Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SANDERS. I rise in strong support of the SCHIP legislation. I find it amazing that we have spent so much time debating it. This SCHIP legislation would help more than 4 million children in this country get the health insurance they desperately need. But I should point out it leaves approximately 3 million kids still uninsured. As you well know, the United States of America remains the only major country in the industrialized world where this debate would take place. We are spending weeks discussing an issue which every other country in the industrialized world has long resolved. So if we pass this piece of legislation tomorrow, and I hope we will, 3 million kids still remain without health insurance. The common sense of insuring children is apparent to everybody because when kids are insured, when parents are allowed to bring their children to a doctor, when kids have access to medical care in a school, professionals can pick up the medical problems kids have so 10 years later they do not end up in a hospital with a serious illness and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to cure a child whose problems could have been detected when they were little. This really is a no-brainer. Clearly, what we must do as a nation is move to a national health care program guaranteeing health care to all of our people, but a step forward will be passing this SCHIP legislation. I think the American people are more than aware that our health care system is substantially broken. They understand not only do 46 million Americans have no health insurance, they understand even more are underinsured. They understand the absurdity of tying health care to jobs because when we lose our jobs, then we lose our health care. I hear some of my friends saying: Oh, the American people do not want government health care. Well, you know what. Read the polls. The American people do believe the U.S. Government should take the responsibility of providing health care to every man, woman, and child, and I hope as soon as possible we, in fact, do that. But not only do we have 46 million Americans, including many children--and that issue we are trying to deal with right now--who have no health insurance, what we are also doing, because of the waste and inefficiency in our current system, is we end up spending far more per capita on health care than the people of any other country. I know the Presiding Officer is more than aware that General Motors spends more, for example, on health care than they do on steel in building automobiles. What kind of sense is that? So I hope, at a certain point--and I hope soon--we as a nation end up finally saying health care is a right of all people. The absurdity that one child in this country does not have health insurance is an international embarrassment. Let's go forward, and let's develop the most cost- effective way we can provide health care to all our people. Now, here is the irony: that even if tomorrow we guaranteed health care to all our children, even if the next day we guaranteed health care to all our people, do you know what. That does not mean people are going to be able to find doctors or dentists. Our infrastructure, especially in primary care, is in such a bad condition that we need to revolutionize primary health care in America. We just had a hearing, chaired by Senator Harkin, who has been very active in the whole issue of preventative care in the HELP Committee. This is unbelievable. We had a physician who is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, in a State where presumably they have universal health care, and she cannot find a primary health care physician. A professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School cannot find a primary health care physician. That is how absurd this situation is. We have over 50 million Americans today who do not have regular access to a physician. We have many more who cannot find a dentist. Meanwhile, if we were not depleting the medical infrastructure of Third World countries, bringing in doctors and dentists from those countries, our entire primary health care system would be in even worse shape than it is right now. Community Health Centers Madam President, I do wish to say a word about legislation we will be introducing next week--I am proud to tell you we have 15 original cosponsors; I hope we will have more in the next few days--which essentially begins to address the crisis in primary health care by significantly expanding a program Senator Kennedy developed in the 1960s which has widespread support--not just from Democrats but from Republicans, not just from President Obama, who was a cosponsor of similar type legislation last year, but from Senator McCain, who talked about community health centers during his campaign; and President Bush was very supportive of the concept. So we have widespread support, and now is the time to go forward and say we will have a federally qualified community health center in every underserved area in America. By expanding the number of FQCHCs from about 1,100 to 4,800, at the end of the day, by providing primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs, do you know what we do. We save money. We save substantial sums of money because we keep patients out of the emergency room, we keep patients out of the hospital because we are treating their illnesses at an early stage rather than allowing them to become ill and then spending huge sums of money when they end up in the hospital. I am very proud we have Senator Kennedy as a cosponsor, and Senators Durbin, Harkin, Schumer, Kerry, Boxer, Inouye, Leahy, Mikulski, Casey, Cardin, Brown, Begich, Burris, and Wyden. I hope we will have more cosponsors. This is legislation we can pass. This is legislation which has historically had bipartisan support because we all know primary health care--giving people access to doctors, dentists, low-cost prescription drugs--is the way to not only keep people healthy, it is the way to save billions and billions of dollars. Let me conclude by saying I hope very much we support this SCHIP legislation. It will save us money by enabling kids to get to the doctor before their problems become much more acute. It is the right thing to do, and it is the beginning of the United States trying to join the rest of the industrialized world in saying health care must be a right of all people--all people--rather than a privilege of just the few. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, soon we will be voting on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, S. 181. The House of Representatives has already passed this legislation by a vote of 247 to 171. Passing this bill today will send a clear message that our country will not tolerate unequal pay for equal work. As astonishing as it is, in the year 2009, women earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable jobs. What a truly unthinkable, and frankly disgraceful, circumstance--one that we must do everything within our power to change. Today we have the opportunity to take a small but very significant step in making sure that Americans have the legal opportunity to challenge pay discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter was a loyal employee at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for 19 years. At first, her salary was in line with that of her male colleagues, but over time she got smaller raises creating a significant pay gap. Ms. Ledbetter was not aware of this pay discrimination until she received an anonymous note detailing the salaries of three male coworkers. After filing a complaint with the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, her case went to trial and the jury awarded her $3.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages due to the extreme pay discrimination she endured. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed this verdict, arguing that Ms. Ledbetter filed her complaint too late. If you asked anyone on the street, they would tell you that this decision goes against the citizens of this country's sense of right and wrong. How was she to know that this discrimination was happening? Ms. Ledbetter was already facing sexual harassment at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and told by her boss that he didn't think a woman should be working there. To argue that Ms. Ledbetter should have asked her male counterparts what their salaries were at the moment she suspected discrimination defies common sense. This topic was off limits, as it is in most work places. It is clearly not her fault she didn't discover this inequity sooner. In 2007, the Supreme Court upheld the Eleventh Circuit ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and, as a result, took us a step back in time. It gutted a key part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that has protected hardworking Americans from pay discrimination for 45 years by making it extraordinarily difficult for victims of pay discrimination to sue their employers. The bill before us overturns the Court's 5-4 decision and reinstates prior law. It ensures that victims of pay discrimination will not be penalized if they are unaware of wage disparities. I am happy to say that we will have the opportunity today to protect millions of hardworking Americans and reverse the unreasonable and unfair Ledbetter decision. I call on all of my Senate colleagues to vote in favor of this bill, which will send a clear signal that pay discrimination is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the first vote of the day will begin around 11:30 a.m. That vote will be in relation to the Hutchison amendment.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, January 22; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there then be a period for the transaction of morning business for up to 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the final 30 minutes; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of S. 181, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, as under the previous order.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of S. 181, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, on Thursday, January 22, there be up to 60 minutes of debate equally divided between Senator Hutchison and Senator Mikulski or their designees on the Hutchison amendment No. 25 prior to a vote in relation to the amendment; further, that no amendment be in order to the Hutchison amendment prior to the vote.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to begin by congratulating Senator Mikulski on her continued efforts in fighting for pay equality for women workers. This is a struggle that has gone on for decades. We are making some progress, but we have a long way to go and it is imperative that we pass the Ledbetter legislation. Yesterday, as everybody in the world knows, Barack Obama was sworn in as the President of the United States. I can tell my colleagues that in my State of Vermont, and I expect all over this country and, in fact, in virtually every country in the world, there was great anticipation and great joy, not only because we have made history in our country by electing the first African American ever elected President, but also because the people of this country demand that we begin moving America in a very different direction than where we have been going for the last 8 years. Unfortunately, as President Obama assumes office, the Congress, the American people, and he are looking out at a set of the most serious problems that our country has faced since the Great Depression. Let me take a very few minutes to give a broad outline of some of those problems and some of the efforts I personally will be making in order to address these crises. As a result of the outrageous greed and recklessness and dishonesty on the part of a few hundred or a few thousand speculators on Wall Street, our entire financial system is in danger of collapsing. That impacts not only the United States but, in fact, the financial markets all over the world. At this point, the American taxpayer--primarily the middle class--has already put into the TARP bailout some $700 billion, but in addition to that, the Fed has lent out trillions of dollars with virtually no transparency and certainly no accountability. This is a crisis we have to deal with in a number of ways. I will tell my colleagues as somebody who voted against the original bailout and who voted against the second bailout, we have to develop a mechanism that does more than pump hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street. This is a difficult issue, it is a complicated issue, but it is an issue that we have to address. Furthermore, in my view, we need an investigation to get at the root of the problem. I reject the idea, as some suggest, that this was a problem caused by everybody; all of us are guilty in causing this financial crisis. That is wrong. The fact is there are a relatively small number of people--by and large people who in the last 5 to 10 years have made hundreds of millions of dollars; in fact, in some cases have accrued billions of dollars of wealth for themselves, who have operated in utter recklessness and, in my suspicion, in illegal mannerisms in order to make these incredible profits and to bring our financial system to the edge of collapse. We need to know who these people are, how they did it, hold them accountable, and create legislation which makes sure that we never, ever again are placed in the position we are in today. The truth of the matter is that while the financial crisis of the last few months has exacerbated the economic problems that we are facing as a Nation today, for many years, despite the assertions of the Bush administration, the middle class has been in a significant state of decline, poverty has been increasing, and millions of people have lost their health insurance and their pensions. What is happening today as a result of the financial crisis and the huge increase in unemployment is a situation where when people lose their jobs, they are losing their health insurance; when they are losing their income, they are losing their ability to maintain their homes and they are losing their homes; when they are losing their income, they are unable to take care of their parents, they are unable to send their kids to college, and the dreams many people have fought for their entire working lives are now disappearing. I can tell my colleagues that in the State of Vermont we have received many e-mails and communications from elderly people, elderly workers who have told me that they have spent their whole lives working so they would have a secure retirement, and now that retirement is disappearing with the decline of the stock market. We are in the midst of a grave crisis and we are going to need some bold thinking in order to get out of it. Not only are we seeing a huge increase in unemployment, people losing their health insurance, poverty increasing, the reality is we continue to have--and we do not talk about this enough--by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major Nation on Earth. During my years in the House and my time in the Senate, I have heard some of my colleagues talk about family values. Well, let me say very clearly that having the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world is not a family value, it is a national disgrace. Every psychologist in the world will tell us that when kids grow up in poverty, when kids do not have early childhood education, when kids go to poor schools, there is a direct correlation between that reality and the fact that we have more people behind bars today, more people in jail than any country in the world, including China. How does that happen, that millions of Americans end up in jail more so than in an authoritarian country such as China? If one thinks it does not have a relationship to the high rate of childhood poverty in this country and the fact that we are not investing in our kids, I think you would be wrong. Last year, we continued the process of seeing a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else. I know this is not an issue that many people in the Congress choose to talk about, but it is an issue that must be talked about, not only from a sense of morality but from a sense of basic economic well-being. In my view, it is not acceptable that the top one-tenth of 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. It is not acceptable that the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The whole issue of greed is something that we as a Congress and as a Nation have to be talking about. Do people need billions and billions and billions of dollars in personal wealth when we have children in this city and all over this country who are living out in the streets and who are denied basic, decent quality childcare? Is that the kind of Nation that we are about? Since 2000, since the year 2000, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty, the median income for working age families has gone down by over $2,300, over 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance, more than 4 million decent paying manufacturing jobs have been lost, and over 4 million workers have lost their pensions. All of those figures will get worse because of the statistics we have seen in recent months because of the financial crisis. The dream of a college education is fading away for many working families in my State and all over this country as college costs go up while incomes go down. We are seeing a situation where hundreds of thousands of qualified students are unable to go to college because they simply don't have the money to do that, and many others are coming out deeply in debt and have to take jobs which they would rather not take in order to pay back their student loans. Meanwhile, in the last 8 years, despite the bailout of Wall Street, with ongoing tax breaks for the very wealthy, and with the war in Iraq, we now have a national debt of over $10.5 trillion. Another issue this Congress has to deal with is to address the reality that the United States of America remains the only major country on Earth that does not provide health care to all of its people. Yet we end up spending substantially more per capita on health care than any other Nation. But 47 million Americans have no health insurance. Almost 20,000 Americans die every single year because they don't have access to decent primary health care--they can't find a doctor when they need it--and we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. With a new President, with a new Congress, the American people are asking whether finally we will have the courage to stand up to the lobbyists who are outside of this building every single day, who are walking the corridors; can we stand up to the insurance companies, can we stand up to the drug companies so that we finally--finally--will provide quality health care, low-cost prescription drugs to every man, woman, and child as a right of citizenship? Will we have the courage to do that? I certainly hope we will. As we speak, we are currently involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have cost us not only the lives of thousands and thousands of wonderful young men and women, but they cost us over $10 billion every single month. These wars are also stretching the Army and our National Guard to the breaking point. My hope is that in the next several months we will be developing policy to bring our troops home from Iraq as soon as we possibly can. I hope very much that we will have not only a debate right here in Congress but a national conversation about how we deal with the very difficult issues of Afghanistan. Despite the reality of global warming, our Nation still, despite decades of talk, has not yet broken our dependency on fossil fuel and foreign oil. In fact, every single year we are spending more than $500 billion bringing in oil from abroad. We have only begun--just begun--to make the advances we need to make in terms of energy efficiency and sustainable energy. As a member of both the Environmental Committee and the Energy Committee, it is my view that we have the potential to create millions of good-paying jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We can do that. We must do that. As my colleagues well know, the major issue that this Congress is going to be dealing with in the next several weeks is an economic recovery program. I strongly support the basic outlines of that program. Obviously, there is going to be a lot of debate about the details within it and the hope that we can target that money in such a way as to create good-paying jobs as quickly as possible in the most cost-effective way imaginable. What I can tell my colleagues is that in my State--and I expect in the other 49 States in this country--our infrastructure is collapsing. We have roads in the State of Vermont which have huge problems. We have all kinds of bridges that are in need of repair in our small towns. We have water systems that are simply inadequate. We have wastewater plants that need to be rebuilt. All of these are very expensive propositions. So in the stimulus package, my hope is that we are going to put substantial sums of money into rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our water systems. I hope we begin to make the investment we need in public transportation--certainly rural public transportation in the State of Vermont--as one of many needs. If you are a worker in one part of the State and you want to go 50 miles to your job, in almost every case there is no public transportation to get you there. If you are a senior citizen and wish to go to the hospital or the grocery store, it is very hard to get there if you do not have a car. I suspect that is true all over rural America. In addition, our rail system is far behind, where Europe, Japan, and even China are now advancing forward. So I hope for and will support a major increase in funding to create a substantial number of new jobs as we rebuild our infrastructure. In addition--I know President Obama has been very strong on this issue, and I agree with him--we need to invest heavily in energy efficiency. I can tell you that in the State of Vermont and, again, all over this country but especially in cold-weather States, you have older homes where energy is just going through the roof--literally going through the roof and the windows--because of poor insulation. We can create jobs making our homes, our offices, our schools more energy efficient. We need to be extremely aggressive, as I mentioned a moment ago, in terms of public transportation. Also, right now we are on the cusp of major breakthroughs in such renewable technologies as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. I suspect that in 20 years, people will see a very different energy system than we have right now. It will be a cleaner system. It will be a system not emitting greenhouse gases. There is a lot of work that stands in front of us. There was an election in November where the people said: We want change. That is what that election was all about. Unless we are bold, unless we are prepared to take on the big money interests that have dominated legislation for the last many years, there will be a great deal of disappointment all over this country. Now is the time. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the work President Obama has been doing since he has been elected. There is an enormous amount of hope and confidence in the air that we can move America in a new direction. I hope that with new national leadership, with strong grassroots participation, with a Congress prepared to stand up and take on the powerful special interests that have dominated us for so many years, we can fulfill the faith the American people have expressed in us in recent years and that, in fact, we can move America in a very different direction and become the country all of us know we can become. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I have an amendment at the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me be very frank. While the bailout package we are dealing with tonight is far better than the absurd proposal that was originally presented to us by the Bush administration--which, if you can believe it, would have given the Secretary of the Treasury a blank check to spend $700 billion in any way he wanted, without any transparency, without any oversight, and without any judicial review--this bill, far better than that, is still short of where we should be. And I want to thank Senator Dodd and others for their very hard work in improving this legislation. But in my view, this bill is still not good enough. It should be rejected by the Senate, unless an amendment I am about to offer is passed. This country faces many serious problems in the financial market, in the stock market, and in our economy. We must act, but we must act in a way that improves the situation. We can do better than the legislation we are dealing with tonight. This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets. This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight, because the oversight board members were hand picked from the Bush administration. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures, and addressing that very serious issue which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective kind of way we should be. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits. This bill does not deal at all with how we got into this crisis in the first place and the need to undo the deregulation fervor which created trillions of dollars in complicated and unregulated financial instruments, such as credit default swaps and hedge funds. This bill does not address the issue that has taken us to where we are today, the concept of ``too big to fail,'' the need for taxpayers to bail out institutions which are so large that they will cause systemic damage to our entire economy if they go bankrupt. In fact, within the last several weeks we have sat idly by and watched gigantic financial institutions such as the Bank of America swallow other gigantic financial institutions such as Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Who is going to bail out the Bank of America if it begins to totter? Not one word about the issue of too big to fail in this legislation, at a time when that problem is, in fact, becoming even more serious. This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the henhouse. Maybe I am the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, who is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, which, along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Maybe I am the only person in America who thinks that is a little bit weird, but that is what I think. This bill does not address the major economic crises we face--growing unemployment, low wages, and the need to create decent-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure, and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. On top of all that, there is one issue that is even more profound and more basic than everything else that I have mentioned, and that is, if a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, whose money should it be? In other words, who should be paying for this bailout which has been caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street operatives who have made billions in recent years? That is what my amendment is all about. It is an issue that we have to bring to the floor of the Senate because that is what the American people want to hear discussed. The American people are bitter, they are angry, and they are confused. Over the last 7 years since George W. Bush has been President, 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and are in poverty. Today, working families are lining up at emergency food shelves in order to get the food they need to feed their families. Since President Bush has been in office, median family income for working-age families has declined by over $2,000; 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance; 4 million have lost their pensions; consumer debt has more than doubled; and foreclosures are the highest on record. Meanwhile, the cost of energy, food, health care, college, and other basic necessities has soared. While the middle class has declined under President Bush's reckless economic policies, the people on top have never had it so good. For the first 7 years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth. At the end of 2007 they owned over $1.5 trillion in wealth. That is just 400 families--$670 billion increase in wealth since Bush has been in office. In our country today we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth, with the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent, and the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country; when, among others, CEO's of Wall Street firms receive unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses. We have seen the incredible greed of the financial service industry manifested in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists in order to deregulate their industry so hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could flourish. We have seen them play with trillions and trillions of dollars in esoteric financial instruments in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand. We have seen the financial services industry charge 30 percent interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unsuspecting customers. We have seen them engaged in despicable predatory lending practices, taking advantage of the vulnerable and the uneducated. We have seen them send out billions of deceptive solicitations to almost every mailbox in America. I used to think that my home was the only one that was receiving them. It turns out that billions of other solicitations went out to probably every home in America. What they hoped to do was to gain new customers for credit card companies and then, through the very small print on the back of the solicitation, have the opportunity, have the ability to monkey around with interest rates so when people thought they were getting zero interest or 2 percent, it turns out that a few months later they were paying very high interest rates. Most important, of course, we have seen the financial services industry lure people into mortgages they could not afford to pay, which is one of the basic reasons we are tonight in the midst of all of this. We have a bailout package today which says to the middle class that you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You are being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by this excessive Wall Street greed. In other words, the ``Masters of the Universe,'' those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse, and now, as the American and world financial systems teeter on the edge of a meltdown, these multimillionaires are demanding that the middle class, which has already suffered under Bush's disastrous economic policies, pick up the pieces they broke. That is wrong and that is something I will not support. The major point I want to make this evening is, if we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation-- those people are the people who should pick up the tab and not ordinary working people. I have introduced an amendment which gives the Senate a very clear choice. We can pay for this bailout of Wall Street by asking people all across this country, small businesses on Main Street, homeowners on Maple Street, elderly couples on Oak Street, college students on Campus Avenue, working families on Sunrise Lane--we can ask them to pay for this bailout. That is one way we can go or we can ask the people who have gained the most from the spasm of greed, the people whose incomes have been soaring under President Bush, to pick up the tab. They threw the party, they became drunk on greed, and now I believe they should foot the bill. What my amendment proposes is quite simple. It proposes to raise the tax rate on any individual earning $500,000 a year or more, or any family earning $1 million a year or more, by 10 percent. That 10-percent increase in the tax rate from 35 percent to 45 percent will raise over $300 billion in the next 5 years; $300 billion is almost half the cost of the bailout. If what all the supporters of this legislation are saying is correct, that the Government will get back some of its money when the market calms down and the Government sells some of the assets it has purchased, this amount of $300 billion should be sufficient to make sure 99.7 percent of taxpayers do not have to pay one nickel for this bailout. Most of my constituents did not earn a $38 million bonus in 2005 or make over $100 million in total compensation in 3 years, as did Mr. Henry Paulson, current Secretary of the Treasury and former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Most of my constituents did not make $354 million in total compensation over the past 5 years as did Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers. Most of my constituents did not cash out $650 million in stock after a $29 billion bailout for Bear Stearns, after that failing company was bought out by JPMorgan Chase. Most of my constituents did not get a $161 million severance package as E. Stanley O'Neil, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, did. Last week, I placed on my Web site, sanders.senate.gov, a letter to Secretary Paulson in support of the content of my amendment--which was pretty simple. It said that it should be those people best able to pay for this bailout, those people who have made out like bandits in recent years--they should be asked to pay for this bailout. It should not be the middle class. To my amazement, and I am a Senator from a small State--to my amazement some 48,000 people--and here they are, these are their names, and I will not read them all off, 48,000 people have already cosigned this petition, and the names keep coming in and the message is very simple: We had nothing to do with causing this bailout. We are already under economic duress. Go to those people who have made out like bandits. Go to those people who have caused this crisis and ask them to pay for the bailout. The time has come to assure our constituents in Vermont and all over this country that we are listening and understand their anger and their frustration. The time has come to say that we have the courage to stand up to all of the powerful financial institution lobbyists who are running amok, all over this building--from the Chamber of Commerce to the American Bankers Association to the Business Roundtable--all of these groups who make huge campaign contributions, spend all kinds of money on lobbyists--they are here, loudly and clearly. They don't want to pay for this bailout. They want Middle America to pay for it. So this is a moment of truth. I hope very much that this Senate will support the amendment I have offered. Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this bailout, caused by Wall Street's greed and irresponsibility, may cost as much as $700 billion. The simple question is: Who is going to be paying for it? Today, in America, the top 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Since President Bush has been in office, the middle class has seen a significant decline in their standard of living while the top 400 individuals have seen a $670 billion increase in their wealth. What this amendment does is impose a 10-percent surtax on a household that makes $1 million a year, which raises over $300 billion in 5 years. Under this amendment, the bottom 99.7 percent of Americans will not pay 1 penny for this bailout. The middle class has had nothing to do with causing this crisis. They should not have to pay for it, and I ask for a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, earlier this week I placed on my Web site-- sanders.senate.gov--a letter to Secretary Paulson, and I asked people who shared the sentiments of that letter to sign a petition. Essentially, kind of boiling it down, what the petition says is that at a time when the middle class is shrinking, and millions of working people are struggling to keep their heads above water; at a time when Bush's economic policies have done so much harm to so many people--6 million people have left the middle class and gone into poverty; over 6 million people have lost their health insurance, millions have lost their pensions--it does not make a lot of sense for the middle-class and working families, who had nothing to do with causing this financial meltdown, to be asked to go substantially more in debt--to the tune of $2,200 per person or $9,000 for a family of four. It is not fair; and that, in fact, if a bailout is necessary, it should be the people who have caused the bailout, the people who have benefitted from Bush's economic policies, who should put their money at risk and not the middle class. As you well know, since President Bush has been in office, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent. We have a situation where the top 400 individuals in America today, since Bush has been in office, have seen an increase in their wealth of $670 billion at a time when the middle class is shrinking. What the petition says in so many words is those are the people, not working families, who should pay the costs of the bailout. I was amazed at the kind of response we received. As of now, we have over 37,000 signatures on a petition to Secretary Paulson and President Bush which says: Your friends, the people who have made out like bandits under your reckless economic policies, should pay for this bailout, not working families. What I would like to do now is--in addition to these 37,000 signatures on the petition, my office has received thousands of e-mails and phone calls, mostly from Vermont but sometimes from other States as well. What I think would be appropriate and refreshing here in the Senate is, rather than people hearing my point of view, I think it would be a good idea just to read a few of the e-mails I have been receiving from the State of Vermont as to how ordinary people are responding to President Bush's bailout proposal. Let me start with an e-mail I received from a small town in northern Vermont, Fairfield, VT: Dear Senator Sanders, this e-mail and words themselves cannot express the dismay and disbelief I feel about the current Wall Street crisis and proposed bailout. After pulling down 6, 7, and 8-figure bonuses for flying their respective companies into the ground, these Wall Street geniuses then pulled their golden parachutes and leave it up to the taxpayers to clean up the mess and pay their bills. Unbelievable, just unbelievable. And to make a bad situation tragic, due to the ever- escalating Federal deficit, the bill will be paid by my children and grandchildren. I wish I had a solution to offer you but I don't. All my life I have strived to live within my means and pay my debts. I guess the joke is on me--except I feel more like crying, than laughing. Unbelievable. This is from Springfield, VT, a town in southern Vermont: Hold fast, Bernie. It took a long time for the banking crisis to develop; don't be pressured into capitulating to a half-baked solution. I'm among the Americans outraged at the undisciplined, arrogant, reckless nature of the markets. Many of us have been quietly toiling away on our workaday jobs and now our wages--our fiscal support of the Federal Government-- are all that's between Wall Street and economic free fall. Keep reminding them of who is finally paying the price for that avarice. This is from Chester, VT: I may not always agree with you on every topic, but I most certainly agree with you on opposing the current (or any future) bailout for private corporations. If I could ask you to share a message with your peers, it would be this: You do not have my permission to take any-- any--not so much as a single near worthless penny--of my hard-earned money to reward the people who have mismanaged their businesses. Senator Sanders, thank you for opposing this bailout package. From Rupert, VT: We are absolutely sickened by the prospect that honest, hard-working, fiscally responsible middle class Americans will have to foot the bill for the Wall Street bailout. While we realize that something must be done to prevent further damage, we have a problem knowing that the very people who caused the problem will literally sail off into the sunset on their yachts. Some type of strictly defined framework must be established to protect our tax dollars from being further pilfered by the greedy denizens that are at the center of this crisis. Also, what about some accountability for what has already been done? What about being forced to pay back the obscene bonuses and salaries earned in the course of this unprecedented example of unscrupulous pillaging. So many Vermonters are struggling to provide their families with the basics right now. It's hard to imagine how something as far-reaching as this crisis could have happened. Yeah, let's hand over the Social Security next. Please do what you can to insist that the bailout be done with strict oversight. Waterbury, VT: Senator Sanders, you and I may seem to be very different. You are the only one who calls himself a socialist in the Senate. I am in favor of free markets and capitalism. However, we can agree on one thing. The privatization of profits and the socialization of losses is immoral and wrong. To bail out the well-connected on Wall Street, those who thrive on government regulations and monetary policy, is unconscionable. I urge you to reject the bailout of Wall Street that Bush, Paulson and Bernanke propose. From Richmond, VT: Dear Bernie, my wife and I are both 65 years of age. We both retired this past January. For the past 8 years we have lived under one of the worst administrations in U.S. history. This administration is now asking Congress, just a few weeks shy of one of our most important national elections, to approve a massive financial bailout without strong protections for the American people. As two people who have worked hard all of our lives and who have saved for our retirement, we strongly urge you not to get caught up in this panic attack and to ensure that you give taxpayers strong protections before approving Henry Paulson's bailout. As always, we appreciate your support. Newport, VT, right near, on the Canadian border: Dear Bernie, thanks for all you do for Vermonters and the Nation. I am sure that you know that if this bailout plan is rushed through, it will make it that much more difficult for the next administration to address our already dire problems, such as education and health care. Brattleboro, VT, which is the other end of the State, down in the south: Please vote against any bailout of these investment concerns that have made risky, unwise actions and now expect us to cover their mistakes. The Bush administration began with the Enron debacle and it now seems that scheme to deprive hard-working Americans of their money is being applied to the country as a whole. Congress has already given away sizable authority to the executive branch via the PATRIOT Act in the wake of 9/11. It has no right to give the White House and its Secretary of the Treasury the power to transfer the people's money to the richest bankers in the country. Vote no on the bailout legislation. Burlington, VT, the largest city in the State, where I live: We know that you are a leader in this and are very appreciative. We are very concerned about the Bush administration's proposed bailout legislation. We don't believe that extremely wealthy investment bankers who engaged in irresponsible, risky behavior deserve to be bailed out. We would like to see you craft the support legislation that provides relief to homeowners facing foreclosure and middle class people about to retire, for example. Please do not force middle class folks in general to pay for the efforts of the wealthiest people among us to further enrich themselves. We hope Congress will not rush to pass legislation that it and the American people will regret for a generation. St. Albans, VT, in the northern part of the State: Senator Sanders, I know you are busy, but I just wanted to express my opposition to the latest bailout of the mortgage industry. While I don't want to see the economy crash and burn, I also don't want to see the banks and bankers responsible just be able to wash their hands and walk away while leaving generations of Americans paying for their mess. I feel if we need to purchase these bad debts, we should do so in true venture capitalist fashion and offer pennies on the dollar, just enough so that the banks don't fail but not enough for them to show any type of profit. In addition, there should be a proviso denying any officer of any of the banks that accept this bailout any sort of bonus. Mr. President, these are just a handful of the e-mails my office has received. I know my office is not alone. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of these e-mails have come to Capitol Hill, but the number is enormous. I think what most of them are saying--what the vast majority of them are saying--is that after 8 years of Bush's economic policies which have benefited the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of the middle class, it would be immoral, it would be absurd to ask the middle class to have to pay for this bailout. I hope Members of the Congress will be listening to their constituents, will show the courage to stand up to the wealthy financial campaign contributors who have so much influence over what we do here and to say to the upper 1 percent: You are the people who have benefited from Bush's policies. You are the people who are going to have to pay for this bailout, not the middle class. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words on the crisis about which everyone in America is talking. My phones, both in Vermont and here in Washington, have been bouncing off the hook with people who are outraged about the prospect of the middle class bailing out Wall Street. They are telling me: No way; we should not be doing that. The current financial crisis facing our country should, in fact, put an end to almost any support for the extreme rightwing economic policies President Bush has been pursuing for the last 8 years and that, in fact, were pursued even before that. These policies include, of course, huge tax breaks for the very rich under the guise that that money will trickle on down to ordinary people and create a prosperous nation. That certainly has not been the case. Those policies include unfettered free trade, which says it is a good thing for corporate America to be able to throw American workers out on the street, move to China, and bring those products back into this country and run up what is now over a $600 billion-a-year trade deficit. Last but not least, and pertinent to the great financial crisis we are facing right now--a crisis which many people believe is the most serious financial problem this country has had since the Great Depression of 1929--is the whole of deregulation, not only of financial services but of energy and many other sectors in our economy, under the guise that we should have great faith in large financial institutions, that they will do the right thing and that they will benefit the people of our country and, in fact, the world. We have learned tax breaks for the rich do not filter down but make the rich richer. We have learned unfettered free trade costs us millions of good-paying jobs. We have learned that massive deregulation, allowing large financial institutions to do whatever they want to do under the radar screen, will only hurt our economy and maybe drive it to ruin. In the midst of all this, it is important to understand what has been going on for ordinary people in this country. Since President Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty all over this country. In Vermont, as I suspect in Rhode Island, working people are working two jobs; husbands and wives who were working are now reduced to going to emergency food shelves in order to buy groceries they need to take care of their families. Since George Bush has been President, the median family income for working Americans has declined by more than $2,000, a huge decrease in the income for the middle class. Since President Bush has been in office, more than 6 million Americans have lost their health insurance, over 4 million have lost their pensions, foreclosures are at an alltime high, consumer debt has more than doubled, and today we have a national debt which is almost $10 trillion, a debt we are going to be leaving to our kids and our grandchildren. That is what is happening to the middle class under these extreme rightwing economic policies. But in terms of this debate about what we do with regard to the current financial crisis we are facing, it is also important to understand not only what is happening to the middle class and the decline of the middle class, it is also important to understand what is happening to the people on top, the wealthiest people in this country. The top one-tenth of 1 percent now earns more income than the bottom 50 percent of the American people: One-tenth of 1 percent, bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. This country has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income than since just before the Great Depression in the 1920s. Mr. President, the wealthiest 400 people in our country, since President Bush has been in office, have seen their wealth increase by $670 billion. Let me repeat that in case people are kind of scratching their heads because this is such an extraordinary number. The wealthiest 400 people--that is not a whole lot of people--in our country have seen their wealth increase by $670 billion since President Bush has been in office. In the midst of all of that, while the rich become phenomenally richer, President Bush lowered taxes on the very wealthy so they are now paying lower income tax rates than teachers, nurses, policemen, firemen, than people in the middle class. I raise that issue for a very simple reason. Secretary Paulson, representing the Bush administration, which year after year until a few months ago was telling us how robust and strong the economy was--I remember, as a member of the Budget Committee, having Secretary Paulson in front of us not very long ago telling us the economy was marvelous. Marvelous. In late July of this year, President Bush himself said the foundations of the economy were strong. That was on July 31. So after having told us what most middle-class Americans knew instinctively to be wrong, having told us over and over again how strong the economy was, how robust the economy was, last week the Secretary of the Treasury basically said in so many words: I guess we made a slight mistake. The fundamentals are really not very strong. In fact, if we do not act on the largest bailout in the history of our country, and you in Congress can take a few days to respond, but if you do not act, there will be a financial meltdown not only in America but all over the world. So year after year, until very recently, either because of incompetence and not understanding what was going on in the economy or perhaps dishonesty and not wanting to let the American people know what was going on in the economy, we were told everything was going well. Then they say: Oops, we made a slight mistake. Actually, we are on the verge of a major financial meltdown and we want Congress to accept a $700 billion bailout, and we do not want the Congress to discuss it very much. We do not want the Congress to change it very much. It has to act immediately because if it doesn't, terrible things will happen. Well, when we talk about the reasons for the possible need of a bailout, we cannot minimize the incredible greed, the ugly greed we have seen among many of the wealthiest people in this country in the last few years, not least of all the people on Wall Street. Let me give you some examples. In 2005, Henry Paulson, our now Secretary of the Treasury, was then the CEO of Goldman Sachs. He received, in 2005, a $38 million bonus. At that time, that was the largest bonus ever given to a Wall Street CEO. In December of 2006, John Mack, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, broke Mr. Paulson's record by receiving a $40 million bonus--a bonus. This is on top of other forms of compensation. Not to be outdone, Lloyd Blankfein, the new CEO of Goldman Sachs, received a $53 million bonus later that month. In 2007, 1 year ago, Mr. Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs shattered his own record by receiving a $68 million bonus. In October of 2007, E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch--I think we all know what has happened to Merrill Lynch very recently--collected a severance package worth an estimated $161 million. Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide--we know what happened to Countrywide--received a severance package of about $110 million. That was on top of $140 million in Countrywide stock that he sold off during 2006 and 2007. Mozilo was also paid $48 million in 2006. In 2007, here is perhaps--when we talk about Wall Street greed and when we talk about Wall Street bonuses--the most outrageous fact out there, which is that in 2007 Wall Street's five biggest firms--Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley--paid out $39 billion in bonuses to themselves. Wall Street investment bank bonuses are larger, just their bonuses, than the gross domestic products of Sri Lanka, Lebanon, or Bulgaria, and the average bonus--average--of $219,000 is more than four times higher than the median U.S. household income. Why do I raise those issues and give those facts? I do that for a very simple reason; that is, I regard it as an outrage for anyone to suggest the middle class of this country, whose standard of living is going down, should be forced to bail out Wall Street when people on Wall Street have made huge amounts of money in recent years and, in general, as a result of Bush's reckless and irresponsible economic policies. The wealthiest people have also done extraordinarily well. What President Bush would have us do is to say to the middle class that is sinking, you pay for the bailout caused by Wall Street's irresponsibility, and we do not have to ask them to do anything. They pay no price at all. I regard that as an absolutely unacceptable outrage, something we must not allow to happen. I am open to other ideas on this issue, but for me, the bottom line on this bailout is that the middle class should not be paying. There are a number of ways we can go forward to protect the middle class. I have suggested a 5-year, 10-percent tax on incomes over $1 million a year for couples, and $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue. That begins the process of saying to the wealthiest people who have benefitted from Bush's reckless policies: You have to step to the plate, and this is not going to be on the middle class to provide the money for the bailout--this money, by the way, which is $2,200 for every woman, man, and child in this country and, a family of four, close to $9,000. In addition, we have to ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they pay for them. Thirdly, we must require that the taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so the assumption of risk is rewarded when a company's stock goes up. We are going to buy this stuff, and as stocks go up we should benefit from that. In addition, at a time when the middle class has so many serious problems; when people in my State and in the State of the Senator from Rhode Island are worried about how they are going to be able to heat their homes this winter; when millions of middle-class families are worried about how they are going to be able to send their kids to college; at a time when our infrastructure is collapsing, and we have the potential to create millions of jobs rebuilding our bridges, our roads, our rail systems; at a time when we must move from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and create large numbers of jobs in that area as well; we need a major economic recovery program which puts millions of Americans to work dealing with the many unmet needs facing our country. In addition, to my mind, any serious piece of legislation dealing with this bailout must include language which undoes the damage caused by excessive deregulation. That means reinstalling regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999. And, lastly--not lastly because I think many other people have other good ideas as well, but the last point that I want to make tonight is a very important point. We are where we are today because of the doctrine of ``too big to fail.'' The assumption is that if we allow these huge institutions to fail, they take down the entire economy and virtually all of our people suffer. I would respond to that in the future by saying that if an institution is too big to fail, that institution is too big to exist. I should tell you that I have serious concerns right now about the Bank of America swallowing up Countrywide, swallowing up Merrill Lynch. If they were to be teetering, does anyone have any doubt that there would have to be a massive bailout for that bank? But it is not only the Bank of America. I think we have to take a very hard look at these huge institutions, which, if they fail, could impact the entire economy. I think we need to start doing something that was talked about in the early part of the 20th century about breaking up these huge institutions. There is a lot of work that has to be done in the near future. But for me, the bottom line is that at a time when the wealthiest people made out like bandits under Bush's reckless economic policies, while at the same time the middle class declined, it would be absolutely grotesque to ask the middle class of this country to pay for this bailout. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I would like to focus on three aspects of the current economic and financial crisis that is wreaking havoc on tens of millions of working families throughout our country and, in fact, people throughout the world. I think the questions we have to deal with are, No. 1, how did this crisis develop; No. 2, what can we do in the short term to address it and to protect middle-class families--people who are scared to death all over our country about losing their 401(k)s, people who are worried about losing their jobs, people who can't afford health insurance today--and, No. 3, what can we do long term to learn from the mistakes of today so that we create an economy where this crisis never erupts again. I think those are the areas we might want to be focusing on right now. Madam President, we are here today in the midst of the most serious financial and economic crisis that our country has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s primarily--primarily--because of one reason; and that is, over the last many years, especially in the last 8 years of President George W. Bush, government policy, government ideology has been dominated by an extreme rightwing position that tells us--and we have heard it over and over and over again on the floor of the Senate--that government is bad, government is evil, government has to get out of the way so we can allow large multinational corporations and the wealthiest people in this country to do all of the wonderful things they will do to create prosperity for all Americans. Now, among specific policies, what President Bush and others of that view have said is it is important for us to give huge tax breaks-- trillions of dollars in tax breaks--to the wealthiest people and largest corporations in our country so they will then invest in America, create good-paying jobs, and their wealth will trickle on down. That is the trickle-on-down theory of economics. In fact, my friend, Senator Kyl, who just spoke a moment ago, is the lead advocate, along with Senator McCain and many other Republicans, of the repeal of the estate tax that would provides $1 trillion in tax breaks over a 20-year period to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent. Three-tenths of 1 percent receive $1 trillion in tax breaks. That is part of that ideology. Further, what they have said is, we need to not worry about manufacturing in America because what we should establish is a policy of unfettered free trade. We don't need tariffs. What we need is to allow corporate America the freedom to throw American workers out on the street--people who are making 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour, health care, pensions--because somehow we are going to create wealth in America and good-paying jobs in America as we shut down plants, we move to China, and corporations there pay workers 20, 30 cents an hour, and we bring the products back into this country. Anyone who goes shopping in a mall knows how difficult it is today to find a product made in America, but that is a plus. I have to say, in that regard, the champion--and he is honest on this one. Senator McCain has been criticized recently for not being the most honest candidate we have seen in terms of his answers and so forth, but he has been honest on this one. He has been the lead advocate of unfettered free trade. This is an important part of this rightwing ideology: that it is good for America that corporations can go to China and bring products back into this country. But the third pillar of this rightwing ideology that I want to discuss this afternoon, and perhaps the most pertinent to the crisis we are now facing, is over and over again what we have heard from President Bush, what we have heard from Senator McCain, what we have heard from many of our Republican friends is, deregulate, deregulate, deregulate; that the government has to get out of the way so that ExxonMobil and the other large multinational corporations can do all of the wonderful things they will do to create wealth in America. I will just give one example. It is not a major example but a humorous example. All over this country, Madam President, parents who have little kids who play with toys have been worrying about the toys and the quality of the toys coming into this country. It was recently learned that at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, because of that ideology of deregulation, there was one guy, one person whose job it was to test all of the toys, thousands of different types of toys coming in from China and every other country in the world--many of them unhealthy, many of them having toxic ingredients in them. Because of deregulation, because we have great faith in these companies bringing toys in from China, we didn't even have to have a strong regulatory system. I am happy we have moved in that direction in the last few months, but that was the case. The deregulation mantra goes obviously a lot deeper than toys. Let me focus for a moment on this issue of deregulation because it is at the heart of the current financial crisis we are facing. I want to say a word about the former Senator who, it turned out, was the chief economic adviser to Senator McCain and who actually was the leader on deregulation. I know in politics things change from yesterday to today. I have not heard Senator McCain's last pronouncement. I guess he wants to regulate everything today. But yesterday and in the rest of his career he was a champion of deregulation and his major economic adviser was a gentleman named Senator Phil Gramm, formally the Senator from Texas. To review a little bit of what Senator Gramm's role was in pushing us toward this deregulatory society, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee in 1999, Senator Gramm spearheaded legislation that bears his name. It is not a great secret, it is his legislation, the so-called *Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill, and that broke down critical regulatory safeguards the Government had put in place after the Great Depression to prevent--what? To prevent exactly what we are seeing today. Senator Gramm spearheaded that effort and broke down those firewalls. Having laid the groundwork for our crisis in the financial sector, the very next year Senator Phil Gramm is credited--and I do not think there is a lot of debate about this--with slipping into a large unrelated bill legislation that deregulated the electronic energy markets, including, of course, oil. There are leading energy economists--who have testified over and over again just this week, among other committee hearings before Congress--who are telling us that as a result of the deregulation of the energy futures market, 50 percent of the cost of oil, when it was at its peak of $147 a barrel-- 50 percent of that was due to speculation and that speculation was allowed to take place because of the deregulation of the energy futures market spearheaded by Senator Gramm. We are seeing what deregulation did to the financial institutions, what it has done to energy prices, but that is not enough. Senator Gramm was a very aggressive and a very effective, if I might say so, Senator. As we all know, the Federal Government is in the process of nationalizing AIG and bailing them out to the tune of $85 billion. AIG, as we all know, is the world's largest insurance company. It also turns out that the AIG situation is closely tied to the same extremist ideology that has been pushing us toward economic disaster. A key part of the responsibility for AIG's collapse lies once again with this same key Member of the Senate, Senator Phil Gramm, and his rightwing ideology. It turns out that Senator Gramm slipped a 262-page amendment--I always find it amusing how you can ``slip'' a 262-page amendment--into a larger bill that was instrumental in creating, and I know this number is a little bit difficult for anybody in the world to digest, a $62 trillion market for very risky, unregulated financial investments called credit default swaps, that are central to AIG's meltdown. This is extremely complicated. Very few people understand anything about it. But we are talking about an unregulated $62 trillion market for credit default swaps, which played a major role in the collapse of AIG and the fact that the Federal Government is now in the process of bailing that company out. As an online article from Time Magazine explains, AIG's traditional insurance business was doing well. In other words, when they were in the business that they had historically been in, actually they did quite well. But what AIG got involved in was more than traditional insurance. They got involved in risky derivative schemes called credit default swaps, or CDSs, that allowed big companies to guarantee each other's risky lending practices. The point here in this whole complicated scheme of things is that all of this is deregulated primarily because of the efforts of Senator Gramm. The big, bad Federal Government no longer can protect consumers, can protect our economy because we are going to trust all of these guys who are playing in a $60-plus trillion business. In order to give the American people a full understanding of the risks posed by these unregulated credit default swaps, I wish to quote briefly from a September 15 article by Professor Peter Cohen, a graduate of the Wharton School, that details the full scope of the problem we face and the role Senator Gramm had in its creation. Let me quote from Professor Cohen. Lurking in the background of this collapse of two of Wall Street's biggest names, is a $62 billion segment of the $450 trillion market for derivatives that grew huge thanks to John McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil . . . Gramm. That's because in December 2000, Gramm, while a U.S. Senator, snuck in a 262-page amendment to a government reauthorization bill that created what is now the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps. I realize it is painful to read about yet another Wall Street acronym, but this is important because it will help us understand why the global financial markets are collapsing. . . . CDSs are like insurance policies for bondholders. In exchange for a premium, the bondholders get insurance in case the bondholder can't pay. . . . In the case of the $1.4 trillion worth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, the Government's nationalization last Sunday triggered the CDSs on those bonds. The people who received the CDS premiums are now obligated to deliver those bonds to the ones who paid the premiums. Professor Cohen continues: Gramm's 262-page amendment, dubbed the ``Commodity Futures Modernization Act,'' according to the Texas Observer, freed financial institutions from oversight of their CDS transactions. Prior to its passage, they say, banks underwrote mortgages and were responsible for the risks involved. Now through the use of CDSs--which in theory insure the banks against bad debts--those risks are passed along to insurance companies and others . . . wrote the Texas Observer. I will not go on. The bottom line is Gramm, who is McCain's leading financial adviser, spearheaded the effort to deregulate financial services that opened up this huge unregulated market. The result of that has played a significant role in placing us where we are right now. We can go on and on. This is complicated stuff and I am sure there are people who can talk about this for many hours. In my view, the time for hand wringing is over. What we have to understand is the efforts of President Bush to ``deregulate, deregulate,'' and those of Senator Gramm, Senator McCain and many others, was wrong. It largely contributed to where we are today. It seems to me that Congress right now needs to put an end to this radical deregulation. We need to put the safety walls back up in the financial services market. I was a member of the Banking Committee in the House in 1999 when this whole issue was discussed. Many of us then--a minority, but some of us then--saw exactly what was in line to occur. Some of us at least voted against it. What we have to do now is understand that we need to reregulate the electronics energy markets, we need to end the unregulated credit default swaps. Unfortunately, the response we have been hearing from the administration and from Wall Street is not to do that but in fact to move us in another direction, which is to push for further consolidation in the financial services sector. I have a very simple question. Do I hope I am wrong on this one, but I fear I may not be. That question is: What happens when these now even bigger entities, these multi-multi-multibillion dollar corporations-- what happens when they run into trouble in the future? None of us hope that happens, but what happens if that does occur? Once again, clearly, it will be the American people who will be on the hook. This country can no longer afford companies that are too big to fail. If a company is so large that its failure would cause systemic harm to our economy, if it is too big to fail, then it is too big to exist. What we need to do right now is to assess which companies fall into this category. For a start, I don't think you need to be a Ph.D. in economics to understand this. I think Bank of America, if I may be allowed to say so, is certainly one of those companies. Let's take a look at Bank of America. It is the largest depository institution in our country. It has assets of $1.7 trillion; $711 billion of that money comes from bank deposits representing over 10 percent of all bank deposits in the entire country--one bank, 10 percent of all bank deposits. In August, the Bank of America bought Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender in the country. And then last week it bought Merrill Lynch, the largest brokerage firm in America. There is so much concentration of wealth in the Bank of America that clearly, if it were to fall in the future, what do you think the U.S. Government is going to say? You can absolutely expect that the President or the Congress will say: My God, we can't allow Bank of America to fall. Because if they fall, it will impact the entire national economy, the entire world economy. The taxpayers of this country are going to have to bail out Bank of America. My suggestion is before we allow ourselves to be in that position, maybe we make certain the Bank of America never is allowed to have that kind of power. In my view, we should not be making Bank of America bigger; we should be breaking it up. We should start that process today and we should be breaking up other large financial institutions that are ``too big to fail.'' Finally, in terms of dealing with this unfolding disaster, we need to make certain that working Americans, the middle class of this country, are not asked to foot the bill for the current economic crisis that was brought to us by these large multinationals. If the economic calamity requires a Federal bailout, it should be paid for by those people who actually benefited from the reckless behavior of people empowered by the extreme economic views of Senator Gramm, President Bush, and Senator McCain. Right now, today, the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. We have the dubious distinction of having by far the most unequal distribution of income in the world, and on top of that the richest 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The wealthiest 400 Americans--this is a startling figure that for obvious reasons people don't talk about too much, but this is amazing. The wealthiest 400 Americans in this country have not only seen their incomes double, but their net worth has increased by $670 billion since President Bush has been in office. Four hundred families have seen their net worth double and increase by $670 billion since President Bush has been in office. Amazingly, the wealthiest 400 families in our country are now worth over $1.5 trillion--400 families. On average they earn over $214 million a year. As a result of President Bush's policies and the policies of our Republican colleague, the tax rate for these families has been cut almost in half, to 18 percent. Amazingly--and this is a clearly a national disgrace--the wealthiest 400 families pay a much lower tax rate than most police officers do, than nurses do, than teachers do, than firefighters do. Now, what does this say about us as a nation or about our politics, or the power of the wealthy over Government, when the middle class is paying a greater percentage of their income, a middle class which is in decline, a middle class where millions of workers have seen a reduction in their wages, and yet they are paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the very richest people in America? It is this very small segment of our population which has made out like bandits, frankly, during the Bush administration. In my view, we need an emergency tax on those at the very top to pay for any losses the Federal Government suffers as a result of efforts to shore up the economy. In other words, before we ask the middle class to pay more in taxes, before we ask working families to pay more in taxes, it is obvious to me that it is simply fair and right to go to those groups, that group of people who have benefited most out of Bush's policies, who have seen their incomes and their wealth soar. Let's ask them to help us bail out the economy rather than the working families who had nothing, nothing to do with this crisis, and, in fact, who have suffered under the 8 years of President Bush. Before I finish, I wish to step back for a moment and examine this current crisis in the context of who our Government represents. What does it say about an administration that is prepared to put $85 billion at risk to bail out AIG but which has fought tooth and nail against programs that benefit working families all over this country? In my State of Vermont, people are worried about going cold this winter. And yet President Bush wanted to make hundreds of millions of dollars in cutbacks for the LIHEAP program that keeps people warm because we did not have enough money to do it. We have enough money to provide hundreds of billions of tax breaks for the top 1 percent, we have enough money to spend $10 billion every month in Iraq, we have enough money to bail out AIG and Bear Stearns, but somehow we do not have enough money to keep people warm, to make sure that young people can go to college, to make sure that working people have affordable housing? Since George W. Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty; over 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance; more than 4 million Americans have lost their pensions; over 3 million good-paying manufacturing jobs have been lost; total consumer debt has more than doubled; the median income for working-age Americans has gone down by over $2,000, after adjusting for inflation. The interesting question to ask is, in the midst of that crisis facing tens of millions of working families, where has President Bush been? Where has his voice been in saying we have got to bail out working families who are seeing the decline in their standard of living and are falling into poverty? We have got to protect old people who are going to go cold this winter. We have to make sure that everyone in our country is able to get a decent education and can afford college. We have got to make sure that all Americans have health insurance. I have not heard the President say we need to bail out the middle class or working families, but he surely has been there to bail out large multinational corporations. The American people deserve better. We need to reject the failed economic policies and priorities of President Bush and John McCain. We need a government that is not going to allow the wealthiest people and the largest corporations to loot our economy. We need a government that will put regulatory firewalls back in the financial sector and end the use of unregulated credit swaps. We need a government that is going to prevent speculators from stealing from them at the gas pump. We need a government that breaks up corporations that are too big to fail. We need a government that is going to view the problems of ordinary Americans as almost as important as they view the needs of large multinational corporations. In other words, we need a government that represents the people of this country rather than just the wealthy and large multinationals. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. On behalf of the leadership, I object. This bill, as I understand it, is part of a number of bills that are noncontroversial and are going to be included together. Unanimous-Consent Request--S. 3297 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 784, S. 3297; the bill be read a third time and passed; and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. SANDERS. On behalf of the leadership, I object. I understand that is contained within a group of other noncontroversial bills.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. We have a President who says: Well, it is an interesting law. I will pick and choose which of the provisions I want to implement. That is not what the Constitution says. If you don't like the law, veto it.

Mr. SANDERS. We have seen extraordinary renditions of detainees to countries that allow torture. We have seen getting rid of the right of detainees to file habeas corpus petitions. We have seen the condoning of the use of torture. We have seen political firings of U.S. Attorneys. We have seen destruction of CIA tapes. The list goes on and on and on. Those are just some of the insults to the Constitution that we have seen over the last 8 years.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until 10 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, September 18; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each; further, that the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived with respect to the motions to proceed to S. 3297 and H.R. 6049.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the preamble, as amended, be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 643 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.