires and billionaires, at the same time as we have a $13 trillion national debt. Let me conclude by saying this. We have heard our Republican friends week after week, month after month, coming down to the floor of the Senate and saying, no, we cannot extend unemployment benefits to desperate Americans all over this country who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs. We cannot afford to do that. Finally yesterday we got the votes to go forward. But having said that, that they cannot help working families and people who have lost their jobs, they are now coming down to the floor and saying, we desperately need to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. You know, Woody Guthrie had a song some years ago. The title was: ``Whose Side Are You On?'' The Republicans have answered that loudly and clearly. But when it comes to the needs of the unemployed and uninsured, when it comes to protect the interests of the struggling middle class, the Republicans are deficit hawks. We know they are going to go after them. But if you are a billionaire family who needs a huge tax break that will cost $1 trillion over 10 years, they are on your side. 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. SANDERS. Mr. President, each and every day it gets harder and harder to listen to my Republican friends who race to the Senate floor breathlessly telling the American people how concerned they are about the $13 trillion national debt and how we have got to get our financial house in order. They are just very, very upset about that. But, as you know, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, these same Republicans turned a record-breaking Federal surplus left by the Clinton administration into record-breaking deficits. Back then, their rallying cry was ``deficits don't matter,'' articulated by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. This ``deficits don't matter'' philosophy gave us two wars that were not paid for. There are estimates that the war in Iraq alone will end up costing some $3 trillion, unpaid for. They gave us some $700 billion in tax breaks that went to the wealthiest 1 percent. They gave us a $400 billion unpaid for prescription drug program written by the insurance and drug companies. They gave us a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. But under President Obama, Republicans have seemingly taken a 180- degree turn. Apparently, deficits do matter. Now they say we can't afford to extend unemployment insurance to 2 million Americans who lost their jobs during the worst recession in modern history, and they say we just don't have the money to create millions of new jobs by investing in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy system. We just don't have the money to do that. The Republican hypocrisy is now about to advance to a whole new level. In the name of fiscal responsibility, they are opposing virtually every effort to help the middle-class and working families. We just can't afford to do it. But when it comes to the needs of millionaire and billionaire families, our Republican friends have no problem reducing revenue by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. In other words, they are deficit hawks when it comes to the needs of ordinary people, but they are very big spenders when it comes to the needs of the rich. Four years ago, every Republican but two voted to completely eliminate the estate tax, a tax that has been in existence since 1916, and impacts only the very wealthiest families, the top three-tenths of 1 percent. Under the estate tax, 99.7 percent of American families do not pay one nickel. This huge tax break for the wealthy, repealing the estate tax, which Republicans are fighting to do, would increase the national debt by more than $1 trillion over a 10-year period. These deficit hawks, who are so concerned about the national debt and record- breaking deficits, want to increase the national debt by over $1 trillion in a 10-year period. Let me tell my colleagues who the major beneficiaries of this tax break would be. Would it be the average middle-class worker who during the Bush years saw a $2,200 decline in his income? We have a collapsing middle class, working people desperately in need. Would Republican repeal of the estate tax help those workers? Not a chance. Nobody in the middle class would get one nickel of a tax break. Would Republican repeal of the estate tax help a single mother struggling to send her daughter to college, maybe for the first time ever in that family's history? College costs are going up. Working people can't afford college. Would it help that single mom? No, I am afraid not. That single mom would not get one penny. Would it help one of the millions of senior citizens struggling to maintain their dignity on Social Security benefits? This year there is no COLA for senior citizens. I tried to get some help there. Republicans voted against it. Couldn't do it. Would it help senior citizens struggling with the high cost of medicine? No. Those senior citizens would not get one penny of help by Republican repeal of the estate tax. I must be honest. Sadly, there are also a few Democrats who are supporting this giveaway, all Republicans and a few Democrats. Who are the major beneficiaries of the repeal of the estate tax or, as Republican pollsters like to call it, ``the death tax''? If we completely eliminated the estate tax, it would provide an estimated $32 billion tax break for the Walton family, the founders of Walmart. We have a family whose fortune today is worth an estimated $86.8 billion. If, as the Republicans want, we eliminate the estate tax completely, this family--obviously of desperate need, obviously struggling hard to keep their family above water economically, struggling hard to stay off welfare--would receive an estimated $32.7 billion in tax breaks, if the estate tax is completely eliminated. Let's be clear. This policy being pursued by Republicans is designed to help the very richest people in our society. Interestingly enough, our Republican friends today in all likelihood are going to vote against providing a $35 billion emergency extension of unemployment benefits that will help 2 million Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. We can't afford to do it. We just don't have the money. But apparently we do have the money to provide almost $33 billion to a family worth $86 billion, one of the richest families in the world. It is not only the Walton family our Republican friends and a few Democrats want to help. Permanently repealing the estate tax will also provide an $11 billion tax break to the Mars candy bar family. We all eat Mars candy bars. They are going to get an $11 billion tax break. It would provide a $9 billion tax break to the Cox Cable family and a $2.5 billion tax break to the family who founded Campbell Soup. No one in the bottom 99.7 percent of the population, nobody in the working class, nobody in the middle class, no low-income person, nobody even in the upper middle class will gain one cent of benefit from these tax breaks. Today, while Republicans may not have the votes to permanently eliminate the estate tax, they are working feverishly to push legislation to substantially lower that tax. In fact, they have already succeeded in eliminating the estate tax this year, and this year alone, as result of President Bush's $1.35 trillion 2001 tax cut legislation. Wiping out this tax in 2010, when billionaires are dying, for the first time in 95 years their families will not pay one cent in taxes. That has already cost our Treasury, in the midst of a $13 trillion national debt, billions and billions of dollars in needed revenue. It seems to me that at a time when this country has a $13 trillion national debt, at a time when 22 percent of our children are living in poverty--the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world--at a time when our infrastructure is crumbling, at a time when we have a desperate need to transform our energy system and by doing that we can put millions of people to work rebuilding America, transportation infrastructure, energy, it is beyond comprehension, literally beyond comprehension that anyone can come down to the floor of this Senate and argue with a straight face that we should provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. I should add all of this takes place within the context of the United States already having by far the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major country on Earth. The top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. When we give away billions more in tax breaks to the very rich, we are only exacerbating that. We are making that wealth gap even greater. That is why I have introduced the Responsible Estate Tax Act, S. 3533, along with Senators Harkin, Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, and Senator Franken. This legislation would raise $318 billion over the next decade by establishing a graduated inheritance tax on estates of over $3.5 million. I actually cannot take credit for this legislation. I would like to, but I cannot. It would be dishonest. This is an idea developed 100 years ago by a good Republican President named Teddy Roosevelt. In 1910 he pushed this idea which eventually became adopted in 1916. This is what Teddy Roosevelt, as this chart indicates, said 100 years ago. I think my Republican friends probably will not be quoting Teddy Roosevelt, though he is one of our great Presidents. This is what Teddy Roosevelt said: The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. That sounds pretty familiar. A small group of incredibly wealthy people whose sole objective is to hold and increase their power. Therefore, I, [Teddy Roosevelt] believe in . . . a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. What he was talking about was not from a financial point of view of bringing in revenue. He was expressing fear about America becoming an oligarchic aristocracy in which a few people had incredible wealth and used that wealth to perpetuate their position in society. If that is not what is happening today, then I don't know what is happening. When we look at Wall Street spending $300 million trying to stop any real reform of Wall Street at a time when these guys are making all kinds of money, having been bailed out by taxpayers, if we look at the oil companies and all of their lobbyists around here, that is precisely what is going on. A small number of incredibly wealthy people are perpetuating their power through their wealth. In order to gain support for the permanent repeal of the estate tax or a major reduction in estate tax rates, Republicans and lobbyists representing the super rich are doing what they do best, and that is distorting reality. We will not hear any of my Republican friends who talk about repealing the estate tax tell us that the richest families in America are going to be receiving $10, $20, $30 billion in tax breaks. What they have done, both as politicians and through their lobbyists, has created a mythology that a responsible and a fair estate tax--or as their pollsters have framed it, ``a death tax''--will somehow destroy family farms and small businesses. In other words, what they are doing is what they very often do. They say: It is not the very rich, the billionaires we are interested in protecting. It is not the Walmart people. We are interested in family farmers and small businesses. Those are the people we are trying to protect. But nothing could be further from the truth. As usual, they are using their old tactic of pretending to worry about the needs of ordinary people as a smokescreen to serve extremely wealthy special interests. Let's talk a little bit about what they are saying. In terms of the preservation of the family farm, something I happen to believe in passionately--we have a lot of family farms in Vermont--the American Farm Bureau was asked some years ago to come up with a single example of one family farm being lost as a result of the estate tax. They could not find one farm, not one farm that had to be sold as a result of the estate tax, not one. I should tell you, the legislation I have authored provides even more protections to family farms than previous law. So they are not protecting the family farmers; they are protecting the Walton family and other billionaire families. In terms of small businesses--something that is obviously vital to our economy; small business is the engine of job creation; we have to protect small businesses--this is what the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has estimated: that only 80 small businesses and farm estates throughout the country paid an estate tax in 2009--80; 8-0-- representing, as this chart shows, 0.003 percent of all estates. In other words, virtually every single small business and family farm in this country would not pay one penny in estate taxes under my bill, and because of protections in the Tax Code, their effective, real tax rate would only be 14 percent. And the relatively few people who inherit small businesses who pay an estate tax are given 14 years to pay it off. They do not have to pay it off in 1 year. So when our Republican friends come down here and tell us they are fighting to protect the family farm or small businesses, that just is not the case. What they are coming down here to do is to protect the Walton family and the Steinbrenner family and the other billionaire families who are spending a whole lot of money in a major lobbying effort to make sure the richest people in this country become even richer. So I think what this debate is really all about is what the old Woody Guthrie song framed and described as ``which side are you on?''--which side are you on?--and the Republicans have answered very loudly and clearly, when it comes to the needs of the unemployed and the uninsured, when it comes to protecting the interests of the struggling middle class, they are just not there. When it comes to ordinary people, the Republicans are deficit hawks. But if you are a millionaire or a billionaire family and if you need a huge tax break that will cost our government hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, you can count on Republicans for your support. That is what this issue is about. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by making a few points about which there is not a whole lot of disagreement. First, the United States today is in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Over 16 percent of working age Americans are unemployed or underemployed, working 20 hours a week when they want to be working 40 hours. Long-term unemployment is the highest on record. In other words, when people are losing their jobs now, it is not a question of weeks to gain a new job but, in some cases, 6 or 8 months or perhaps not at all. In the midst of this economic crisis, millions of Americans have lost their homes, savings, and pensions. Second point: The United States today has a $13 trillion national debt and a record-breaking $1.6 trillion deficit. Last year alone, the Federal Government spent over $186 billion paying interest on that debt. We are leaving our children and grandchildren a huge financial obligation which not only will impact them personally but will affect the well-being of the entire country in the midst of a strong and competitive global economy. Third point: The United States today has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country. Today, as this chart indicates, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. Let me repeat that. The top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. And the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The top, 1 percent; bottom, 90 percent. What we have is a nation in which in many ways we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, with a small number of people on the top seeing a huge increase in their wealth and income while the middle class lapses and poverty increases. During the Bush years, when the middle class saw a $2,200 decline in median family income, the 400 wealthiest families saw their income more than double. Meanwhile, while the very rich became much richer, their effective income tax rates were slashed almost in half over the past 15 years. The rich get richer. Their effective income tax rate goes down. The wealthiest 400 Americans have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth, while the highest paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007 alone. As a result of Bush's tax policy, these very high-income people pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record. The rich get richer. Their effective tax rates go down--lowest on record. Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people on the planet, has often made the point that he, a multibillionaire, pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. Last point I wish to make: Last month a gentleman named Dan Duncan, who happened to be the wealthiest person in Houston, TX, passed away. He left his family some $9 billion. For the first time since 1916, almost 100 years, somebody in the top echelon bracket like a Mr. Duncan will have a situation where his heirs will pay zero inheritance tax, not a nickel. That is the first time that a multimillionaire or billionaire has died in 100 years and their family has not paid one penny in inheritance taxes. This occurred as a result of President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax break enacted into law in 2001. In other words, at a time when this country has a devastatingly high rate of unemployment, at a time when the Senate refused to extend unemployment benefits to desperate people who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs and have no income, at a time when we have a huge national debt, at a time when we have massive unmet needs, including a crumbling infrastructure and the need to transform our energy system, at a time when we have a growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, we have a situation now where the very wealthiest people are seeing, when one in their family dies, their estate tax is zero. A century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt, a good Republican, called for a graduated inheritance tax on wealthy estates. In 1916, Congress passed that law. Interestingly enough, here is what Republican Teddy Roosevelt said in 1910: The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise . . . No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Let me repeat: No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered, not gambling in stocks but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective--a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. Teddy Roosevelt, 1910. There are not many Republicans I agree with today, but I do agree with what Teddy Roosevelt said 100 years ago. That is exactly what the responsible estate tax act I have introduced, along with Senators Harkin, Whitehouse, Franken, and Sherrod Brown, will do. Specifically, this legislation exempts the first $3.5 million of an inheritance from paying any Federal estate tax whatsoever. Doing this means that 99.7 percent of Americans who receive an inheritance will not pay one penny in Federal estate taxes. This legislation would impact only the very wealthy, the top three-tenths of 1 percent. Under my legislation, the value of estates above $3.5 million and below $10 million would be taxed at 45 percent; the value of estates above $10 million and below $50 million would be taxed at 50 percent; and the value of estates above $50 million would be taxed at 55 percent, the same as the 2001 level before the Bush tax cuts. Further, this legislation includes a 10-percent surtax on the value of estates above $500 million or $1 billion for couples. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this legislation, over a 10-year period, would bring in $315 billion--a significant step forward in addressing our national debt. But this legislation would do something even more important. In the midst of these enormously difficult times, this legislation makes clear we are one country and all Americans must accept shared responsibility. In my view, it is immoral, it is unfair that while the middle class struggles to survive, millionaires and billionaires get tax breaks. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as we celebrate the 147th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, I celebrate the contributions Vermont's brave citizens made to keep the Union whole. As the Civil War began, President Lincoln sent a message to Governor Erastus Fairbanks: ``Washington is in grave danger. What may we expect of Vermont?'' The Governor's reply: ``Vermont will do its full duty.'' Fairbanks called a special session of the State legislature and told lawmakers, ``The United States government must be sustained and the rebellion suppressed, at whatever cost of men and treasure.'' Vermonters fulfilled that pledge. During the Battle of Gettysburg, waged from July 1 to July 3, 1863, Vermonters fought heroically. Under the command of GEN George Stannard, Vermonters ``broke the back of Pickett's charge,'' helping lead the Union Army to victory in the decisive battle, says George Gunlock, a local historian in my State. Another Vermonter, William Wells, won the Medal of Honor for leading his men in a daring cavalry charge against Confederate lines during the Battle of Gettysburg. A statue was built in his honor in both Gettysburg and in Burlington's Battery Park. Wells, who rose to the rank of general, served as Vermont's adjutant general after the Civil War. But it not so much the officers, but the brave men who served under them, that we most remember, even at this historical distance. Despite its small size, Vermont was a major contributor to the Union Army. In all, 33,200 Vermonters fought in the war, or more than 10 percent of the State's population at the time. Twenty-eight thousand Vermonters served in the State militia and another 5,000 enlisted for Federal service during the Civil War. At the time, the State's estimated population was 320,000. According to historians, nearly half of the men in Vermont who were of military age signed on to serve their Nation. Great sacrifice was exacted from these brave volunteers. Vermonters suffered 5,194 deaths, during the Civil War, including 1,832 Vermonters killed or mortally wounded in battle, 2,747 who died of disease or other causes and 615 who died while prisoners. More than 2,200 Vermonters were taken prisoner during the war. The history of the Vermonters who fought during the Civil War lives on. The Vermont National Guard's 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, now deployed in Afghanistan, uses a famous line from the Civil War--``Put the Vermonters ahead''--as its motto today. The line comes from a famous order by Union GEN John Sedgwick. When the battle of Gettysburg began on July 1, 1863, Sedgwick's soldiers were in Maryland, 35 miles from the battlefield. ``At dusk orders came to move, but it was about 10 o'clock at night before the column started for Gettysburg. It was on this occasion that General Sedgwick issued his famous order: ``Put the Vermonters ahead and keep the column well closed up.'' As we recognize the dedication of Vermont's soldiers in the Civil War, so should we recognize the dedication and bravery of Vermont's soldiers today, when more than 1,500 members of the Vermont National Guard are serving in the war zone in Afghanistan. Approaching July 4th, the day which marks our Nation's independence, I want to celebrate the courage of those brave men from Vermont who fought to preserve the Nation in the Civil War, and the brave men and women who are answering our Nation's call today in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I thank the Senator for all she is doing for the unemployed in this country. I wish to briefly quote from an e-newsletter we sent out from our office which is sanders.senate.gov, and this is what the newsletter said recently in discussing the unemployment situation in Vermont: Adrian Keyser is one of more than 200 people who applied for eight licensed nursing assistant positions at Burlington's Fletcher Allen Health Care earlier this month. She has been unemployed since November. Eight jobs, 200 people applying for those jobs. This is what she says: I have been desperately seeking work. Just so many people are looking for jobs. It's very frustrating. It kind of gets on your self-esteem because you are trying so hard and nothing comes through. I know a lot of people that are out of jobs right now. As Congress debates whether to extend benefits for the seriously and long-term unemployed, an estimated 23,000 Vermonters were jobless in April. Of those, 6,600, or 29 percent, were unemployed for 6 months or longer, according to preliminary data from the Vermont Labor Department. Thousands of Vermonters who are looking for full-time jobs are only working part-time. The Labor Department estimates 24,100 are working part time, largely because jobs aren't available. By the way, the recession has not hit Vermont as badly as it has hit many other States, but we have just heard of a situation where eight jobs were being offered, and 200 people were lining up for those jobs. I wish to make a point about the priorities of many of my Republican friends, which I don't quite understand. When Senator Stabenow, a moment ago, asked for unanimous consent so that we can provide the desperately needed unemployment compensation for almost 1 million workers out there, there was an objection. The objection was, well, we have to pay for that. We have a large deficit. I understand we have a large deficit and that we have a large national debt, but what I don't understand is that when it comes to tax breaks for billionaires, my word, we don't have to pay for that. My understanding is that every member of the Republican caucus without exception voted to repeal completely the estate tax. That would cost the government over $1 trillion over a 10-year period--$1 trillion over a 10-year period--and how was that going to be paid for? Oh, it wasn't going to be paid for--but not to worry. What Senator Stabenow is talking about now is 1 million workers who are in desperate need of help in order to put food on the table, in order to put gas in the car so they can look for work. On the other hand, when you repeal the estate tax, you are not talking about 1 million unemployed workers, you are talking about the top three-tenths of 1 percent of our population, people who are millionaires and billionaires. Our Republican friends say: Oh, it is OK. We can give them $1 trillion in tax breaks. We don't have to worry about how we pay for that. Actually, within a couple of weeks there is going to be another version of providing huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country as another form of repealing the estate tax coming before the Congress. I wonder how much concern our Republican friends will have when that bill comes to the floor about how we are going to pay for that. Right now, interestingly enough, there is no estate tax. For the first time since 1916, you could be a multibillionaire and your family will not have to pay any taxes when you die. Last month, it turned out that the wealthiest person in Houston, TX, a gentleman named Dan Duncan, became the first multibillionaire to pass along his entire estate, estimated to be worth $9 billion, to his family without paying any Federal estate taxes. Now, I don't know, I may have missed it, but what that family would have been paying in Federal taxes is probably between $3 billion or $4 billion. That is a lot of money. That can provide a lot of unemployment compensation to workers who have lost their jobs and are living in desperation. Maybe my friend from Michigan, Senator Stabenow, can correct me, but I don't recall hearing any of my Republican friends coming to the floor and saying: Oh, my word. We have a huge deficit problem. Yet right now billionaire families are not paying any taxes at all for the estate tax--the first time since 1916. I don't know. Did my friend from Michigan hear any great laments about that crisis? No. But when it comes to unemployed workers: Oh, my word, we have to pay for that. The last point I wish to make is I get a little bit tired of being lectured by our Republican friends for the deficit we are in. Let's go over how we got to the deficit--or a good part of the deficit--right now. I voted against going to the war in Iraq. Most, or all, of my Republican friends voted for it. That war will cost approximately $3 trillion by the time the last veteran gets the benefits he or she is entitled to. They voted for it, but they forgot to tell us how they would pay for it. During the Bush era, our Republican friends pushed for hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They voted for it; I didn't. The point is, please don't lecture us on the deficit that you largely caused. With that, I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I will take just a few minutes now.

Mr. SANDERS. I am not a liberal but a progressive. Sometime we will talk about the difference. Mr. President, I did not vote for the $3 trillion war in Iraq. I did not vote for the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks. I did not vote for the Medicare Part D Program which drove up the deficit altogether as a matter of fact. I suspect my friend may have voted the other way on all of those issues which were not paid for. In terms of ExxonMobil, let's be clear. I don't know what ExxonMobil told my colleague, but I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record what ExxonMobil told the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. What is reported by the SEC for 2009 is they received a $156 million refund. That is the SEC. I ask unanimous consent to have this printed in the Record.

Mr. SANDERS. I will reserve the remainder of my time. But let me say this to my friend from Oklahoma, who I know is an honest guy. We disagree. We have differences of opinion. It was not my suggestion that ExxonMobil did not pay taxes over those years. That was not my suggestion. But let me say this. He mentioned that they do pay taxes, which is true. But let's understand that ExxonMobil was the most profitable corporation in the history of the world from 2006 through 2008, making $40 billion in profits in 2006, $41 billion in 2007, and $45 billion in 2008. In the midst of a recession, my understanding is they made $19 billion in profits last year. Would my friend from Oklahoma deny that despite making these huge profits last year, $19 billion, they received--they paid zero in 2009 and in fact received a $156 million refund from the taxpayers of this country? I hope my friend from Oklahoma would comment on whether that is good public policy. With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Let me say to my friend from Oklahoma, who talked about the oil companies plowing their money back into new wells, that the big five oil companies spent $270 billion over the past decade buying back their own stock--about $100 billion more than they spent on oil exploration. My friend from Oklahoma talks about jobs. That is obviously an important issue. I would concede there may be some job loss here, but it is matched by an investment in sustainable energy that will create far more employment than the relatively small number of jobs that might be lost. I would mention Dr. Krueger, the Chief Economist at the Treasury Department. He has estimated that repealing these tax breaks would lead to a decline in employment in oil and gas production of less than one- half of 1 percent at most. That translates into the potential loss of 1,650 jobs in the oil and gas industry. I do not mean to minimize that. One job lost is one job too many. But on the other hand, in this bill we put $10 billion into the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program, where the estimate is we can create 140,000 jobs over the same period of time. On one hand, we might lose 1,600 jobs; on the other hand, we gain 140,000 jobs. With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 15, 2010, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``The New START Treaty (Treaty Doc. 111-5): The Negotiations.''

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Evaluating the Health Impacts of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill'' on June 15, 2010. The hearing will commence at 2:30 p.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I have a pending amendment to the tax extenders bill and want to say a few words on that. At a time when we have a recordbreaking $13 trillion national debt and an unsustainable Federal deficit, at a time when two out of every three corporations in America paid no Federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, at a time when ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in the history of the world, not only paid no Federal income taxes in 2009 but actually got a $156 million refund from the IRS, at a time when we desperately need to end our dependence on fossil fuel and transform our energy system, the amendment I am offering, along with Senator Wyden, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Menendez, and Senator Lautenberg, is simple and straightforward. This amendment simply repeals over $35 billion in tax breaks to the oil and gas industry, all of which were recommended for elimination in President Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget, which the Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated would raise over $35 billion in a 10-year period. To put this in perspective, the taxpayer dollars saved by repealing these tax breaks represents about 1 percent of the total projected revenue of the oil and gas industry over this same time period. In other words, the cost of repealing these tax breaks for the oil and gas industry is negligible. More than $25 billion of the money saved under this amendment would be used to reduce the deficit. I hear my friends coming down every day, appropriately, talking about our recordbreaking deficit and our huge national debt. Mr. President, $25 billion in this amendment is used for deficit reduction. Mr. President, $10 billion would be invested in the highly successful Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program over a 5-year period, which would go to 50 States in this country to help them move forward in terms of energy efficiency and sustainable energy. This amendment has widespread support throughout this country from organizations representing millions of Americans, including the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, Friends of the Earth, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the American Public Health Association, moveon.org, Environment America, Oceana, 1 Sky, Greenpeace, Public Citizen, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Law Foundation, and 350.org. In addition, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant funding this amendment would provide is strongly supported by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of State Energy Officials, and the National Association of Development Organizations, and I am pleased to report that Taxpayers for Common Sense and the National Wildlife Federation strongly support repealing the oil and gas tax breaks this amendment would eliminate. Let me briefly explain why this amendment needs to be included in this overall legislation. First, there is no debate; everybody here understands we have to address the deficit crisis and the $13 trillion national debt we face. Well, I say to my friends: If you are serious about doing this and doing it in a way that doesn't decimate the middle class or working families, this amendment is a good step forward: $25 billion in deficit reduction over a 10-year period is significant and it would help us address a major crisis. Secondly, we all understand--or I hope we all understand--we have to reform the Tax Code, which is grossly unfair today. We must make the Tax Code fairer and more equitable for ordinary Americans and, in my view, that means ending the absurdity of seeing large corporations, enormously profitable corporations, not pay their fair share of taxes and, in some cases, not paying any taxes at all. Each and every year, large and profitable corporations all over this country are able to avoid paying billions of dollars in Federal income taxes through loopholes in the Tax Code and generous tax breaks. This is simply unacceptable, it is unfair especially with a record-breaking deficit, it is very poor public policy, and it has to be changed. To highlight how absurd this situation has become, take a look at the August 2008 report on the subject by the Government Accountability Office or the GAO. According to this report--and I hope Americans hear this--two out of every three corporations in the United States paid no Federal income taxes from 1998 to 2005--two out of three. Amazingly these corporations had a combined $2.5 trillion in sales but paid no income taxes to the IRS. This statistic includes one out of four large corporations. That is according to the GAO. Further, according to a report from the Citizens for Tax Justice, 82 Fortune 500 companies in America paid: zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. I am thinking now about working people in the State of Vermont and in the State of New Mexico or in Oklahoma, where people are making 10, 12 bucks an hour; people are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week; people who are paying their fair share of taxes. Yet we end up having these large multinational corporations making billions of dollars every year in profits and then they avoid paying their fair share of taxes. That is an issue we have to address. This same report from Citizens for Tax Justice states: In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $102 billion in U.S. profits. How is that? Not a bad deal: $102 billion in profits, zero income taxes. But instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury, totaling $12.6 billion. How is that? They make huge amounts of money, don't pay any taxes, and then Uncle Sam gives them a rebate. That is quite the scam. In other words, between 2001 and 2003, 82 of the largest, most profitable corporations in this country received a $12.6 billion tax refund--tax refund--from the IRS when, if they were paying their 35 percent of corporate taxes as the law requires, they would have paid over $35 billion in taxes. That is a net loss to the U.S. Treasury of $48 billion. It is not just Bernie Sanders who has strong concerns about this issue. The issue of abusive corporate tax breaks has even gotten the attention of Forbes Magazine.

Mr. SANDERS. I am, but not yet. I will get to that in a moment.

Mr. SANDERS. I will yield in a few minutes and be happy to discuss this issue with my friend.