Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, today we are discussing two issues which, in fact, are related to each other. No. 1 is the outrageously high cost of oil and gas. The second is the planetary crisis we face as a result of global warming. There are some people who think we have to address the price of high oil prices today and not worry about global warming. Some people think we have to worry about global warming and ignore the reality facing millions of people who cannot afford oil and gas. I think we are actually smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time. We can and must address both these important issues. My office has recently published a small book. It is called ``The Collapse of the Middle Class, Letters from Vermont and America.'' It talks about what is going on not only in my State but all over this country, where the middle class is declining, people are working longer hours for lower wages, losing health care, pensions, their good-paying jobs. After all that, when you have gas at $4 a gallon at the pump, home heating oil outrageously high, many people throughout the country have now fallen over the economic cliff. In terms of oil and gas prices, the time is now for the Congress to tell our friends at ExxonMobil and other oil companies enjoying recordbreaking profits--last year ExxonMobil earned more profits than any corporation in the history of the world; last year the head of Occidental Oil, a major oil company, had enough money to provide $400 million in compensation for their CEO--to stop ripping off the American people. It is time for us to pass a windfall profits tax which says: Enough is enough. But it is not only the oil companies that are ripping off the American people. The other day at the Commerce Committee, there was an important hearing in which George Soros and major economists testified it is not only oil company greed but speculators on Wall Street who are driving prices up, which results, perhaps, in a 35-percent increase in what the price of a barrel of oil should be. We have to deal with that issue as well. This is the so-called Enron loophole. Right now, through hedge funds, through unregulated markets, there is a massive amount of trading on oil futures which is driving up oil prices. We should be regulating that speculation. It should be transparent. In the process, when we do that, as was the case with Enron and electricity, as was the case with propane gas, as was the case with natural gas, if we begin to address speculation in terms of oil futures, we can drive down oil prices. Bottom line: We have to do that. In my State, as in rural States all over this country, where people are traveling long distances to work, they cannot afford, on limited incomes, to pay $4 for a gallon of gas. When the weather gets 20 below zero in Vermont, people cannot afford to pay twice as much this year as they did a couple years ago for home heating oil. So let us have the courage to take on the speculators. Let us have the courage to take on the oil companies and fight to lower oil and gas prices. In addition, we can't ignore the crisis in global warming. My friends come to the floor and say: Well, the scientific evidence is not clear. That is not true. Virtually every leading scientist who knows something about the issue, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said, with 100 percent certainty, global warming is a reality. In fact, what they have told us is the situation is more dire than they had previously predicted. If we are concerned about the drought we are seeing today which will only get worse, if we are concerned about the hunger we are seeing as a result of that drought which will only get worse, if we are worried about the severe weather disturbances we are seeing right now, if we are worried about flooding, about disease, it is absolutely imperative we address the crisis of global warming and address it now. Some people say: There may be economic dislocation if we do it. There may be, and we have to address that. But I believe there are enormous economic opportunities. I believe the evidence is clear we can create millions of good-paying jobs as we move toward energy efficiency, as we produce automobiles, not that get 15 miles per gallon but hybrid plug- ins which get 150 miles per gallon, as we rebuild our deteriorating rail system so people do not have to get into a car to go where they want to go but can get on good rail, that we deliver cargo via rail. There is enormous opportunity not only in terms of energy efficiency, in saving huge amounts of fossil fuel, but also in sustainable energy. I have tremendous optimism in what we can do with the technology that is already on the shelf, not to mention the technology that will be coming in the near future. In terms of solar thermal plants which are now being built in the southwestern part of this country, as well as all over the world, you have plants, solar thermal plants, that are being built which can provide as much electricity as small nuclear powerplants, with no, or virtually no, greenhouse gas emissions. We are talking about producing 15, 20 or more percent of the electricity the United States needs right from solar thermal plants. In addition to that, as Germany is doing, as California is now doing, there is tremendous opportunity with photovoltaics. We can put photovoltaics on 10 million roofs in this country. The more we produce, the more the price goes down, and we create jobs in the process. Wind is the fastest growing source of new energy in the world and in the United States. It is also becoming less and less expensive. I am not just talking about large wind farms in Texas, in the Midwest. We are talking about small wind turbines that can be placed in people's backyards all over rural America. Geothermal, biomass--there is huge potential. We must go forward for the sake of our kids and our grandchildren. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to bring to the attention of the Nation, and my colleagues in this body, the remarkable career of Ralph Jackman of Vergennes, VT, who has served that small city as its volunteer fire chief for the past 54 years. While it is difficult to confirm this fact definitively, it is my understanding that Ralph Jackman is the longest serving fire chief in the history of this country. This historic longevity of service is deserving of celebration, as is the quality of leadership he has brought to his community, his State and this Nation. In much of rural America, volunteer firefighters are not just first responders, but the heart of their communities, an essential part of the glue that holds those communities together. Everywhere across America, young people hear, and for decades have heard, the call to serve their communities; everywhere across America, and most certainly in Vermont, they answer that call at an early age. Like so many volunteer firefighters, Ralph joined his department when he was in his early twenties. In 1953, at the age of 30, Ralph Jackman was named chief of the Vergennes Fire Department. He has served in that capacity for over half a century, protecting the citizenry and their property in this city near Lake Champlain. In large part owing to Mr. Jackman's leadership, the department was able to successfully upgrade its fire station, recruit many new members and acquire the large array of vehicles, equipment, and apparatus that his fire department needed. Testimony to his leadership are the positions he has held and the honors he has received: two-time past president of the Vermont State Firefighters Association, past president of the Addison County Firefighters Association, ACFA, the Robert B. King Fire Chief of the Year and as the Frances J. Shorkey Fire Chief of the Year. Today, even though he is in his eighties, Ralph Jackman continues to serve as the active fire chief in Vergennes and manages all the day-to- day operations of the department. Not content with his service as a firefighter, and desiring to serve further, in addition to his role as fire chief, Ralph Jackman answered his Nation's call: he is a World War II veteran, and served in the Army Reserves from 1946 to 1972. He is also a member of the American Legion Post 14, continues to serve as Vergennes fire warden, and has been a member of the Rotary Club for 55 years. He has also been an organizer for Meals-On-Wheels. I am proud of the work that Chief Jackman has done for the city of Vergennes, the State of Vermont and for the spirit of public service and volunteerism in this country. Mr. Jackman's dedication to his family, to his fellow volunteer firefighters, the fire service, and to the people of his community is worthy of commendation, and today I commend him in the highest terms.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, before I begin my remarks on this global warming legislation, I did want to say one word about gas prices, which are impacting my State of Vermont very heavily because workers in Vermont have to travel long distances to work, and the weather gets very cold and we spend a lot of money on home heating oil. What I say to my Republican friends is I am glad to hear they are concerned about these soaring oil and gas prices. In the coming days we are going to give them an opportunity to stand up to the big oil companies who are enjoying record-breaking profits as they rip off the American people. We are going to give our Republican colleagues the opportunity to stand up to the speculators who many experts believe are driving up the price of oil by 25 to 50 percent. And we are going to give them the opportunity to join with us to stand up to those people who are causing oil prices to be so high and are causing so many problems all over this country as a result. We look forward to working with them on that issue. As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I want to say a few words in congratulating Senator Boxer, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Warner, and all of those who worked so hard to bring this historic legislation to the floor. This is a very important start in addressing one of the great crises facing our planet. But in my view, and I think in the view of many people in the scientific community, if we are going to respond in a serious way to what the best evidence out there is telling us, this bill must be strengthened in a number of ways. In the short time I have now, I wish to focus on four simple points. No. 1, what are the most knowledgable scientists in the world telling us about global warming and what will happen if we do not act boldly? No. 2, how can we reverse global warming through an aggressive path of energy efficiency and renewable energy? No. 3, how can transforming our energy system create millions of good-paying jobs here in the United States? And, No. 4, I want to mention some of the amendments I will be offering to strengthen the bill. Let me begin by mentioning that the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, is made up of more than 2,500 scientific expert reviewers, some 800 contributing authors, and in excess of 450 lead authors representing 130 countries. Collectively, this group, the entire team, was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last December. Let me very briefly summarize the findings of the IPCC, and let me state very clearly that this, their work, constitutes the overwhelming position of the scientific community. That is why they received the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what they said. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. With 90 percent certainty, most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to human activity. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have been in over the last 650,000 years. Eleven of the twelve years between 1995 and 2006 rank among the 12 warmest years since we have been keeping records--meaning since 1850. Without a major change, by 2100, temperatures will likely increase between 3 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit. Further, with 90 percent certainty scientists expect that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent, and the higher the temperatures become, the worse the effects of global warming will become. That is what the scientific community is telling us. There is not a lot of debate within the scientific community on these issues. But what does unchecked global warming actually mean for ordinary people, who are not Nobel Prize-winning scientists? It means there will be a significant increase in human misery and death for our children, our grandchildren, and future generations as we see a significant increase in drought, in flooding, in severe weather disturbances, in wars and political unrest as nations fight for limited resources. There will be an increase in all kinds of disease. There will be an increase in malnutrition and starvation because of the loss of arable cropland and water. Those are some of the realities that will be seen in coming generations. Let me be even more specific about what the future will bring if we do not reduce global warming in a significant way. Many of our friends say: Oh, there are problems here, look at all the problems. Yes, there are problems, but think about the problems that will take place if we do not act. In this sense we have to not be selfish because we are talking about our kids, our grandchildren, and the future of this planet. This is what we will be seeing in the not too distant future. In the western United States, there will be a major crisis in terms of finding drinking water. There are great discussions taking place right now in California. While we have already seen major problems in terms of forest fires in recent years--and my colleague from Idaho was on the floor talking about forest fires--he ``ain't seen nothing yet,'' if this planet continues to warm. Furthermore, we will see heat waves, which will become more frequent, which will cause terrible health impacts, especially for the elderly. In Africa, by 2020, fresh water sources for between 75 and 250 million people will be stressed. In Asia, fresh water availability will be decreased, potentially adversely affecting more than 1 billion people by the year 2050. In Latin America, by mid-century, tropical forests will be replaced by savanna, causing a significant loss of biodiversity and water availability. Finally, in the polar regions, the loss of ice in glaciers and ice sheets and changes in snow conditions will negatively affect wildlife and arctic communities. From this, sea level could rise up to 23 feet, with the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would take many centuries but would ultimately occur due to manmade emissions. When people say: My goodness, resolving global warming is a problem-- yes. But compared to what? Let us also be very clear that the horrific problems we are talking about for the future have already begun today. This is not saying, gee, it is all going to happen tomorrow. It is happening today, right now. Yesterday, one example of a million, the New York Times reported that large parts of Spain are turning into deserts and conflicts over water are increasing, in part because of global warming. A long-term drought in Australia, which many believe is related to global warming, has significantly reduced their food production, which some experts believe is one of the reasons international food prices are rising. That is today, not 10 years from now. The evidence is overwhelming. We are looking at one of the great crises facing our planet, as great as we have ever faced. If we do not act effectively, the results will be catastrophic. When people say it will be difficult to address the issues of global warming, they are right. It is not going to be easy. But it will be 100 times more difficult to address the disasters that will come if we do not act now. All over the world people of all political persuasions, of all religious persuasions, understand that simple reality. If you do not act now, it is not going away, it is only going to get worse. What the leading scientists are telling us is that not only is the situation dire, it is worse than they had predicted only a few years ago. I am a member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works. That is what these people do. They come and say: Yes, we told you the situation was bad. We were wrong. It is worse than we had told you only a few years ago. What the scientific community is now telling us, and why this particular bill is lacking, is that the United States must reduce its global warming emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, and some say we should do more than that. Further, through its leadership--we are the most powerful Nation on Earth--through its political strength, its advanced technology, we must do everything we can to work with the international community so that as a planet we go forward together in substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The world is crying out for America's leadership. We must give it. If we do all of these things, there is still a chance that we may not be successful in keeping the worst from happening. Those are the problems our planet is facing. What should we do to address them? What do we do? Frankly, I happen to believe that not only is the global warming crisis solvable, I happen to believe it is not quite as complicated as many others believe. The truth is that as a result of a lot of excellent scientific and technological work done here in the United States and all over the world, we know what has to be done. We know what has to be done. It is not a mystery. Frankly, if you compare for a moment the challenge that we face with global warming today compared to the challenge the Congress of 1941 faced when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, our job is much less difficult than their job was. They had to create armies to fight all over the world. They had to rebuild the civilian economy into a war economy. And they did all of that in a few years--and won, both in Europe and in Asia. That was a problem. This, frankly, in my view, is less of a problem. What do we have to do? In English? No. 1, we must move aggressively toward energy efficiency in every area of our lives, and the technology is here for us to do it. My own State of Vermont has been aggressive with regard to energy efficiency and the results are very promising. As a result of strong energy efficiency efforts, my State is using 5.3 percent less energy than it would have without those programs. These efforts have made Vermont the first State in the country to experience negative load growth while the population is increasing. Said another way, the State has actually reduced the amount of electricity it uses while still adding more users and experiencing economic growth. And Vermont has barely scratched the surface in terms of energy efficiency. I have no doubt, for example, that Vermont and the rest of the country can do much better in years to come, especially as new technology such as LED light bulbs are introduced into the economy. These bulbs will consume one-tenth of the electricity of an incandescent bulb. So the potential in terms of energy efficiency is extraordinary. But the issue is not only with electricity. The issue is also with transportation. Given the dismal situation in terms of efficiency in transportation today, we can't help but make enormous improvements in years to come. Automobiles, including hybrids and hybrid plug-ins, will get at least 50 miles per gallon and it should be commonplace within a few years. Forget about the cars that are getting 15 miles per gallon, we will get 50, 75 miles per gallon and even more. Electric cars will be on the market that will have a range of 200 to 300 miles. You go to work, you go on your trip, you come back, plug it in, and you are off and running the next day. Today, rural America is sorely lacking in public transportation. In Vermont and all over America, workers have no choice but to drive to work because we don't have the kind of bus system we have to have. Build that bus system. You are going to save an enormous amount of energy. In terms of our antiquated rail system, think of the potential we have there. Today we are far behind, both in passenger travel and in cargo travel. We are way behind Europe and Japan, other parts of the world. We can and must build a modern transportation system, a rail system. When we do that, we save unbelievable quantities of energy. In other words, what the scientific community has told us over and over again is that the cheapest energy is the energy we don't use. As a Nation we are going to make some progress in this area, but we have a long way to go. As we contemplate a strategy to reverse global warming, breaking our dependance on foreign oil and stimulating the economy, there is some very good news out there if we are smart enough to hear it, if we are prepared to take on powerful special interests, and if we are prepared to develop the political will to go forward. Despite the fact that the Federal Government has been very slow in moving in terms of sustainable energy, major breakthroughs are already taking place in our country and around the world in terms of such renewable energies as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. If we are smart and prepared to invest in a reasonably short period of time, we can move our country not only away from foreign oil but away from fossil fuel in general, the burning of which is the major cause of global warming. We now have the potential to produce an enormous amount of energy in a cost-effective way through sustainable approaches which not only do not emit greenhouse gases but produce virtually no pollution at all, clean up our environment, as well as cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. Let me give you a few examples of what I am talking about. Wind is the fastest growing source of energy in the world and the United States, but we have barely begun to tap its potential. Today, we are producing less than 1 percent of our electricity from wind, but even the Bush administration acknowledges that we can get as much as 20 percent of our electricity from this valuable renewable resource. We should be supporting wind energy not only through the creation of large wind farms in the appropriate areas but through the production of small, inexpensive wind turbines which can be used in homes and farms throughout rural America. In terms of solar power, the potential is almost unlimited. Right now, as we speak, concentrating solar powerplants are being built and planned in the United States and throughout the world. These plants can produce as much electricity as a small nuclear powerplant. Let me repeat that. Plants are being constructed today which emit virtually no greenhouse gas emissions, which are cost effective, and which can produce almost as much electricity as a nuclear powerplant. It is estimated that this one solar technology which is beginning to explode in the southwest part of our country--in Nevada, southern California, New Mexico--this one technology can provide as much as 25 percent of our Nation's electricity and maybe even more. It is there. It is happening now. The Federal Government, of course, has been very slow to respond or to help. It is happening even without our help. To offer another example, building just 80 gigawatts of concentrating solar power capacity--a target that is achievable by 2030--would produce enough electricity to power approximately 25 million homes, while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is there now. This is what we can be doing. Furthermore, the cost of concentrating solar powerplants has already begun to decline as production increases. In fact, concentrating solar power costs are projected to drop to 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour when capacity exceeds 3,000 megawatts, according to a 2008 Sandia National Laboratory presentation. There it is. It is happening. People are talking about all kinds of things, solar concentrating powerplants are taking place right now, increasingly cost effective, and no greenhouse gas emissions. One of the country's largest utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric, is working with Solel Solar Systems to build and operate a 553-megawatt concentrated solar powerplant in the Mojave Desert which would provide electricity for 400,000 homes. We can build dozens of those plants in the United States of America. Furthermore, in terms of solar technology, we are not only talking about solar powerplants, we are also talking about photovoltaic. And more and more Americans, in their homes, in their buildings, in public buildings, in businesses, are installing solar photovoltaics, the price of which should also come down significantly as production increases. Photovoltaics on the roofs of only 10 percent of the existing buildings in the United States could meet 70 percent of peak electric demand. Worldwide installations of solar PVs have increased by nearly 50 percent last year. This is an exploding technology in the United States and all over the world. We have to do everything we can to increase and help out and make sure that technology continues to grow. The bottom line here is, as we move forward in all of these areas, we are going to create millions of good-paying jobs, transforming our energy system away from foreign oil and fossil fuels into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. The potential is extraordinary. This is a great country. We have faced challenges in the past. We can and must accept this challenge now.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I raise a point of order that chapter 3, section 11312, of the General Provision title violates paragraph 4 of Senate rule XVI in the Reid motion to concur in the House amendment No. 1, with an amendment.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I want to say a few words about two important components of the domestic supplemental bill which, in my view, must be passed whenever we end up considering that legislation, and that is the new GI educational bill and the billion dollars in the bill for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program. As an early cosponsor of the post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, I am here today to ask my colleagues not only to pass this legislation but pass it with big numbers so if President Bush decides to veto it, we will have the votes--and he knows we will have the votes--to override that veto. The soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have paid a very heavy toll. In Iraq alone, over 4,000 have died, over 30,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands more have come home with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. In my State of Vermont, middle-aged dads and moms have left their families, they have left their kids, they have left their jobs, and they have joined their fellow members of the National Guard and Reserve in a kind of war they never dreamed they would be fighting. But they went to war and they did their jobs, and they did their jobs well and without complaint. They gave as much as they could give for their country, and now it is our turn to give back, not only for them but for the well-being of our entire economy. The original GI bill was an appropriate way for a grateful nation to say thank you for the service and sacrifice of those who wore our country's uniform. That bill was not only a way to express our appreciation to the greatest generation, but it enabled millions of Americans to get a college education, and by doing that, it helped reshape the American economy, it created immense wealth, and allowed millions of Americans to enter the middle class. There are, in fact, those who believe that the GI bill was one of the major reasons for the strong economic spurt this country enjoyed from the end of World War II to the early 1970s. Unfortunately, as many returning soldiers understand, today's GI educational benefits do not match up with what the World War II veterans received and do not come close today to covering the cost of a college education. That is why it is so important that we update these benefits by passing the new GI bill, both for our Active-Duty soldiers and for the National Guard and Reserve. As a nation, we must understand that caring for our servicemembers is part of the cost of going to war. If we are going to go to war, we cannot forget about the men and women who put their lives on the line and returned from that war. There are some who say this bill is too generous for our servicemembers, that we cannot afford to provide these benefits. I disagree. If we can spend $12 billion every single month paying for the cost of the war in Iraq, we surely can spend the equivalent of 4 months of that war to pay for the cost of the educational benefits for these men and women for a 10-year period. The new GI bill will cover the highest in-State undergraduate tuition at a public college or university where the veteran is enrolled, plus a living stipend, and would be based on how long the veteran served in active duty. This money could also be applied to law school, medical school, or approved programs of study. This is an extremely important piece of legislation. I congratulate Senator Webb for offering it. And now it is our job to pass it. There is another component of the domestic supplemental that also must be passed, and that is the $1 billion in additional funding for LIHEAP that was included in the supplemental appropriations bill through the adoption of an amendment by Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. I thank Senator Reed for offering that amendment and for getting it passed in the Appropriations Committee by a bipartisan vote of 20 to 9, which included 5 Republicans. Furthermore, I have been active on that issue by authoring a letter, which was cosigned by 20 of my colleagues, including 4 Republicans, who also understand the absolute imperative for increasing funding for LIHEAP. Two years ago, under the leadership of Senator Snowe and many other Senators, LIHEAP funding was increased by $1 billion above the appropriated level because it was well understood that at that time, we faced a home heating emergency. I strongly agreed with that assessment. But if we faced a home heating emergency a year ago, we face a much more severe home heating emergency today, and that is because the price of heating oil and propane are escalating off the roof. They are much higher today than they were several years ago. It is absolutely imperative that we significantly increase funding for LIHEAP if we are not to see the purchasing power of this program eviscerated. While $1 billion is a good step forward, the truth is, we are going to need a lot more than that to keep pace and level fund in terms of real dollars what the American people are receiving from LIHEAP. Two years ago, as you know, the price of heating oil was less than $2.50 a gallon. Today it is about $4.50 a gallon. What I can tell you is that last winter in the State of Vermont, there were families unable to heat their homes. Families with children became sick because the temperature in those homes was too low. That was last winter. Certainly if that was the case last winter, it will only be worse next winter. Let us be very clear that the LIHEAP program addresses not only families who are worried about keeping warm in the wintertime, it also addresses the very serious problem of families, especially older people, who, when the weather gets 100-plus degrees, will be too warm in the summertime. It also addresses the issue of more and more Americans having their electricity disconnected. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents the State directors of LIHEAP, a recordbreaking 15.6 million American families, or nearly 15 percent of all households, are at least 30 days late in paying their utility bills. Several States have laws on the books that impose a moratorium on cutting off essential utility services in the winter. However, these utility shutoff moratoriums expire during the spring. Without additional LIHEAP funding, senior citizens on fixed income, low-income families with children, and persons with disabilities from all across this country are in danger of having their essential utility services shut off this spring. This is going on in California, Iowa, Massachusetts--all over this country. Rapidly rising energy costs are the major reason so many Americans are late in paying their energy bills. It is extremely important, therefore, that additional LIHEAP funding be included in the supplemental to address these urgent needs. I hope very much when we get around to addressing the domestic supplemental bill that, A, we absolutely pass this legislation with strong numbers for our veterans to give them the educational opportunities they need and our country needs and, B, let us not forget that with the cost of gas and oil soaring, millions of Americans will go cold next winter. There are people who will suffer this summer unless we pass an expanded LIHEAP program. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I concur with a lot of what my colleague from North Dakota said, and I applaud his leadership on this whole issue of outrageously high energy prices. A few weeks ago, I sent an e-mail out to constituents in the State of Vermont, and essentially I said: Please write back to me and tell me what these outrageously high gas prices and oil prices mean to you. How are they impacting your lives? From our very small State of 630,000 people, we received, as of this date, some 900 responses. Nine hundred families wrote to me to tell me the impact these extraordinarily high gas and oil prices are having in Vermont. As you know, Vermont is doubly hit by these high prices because we are a rural State and people have to travel long distances to get to work, to get to the doctor, to get to the grocery store, and with the weather sometimes at 30 below zero, people spend a lot of money heating their homes. Madam President, $4-plus a gallon for home heating oil has a huge impact on their lives. What I would like to do in the time I have is simply read some of the e-mails I have recently received from Vermont. Let me be very clear in saying that while the e-mails came from Vermont, these e-mails speak for millions of people throughout this country, perhaps especially in rural areas. It is just amazing that at a time when poverty is increasing and the middle class is collapsing these high gas and oil prices have just taken many people over the edge. We are hearing what their stories are about. As I have said on many occasions, I think we in the Congress are far too separated and isolated from the reality of American life. We are surrounded by a ring of well-paid lobbyists representing large, powerful multinational corporations, and the voices of the people do not ring out as clearly as they should in the Senate. Today I want to allow some of those voices to be heard. Let me start off with somebody from the southwestern part of the State of Vermont. This is what this person writes: I retired to this community on a fixed income, and now the price of gas almost prohibits me from having any enjoyment. I have to factor in the price of gas for everything I do. Most of my medical appointments are at least 50 miles round-trip, and the cost of gas is absolutely prohibitive. I do not know how working people who earn less than $10 an hour are able to afford the gas. Something has to happen as this is a crisis not only in Vermont, but throughout the country. Here you see a story of somebody being impacted because they have to go to a doctor a considerable distance away. While we are on that subject, let me read an e-mail that came into Burlington, where our major medical center is. This story is interesting. Again, it tells you one of the side impacts of these outrageously high gas prices--what gas prices are doing. This is from Burlington, VT: My story involves my capacity as an oncology social worker working with cancer patients in an outpatient clinic. I also run an emergency fund for the cancer support program, which provides funds for cancer patients in need during their cancer journey, including initial diagnosis, surgery, and treatment period in which they experience a significant decrease in income during a medical leave. These are people dealing with cancer. They cannot go to work. Their incomes are declining. Then she writes: I cannot describe how devastating it has been for these folks who need to travel great distances to get to and from their cancer treatment and followup care with the way gas prices have been. Many of these folks need to travel on a daily basis to radiation therapy for several weeks, while others come from surrounding counties every 1 to 2 weeks for chemotherapy. It has had a tremendous impact on our ability to provide the financial assistance through our emergency fund to all those in need. Someone with cancer who has to get treatment has no choice how many times they need to travel great distances. They have to have reliable transportation and thus need access to gas for their cars or other family members' cars to get to their treatment and followup care. This is becoming increasingly difficult as gas prices continue to rise and our emergency fund cannot meet all of the financial needs of these patients. How many people think of that? We all get upset and angry when we pay $3.79 or $3.80 for a gallon of gas, but here is a story where this price of gas is impacting the ability in rural States for people to actually get the cancer treatment they need. Here is another story that comes from northern Vermont: My commute is 630 miles per week. On average, I drive nearly 900 miles per week. My wife also commutes 250 miles per week. Two years ago, we spent between $500 to $600 per month on gas. You don't need an MBA to figure out what we spend a month on gas now. Our mortgage payment is less than the cost of getting to work. How does this hurt all Americans? We spend less on local goods and services. We wait longer to fix problems with our cars. Is this doing further damage to our environment? I need new tires and am scouring the classifieds to find used tires. Is this putting my family at risk? I don't know where this is going to end. How can ExxonMobil possibly make $40 billion in profits alone? I just hope that supposedly smart people in Washington [i.e., us] will use all the tools in their tool boxes to stop this insanity. Here is another letter. It comes from northern Vermont again: This is my opinion. Here in Vermont you know we face challenges to heat our homes and commute to our workplaces. I live in the town of Morrisville, and I travel 78 miles to work round trip each day. My car gets 30 miles per gallon, therefore I spend roughly $10 a day just to commute to and from work. With that in mind, it costs me $2,600 per year to just get a paycheck. My wages have nowhere kept up with the rising cost of gasoline, much less adjust for the rise in heating fuel, food prices, increases in incidental necessities such as tires, oil changes, et cetera. Once again, it is the working person and the burden that high gas prices are having on the ability of that person to get to work. Here is another story. This is also from northern Vermont: I am a working mother of two young children. I currently pay, on average, about $80 a week for gas so that I can go to work. I see the effects of the gas increases at the grocery stores and at the department stores. On average, I spend around $250 per week at the grocery store, and trust me when I say I don't buy prime rib. I buy just enough to get us through the week, and I can't afford to make sure we have seven wholesome meals to eat every night of the week. Some nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that's all I have. My family has had to cancel our annual trip to the zoo, and we make less trips to see our families in another town due to the increase of the price of gas. The price of gas has created a hardship for most average Americans. We have less money to pay the living expenses which have also increased. It seems as if it is just a rippling effect. I am really scared for what the future holds for me and my kids because I just simply cannot afford to live from day to day and I am getting further and further in credit card debt just trying to stay afloat. Another letter: I am a single mother of two daughters. The gas prices are affecting my life tremendously. I have a full-time job in Burlington but live in Richmond and it is getting so that I cannot afford my bills such as electricity and phone so that I can afford to drive to work every day. I live off from what I make at work and I get some food stamps to help out. Welfare does not consider gas as an expense, even though you need it to get to work. Right now I am 2 weeks behind in my rent and pinching my pennies as far as they will go just to live a low-class lifestyle. Another story: Personally, my 90-year-old father in Connecticut has recently become ill and asked me to visit him. I want to drop everything I am doing and go visit him. However, I am finding it hard to save enough money to add to the extra gas I'll need to get there. Here is someone whose 90-year-old father is ill and doesn't know how he is going to be able to afford to fill up the gas tank to get there. I am self-employed with my own commercial cleaning service and money is tight, not only with gas prices but everything. I make more than I did a year ago, and I don't have enough to pay my property taxes this quarter for the first time in many years. They are due tomorrow. Madam President, on and on it goes. As I said, we have had about 900 of these e-mails from the State of Vermont. We also get e-mails from around the country. If anybody is interested in reading these e-mails, they can do it at my Web site: sanders.senate.gov. That is the reality. We have the middle class which for many years has been shrinking. Since Bush has been President, 5 million more Americans have slipped into poverty; 8 million Americans have lost their health insurance; 3 million Americans have lost their pensions. That is what is going on for ordinary people. But--and we don't discuss this too often--the people on top have never had it so good. In fact, the top 1 percent is doing better than at any time since the 1920s. Senator Dorgan a moment ago proposed some ideas with which I concur, in terms of how we have to address this oil and gas crisis. I think we made some progress several weeks ago by passing legislation which would stop the bringing more oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That is a small step forward but an important step forward. Right now I know we have dealt with, and the House is dealing with, the issue of OPEC, how to deal with a cartel whose function in life is to limit production and artificially raise prices. Clearly, long-term, starting yesterday, we have to move this country away from fossil fuel and our dependence on foreign oil; move us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. There is unbelievable and huge potential to do that. We have made some small starts, but we have a long way to go in energy efficiency and in adequately funding solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, biomass, and other forms of sustainable energy. The potential there is enormous if we are able to summon the courage to take on the very powerful lobbyists from the fossil fuel and automobile industries and move this country in the direction it should be going. Right now, while we move forward to break our dependency on fossil fuel and foreign oil, we cannot forget these folks from Vermont and around this country who, today, are in desperation as a result of gasoline prices at $3.80 a gallon, prices which will only go higher. There are several other things that, in my view, we need to do. For a start, while Americans are paying outrageously high prices at the gas pump, the oil industry, as most Americans understand, is enjoying recordbreaking profits. The American people simply find it very hard to understand how it could be that they can no longer afford to fill their gas tanks, while ExxonMobil has made more profits than any corporation in the history of the world for the past 2 consecutive years. There is no end to the greed. Last year alone, ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits and rewarded its CEO with $21 million in total compensation. A few years ago, ExxonMobil gave its former CEO a $400 million retirement package. All over America, people cannot afford to heat their homes, working people cannot fill their gas tanks, but ExxonMobil had enough money a few years ago to provide its former CEO a $400 million retirement package and provide the current CEO with $21 million in total compensation. But ExxonMobil is not alone. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP have been also making out like bandits, seeing huge increases in their profits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made over $600 billion in profits since George W. Bush has been in office. Last year alone, the major oil companies in the United States made over $155 billion in profits. Believe it or not, these profits continue to soar. There is apparently no end to the profitability of these companies. Recently, ExxonMobil reported a 17-percent increase in profits. Earlier, BP announced a 63-percent increase in profits. On and on and on it goes, the middle class getting decimated--can't afford to heat their homes, can't put gas in their tanks--and oil companies making outrageous profits. In 2006, Occidental Petroleum--not even one of the very major ones-- gave its CEO a $400 million compensation package for 1 year's work. They are simply sticking out their tongues, they are spitting on the American people, they are saying: We will do anything we want; $400 million to the CEO in 1 year, and we don't care if you can fill your gas tank, we don't care if kids in Vermont are getting sick because their parents can't afford to adequately heat their home. That is the way it goes. We have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Congress. We have lobbyists all over the place. You can't do anything about it. That is what they are telling the American people. I hope that is a wrong assertion. I hope, in fact, that Congress does have the courage to stand up to these oil companies and impose a windfall profits tax. It will not be easy, but that is the fight we have to make. Furthermore, in addition to dealing with the greed of the oil companies, we must deal with the greed of speculation. The problem with dealing with speculation is that by definition, at least as is currently the case, everything takes place below the radar screen. They are not acting transparently, which is at the heart of what the problem is. What we do know is, the hedge funds have made huge amounts of money. The top 50 hedge fund managers earned $29 billion in income last year; 50 managers, $29 billion. That is not too bad. We also know there are a lot of financial institutions investing heavily in oil futures and are driving up the price of oil in the process. Clearly, while it is a complicated issue--it is not an easy issue, and we made some progress in the ag bill by doing away with the Enron loophole exemption. Clearly, a lot more thought and work has to go into that. But there are some experts who are arguing that literally 50 percent of the $125-per-barrel cost of oil is a result of speculation and not actually the production of oil. The issue is not just addressing the crisis in high oil and gas prices. The issue is whether the American people will have any degree of confidence in their elected officials and in the U.S. Government. It is no great secret that President Bush is perhaps the most unpopular President--for good reasons, I should add--of any President in the modern history of the United States. Congress is held in equal contempt. I think the time is now, in the midst of this very serious economic crisis our country faces--which includes the high price of oil, includes our disintegrating health care system, includes a trade policy which allows companies to throw American workers out on the street and move to China, and many other issues--if we are to regain the faith of the American people, we had better summon the courage to take on these oil companies, these speculators, these hedge fund operators. Now is the time to do that. I certainly hope we will summon the courage to go forward. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I understand that S.J. Res. 32, introduced earlier today, is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I now ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 562, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 561, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, about a month ago on my Web site, which is sanders.senate.gov, I requested that Vermonters e-mail me about what the collapse of the middle class means to them personally--not in esoteric economic terms but in a sense of what they are going through. Frankly, we are a small State, and our people are pretty reticent. People in Vermont don't like to open up and tell everybody all of the problems they have. They try to keep it to themselves. We expected that we would receive perhaps a few dozen replies. In fact, over the last month, we have received some 700 e-mails that came into my office talking about how people in the middle class today are trying desperately to survive. About 90 percent of the e-mails came from the State of Vermont. We have had a number from around the rest of the country. I sometimes think that many of our colleagues here really don't have much of a clue about what is going on in the real world. It is no great secret that the Halls of Congress are filled with lobbyists who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year representing the energy companies, the coal companies, the oil companies, the drug companies, the insurance companies, the banks, and the credit card companies. They are all over the place, and they try to influence--and are successful in many instances--in influencing Congress to pass legislation that protects the interests of multinational corporations or the wealthiest people in this country. It is far too rare that we hear the pain and the reality of life that is going on among ordinary people, especially people who come from a rural State such as mine. What I wish to do is spend most of my time doing nothing more than just reading to my colleagues and for the American people some of the reality that takes place in a small, rural State which I think is not radically different from what is taking place today all over this country. All of these are verbatim e-mails that I received from families in the State of Vermont. Let me begin by reading one which says: I make less than $35,000 a year and work hard to earn it. I am trying to get by with rising costs of fuel. I have a wife and four kids that I love dearly and I am trying to do the best that I can for them. With the cost of gas pushing $4 a gallon and the price of heating oil up to over $4 a gallon, it is hard to make ends meet. On top of that, the furnace that heats the house and keeps my kids warm died today, and while it will not need to run much longer, the nights are still too cold for a 3-year-old. I am not sure how I am going to pay for the repairs. I never thought that I would be classified as poor having grown up in an upper middle class family, but that is where I am now. I don't know what we need to do, but I know we need to do something before the middle class is a thing of the past. As I read these stories, what you are going to hear today in the year 2008 is that children are going cold in America, and we have to understand that. This is one example. I will read more. Anyone who thinks it is not true doesn't know what is going on in the real world. Here is another e-mail that I received: I am a teacher with 20 years of experience, and I have a master's degree. As a single parent, I am struggling every day to put food on the table. This is a teacher with a masters degree. Our clothes all come from thrift stores. I have a 5-year- old car that needs work. My son is gifted and talented. I tried to sell my house to enroll him in a school that had curriculum available for his special needs. After two years on the market, my house never sold. The property taxes have nearly doubled in 10 years, and the price of heating oil is prohibitive. To meet the needs of my son, I let the house sit and moved into an apartment near his high school. I don't go to church many Sundays because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there. Now, I wonder how many people all over this country are facing that same reality. I will read right from her letter: I don't go to church many Sundays because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there. Every thought of an activity is dependent on the cost. I can only purchase food from dented can stores. I don't know how I can continue this way for two more years of my son's high school; yet, I am trying to meet his academic and psychological needs. I know that I will never be able to retire on a teacher's retirement with no insurance. I am stretched to the breaking point, with no help in sight. That is a teacher with a master's degree. This is not somebody who is unemployed, who never graduated high school. This is solid middle class. This is her reality. Here is another story: My wife and I live in rural Vermont. We own a home and make about $75,000 a year combined. That is, in Vermont, not a bad income. We own two vehicles and travel about 74 miles a day roundtrip to get to our jobs. Not only is the price of gas killing us, I have been displaced from two jobs in the last nine years due to the exportation of jobs overseas. My current job is in jeopardy of being downsized due to the economy. Every job I have had since I moved here in 1999 has paid less, with less benefits. We are spending our life savings just to make ends meet. When you read these stories, you hear recurring themes: The price of gas and people losing jobs due to outsourcing. Over and over again, these themes appear. I want to reiterate that these are not ``poor'' people, homeless people, people without any education. These are people who once considered themselves to be part of the American middle class. Similar to millions and millions of other people, that middle-class life is rapidly disappearing. Here is another one: I work full-time at the largest hospital in Vermont. I am in more debt now than I was 10 years ago as a single mother going full time to college and waitressing to make ends meet. When is something going to be done to lower gas prices, which have exponentially raised the cost of everything? I would love to just tell my children, ``Yes, we can go out to the movies'' and not have it break the bank. In other words, what you are seeing all over this country is for people who take a ride to church or go to the movies, they can no longer perform these basic joys of life because they cannot afford to do that anymore. Here is another letter: My husband and I have lived in Vermont our whole lives. We have two small children (a baby and a toddler) and felt fortunate to own our own house and land, but due to the increasing fuel prices we have at times had to choose between baby food, diapers, and heating fuel. We've run out of heating fuel 3 times so far, and the baby has ended up in the hospital with pneumonia 2 of the times. We try to keep the kids warm with an electric space heater on those nights, but that just doesn't do the trick. My husband does what he can just to scrape enough money for car fuel each week, and we've gone from 3 vehicles to 1 just to try and get by without going further into debt. We were going to sell the house and rent, but the rent around here is higher than what we pay for our monthly mortgage and property taxes combined. Please help. This is the story in America in 2008--a family not having enough heat and their child getting pneumonia. This is the United States of America in 2008. She asks, ``Please help.'' Well, let's help. This is from north central Vermont: Due to illness, my ability to work has been severely limited. I am making $10 an hour and if I am lucky, I get 35 hours a week of work. At this time, I am only getting 20 hours as it is ``off season'' in Stowe. That is a major recreation area in Vermont. It does not take a mathematician to do the figures. How are my wife and I supposed to live on a monthly take home income of less than $800. We do it by spending our hard-earned retirement savings. I am 50 and my wife is 49. At the rate we are going, we will be destitute in just a few years. The situation is so dire that it is all that I can think about. Listen to this: Soon, I will have to start walking to work, an 8 mile round trip, because the price of energy is so high it is that or go without heat. In the United States of America, in 2008, somebody will be walking 4 miles to work and 4 miles back. The alternative is not having enough money to heat their home. As bad as our situation is, I know many in worse shape. We try to donate food when we do our weekly shopping, but now we are not able to even afford to help our neighbors eat. What has this country come to? Imagine that, having to walk 4 miles to work, and they donate food for other people who are worse off than they are. Here is one from a single mother in a small town in southern Vermont: I am a single mother with a 9-year-old boy. We lived this past winter without any heat at all. In Vermont in the wintertime. Fortunately, someone gave me an old wood stove. I had to hook it up to an old, unused chimney we had in the kitchen. I couldn't even afford a chimney liner (the price of liners went up with the price of fuel). To stay warm at night, my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I'd hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway and we'd sleep right there on the floor. By February, we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it in the tub. I'd like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the capital building. We are certainly a country in distress. This is a gentleman from another town in southern Vermont: I make less than $35,000 a year and work hard to earn that. I am trying to get by with the rising cost of fuel. I have a wife and four kids that I love dearly and am trying to do the best I can for them. We do receive help from the State, but I would like to be able to make it without that help. He would like to do it without that help. With the cost of gas pushing $4 a gallon and price of heating oil up over $4 a gallon, it is hard to make ends meet. On the top of that, the furnace that heats the house and keeps my kids warm died today, and while it will not need to run much longer this winter, the nights are still too cold for a three year old, and I have next winter to look forward to. I am not sure how I am going to pay for the repairs. Here is another from a woman from a small town in central Vermont: My husband and I followed all the rules. He grew up in urban projects and went into the military with Vietnam service so he could get GI Bill benefits and go to college. I grew up picking strawberries as a migrant worker but had a mother who so pressed education that I was able to go to college on scholarship and by working full time nights in a mental hospital. My husband and I worked hard to buy a home, maintain good credit, even taking government jobs because we truly wanted to help others. I became disabled and unable to work, but we managed to live a middle class life on one salary. Slowly, though, we have sunk back to the ``poor'' days. Our heating oil bill, gas prices, food prices--well, you know the story. Even a pizza is a splurge now. The interest on our meager savings doesn't seem worth keeping the money in the bank. We're so much more fortunate than many others, since we can still meet our bills, but we're scared that we will drop beneath that level soon. It doesn't seem right that after working hard and following all the rules for our lives, now, at 60, we're tumbling down. Here is an e-mail from a Vermonter from a small town near the New Hampshire border: Dear Senator Sanders: First, let me thank you for all of the support and rallying behind the middle class you have done. I, too, have been struggling to overcome the increasing cost of gas, heating oil, food, taxes, etc. I have to say that this is the toughest year, financially, that I have ever experienced in my 41 years on this earth. I have what used to be considered a decent job. I work hard, pinch my pennies, but the pennies have all but dried up. I am thankful that my employer understands that many of us cannot afford to drive to work five days a week. Instead, I work three 15- hour days. I have taken odd jobs to try to make ends meet. This winter, after keeping the heat just high enough to keep my pipes from bursting (the bedrooms are not heated and never got above 30 degrees), I began selling off my woodworking tools, snowblower (pennies on the dollar), and furniture that had been handed down in my family from the early 1800s, just to keep the heat on. Today, I am sad, broken, and very discouraged. I am thankful that the winter cold is behind us for a while, but now gas prices are rising yet again. I just can't keep up. This is from a mother in a town near the Canadian border: I am a single mother of 4. Each day the struggle becomes more difficult. Thank goodness for Spring. My last oil delivery was $500. I spend over $200 a month on gas just driving back and forth to work (approximately 300 miles a week). Sometimes what some of my colleagues don't understand is that in rural parts of America, people don't walk to work, they don't take a car ride of 5 minutes. Sometimes people drive 50 miles to work. Sometimes they drive 100 miles to work. When gasoline costs $3.70 a gallon, every nickel of the pay raise they may have gotten goes right into that gas tank. We have cut our budget again and again. There is little left to cut. Spring and Summer brings a respite from the fuel bills of winter, but I worry what next winter will bring. I will have to dig into my small 401(k) to make some home repairs this summer. Money that had been set aside went to fuel, an electric bill that increased by 14%, and food. I read these letters because sometimes in the middle of the debates we have here, everybody is spouting off all kinds of facts and figures and ideas. I thought it important to bring a little bit of reality of what is going on in middle-class Vermont. I have to say I doubt very much that it is any different than middle-class New Jersey or any other State in this country. People are hurting. Poverty is increasing. The middle class is collapsing. The only people in our economy who are doing well are the people at the very top, and they are doing extremely well. Many of the stories we have heard deal with high energy prices. I believe that what happened is that while the middle class has been shrinking for many years now, these high energy prices have resulted in a lot of people now dropping over the cliff. They were struggling and trying to keep their heads above water and, suddenly, out of nowhere, comes $3.70 for a gallon of gas and $4 for home heating oil. That has taken them over the edge. That is one of the reasons 82 percent of the American people think our country is moving in the wrong direction. What do we do? There is a lot we can do. Let me focus on energy. The good news is that today, thankfully, 97 Senators voted to stop the Bush administration from continuing the absurd policy of adding 70,000 barrels of oil a day into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is already 97 percent full. Is that going to result in a precipitous drop in gasoline prices? No. Will it help? Yes. I applaud my colleagues for doing that. I find it interesting that 97 of our colleagues voted for this today, when 2 or 3 weeks ago we were wondering whether we had the votes to get this through. I think many of our colleagues are hearing, when they go home, that people are in trouble. They are hearing the same stories I am hearing, and they are hearing people want them to begin to stand up to the Bush administration, stand up to the oil companies, stand up to the speculators, stand up to the people who are ripping them off while their lifestyle is rapidly declining. What we did today is a good thought, but, clearly, we have a long way to go. I am onboard legislation, which we discussed a little bit today, which demands that President Bush tell Saudi Arabia it is not acceptable that they have cut back on their oil production, that it is imperative they increase oil production so we can have more oil on the market, which will lower gas and oil prices. In addition to that, I believe the time is long overdue that we start dealing with the reality that OPEC is, by definition, a cartel designed, created to restrict trade, to collude to limit oil production output, and to make prices higher than they need be. We have to take a hard look at OPEC and begin to demand that this President go to the WTO and break up OPEC. Furthermore, it is very clear that at a time when oil prices are soaring, it is, in my view, absolutely necessary that we impose a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. The American people do not understand why they are paying recordbreaking prices at the gas pump while ExxonMobil has made more profits than any company in the history of the world for the past 2 consecutive years. Last year alone, ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits and rewarded its CEO with $21 million in total compensation. Just a few years ago, ExxonMobil gave its former CEO a $400 million retirement package--a $400 million retirement package and people in Vermont and all over this country are unable to fill up their gas tanks or heat their homes. But ExxonMobil is not alone. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP have also been making out like bandits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made over $600 billion in profits since President Bush has been in office. Last year alone, the major oil companies in the United States made over $155 billion in profits. Believe it or not, these profits continue to soar. Recently, ExxonMobil reported a 17-percent increase in profits, totaling $10.9 billion. Earlier, BP announced a 63-percent increase in profits and on and on it goes. Every major oil company is seeing a significant increase in their profits. Meanwhile, what these big oil companies do with all their revenue is they have the capability of providing their CEOs with lavish compensation. In 2006, Occidental Petroleum gave its CEO, Ray Irani, $400 million in total compensation for 1 year of work. My friends, when you are going to fill up your gas tanks at $3.75 a gallon, let's remember, the gentleman who runs Occidental managed to survive last year on $400 million in total compensation. Last year, Anadarko Petroleum's CEO received $26.7 million; Chevron's CEO received $15.7 million; and ConocoPhillips' CEO made $15.1 million in total compensation. Let's be clear, I believe oil companies should be allowed to make reasonable profits, and CEOs of big oil companies should be able to make a reasonable compensation. But at a time when so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet and when people cannot afford the outrageously high prices they are now forced to pay, these kinds of executive compensations are to me totally unacceptable. It is not just the oil companies that are ripping off the American people. There is a lot of evidence, and there have been hearings held on this issue, that wealthy speculators and hedge fund managers have been making obscene amounts of money by driving up the price of oil in unregulated energy markets with absolutely no Government oversight. The top 50 hedge fund managers earned $29 billion in income last year. What we are seeing now is not only oil company greed driving up prices, but we are seeing financial institutions and hedge funds speculating on oil futures also driving up the price of oil. This is an issue that must be dealt with in a number of ways, including repealing the so-called Enron loophole. I conclude by saying what I think the American people know. They know our middle class is in deep distress, that people who have worked their whole lives hoping to enjoy a secure retirement are not going to have that retirement. We have heard from young people who are very worried about how, if ever, they are going to be able to pay off their very high college loans, and we heard about other people who cannot afford to go to college. The time is very much overdue for the Congress to stop listening to the oil companies, the speculators, the banks, and the credit card companies and all these people who make huge sums of money and who pay their CEOs obscene compensation packages and start listening to ordinary Americans who, to a great degree, are not having their voices heard. That is what our job is. That is what we swore to do when we swore to uphold the Constitution. I think we swore to uphold the needs of the American people. I hope we can move forward in addressing the energy crisis short term. Long term, of course, we need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and foreign oil into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. I know you and I, Mr. President, have worked on a number of pieces of legislation that will move this country in that direction, and that is what we have to do.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the State of Vermont is proud of the people in our state who organize the annual Stowe Weekend of Hope, one of the most inspiring and educational events for cancer survivors in the United States. ``We believe that the Stowe Weekend of Hope is unique, as it covers all cancers, reveals the generosity of an entire community, and has enhanced the lives of thousands of past attendees and their loved ones,'' said Jo Sabel Courtney, the chair and cofounder of the uplifting event. ``Our mission,'' she explained, ``is to inspire, educate, and celebrate the lives of people living with cancer.'' Altogether, some 900 participants from 21 States, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Canada participated in this year's events presented by the Stowe Area Association and the Vermont Cancer Center. The Stowe Area Association's lodging properties donated 312 complimentary rooms to cancer survivors and their loved ones. Jo Sabel Courtney would be the first to tell you that making the weekend a tremendous success is a team effort. The Stowe Weekend of Hope Organizing Committee she chairs includes Leslie Anderson of Stowe; Trine Brink, Stowe; David Cranmer, Shelburne; Sandy Devine, Stowe; Jenn Ingersoll, Burlington; Kimberly Luebbers, Burlington; Kathleen McBeth, Stowe; Valerie Rochon, Stowe; Susan Rousselle, Elmore; Terry Smith, Stowe, and emeritus member and cofounder, Patti O'Brien, M.D. We in Vermont are very proud of the efforts that all of these people put into organizing this annual event for the education and enlightenment of cancer patients, cancer survivors and their families, and I have very much enjoyed visiting with them over the last several years. This year's participants in the Stowe Weekend of Hope included people with 46 different cancers, people who are confronting complex physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial challenges. Nationally renowned oncology specialists from around New England, as well as leading oncologists and researchers from the Vermont Cancer Center, and the University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Health Care Division of Hematology and Oncology were present at this year's eighth annual Stowe Weekend of Hope to provide up-to-date information to both the patients and their loved ones. The weekend also included hands-on workshops, informational and support group gatherings, recreation opportunities, inspirational music, ecumenical services, motivational talks designed to heighten the emotional experience of healing and growth, and a time for relaxation and reflection. On Sunday morning, participants gathered to dedicate the Flags of Hope and Healing that they had created. The closing ceremony also included prayer, dance, song and remembrances. The Stowe Weekend of Hope was founded in 2001. Since its inception, the event has grown locally and nationally to continue its focus its mission of support, education and inspiration. It makes me proud of Vermont.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, May 14; 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 morning business for up to 1 hour, with the time to be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half; further, I ask that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 980, collective bargaining.

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, in the last several weeks in a number of venues, I have met with hundreds, in fact thousands, of Vermonters, and to nobody's great surprise, the issue that is uppermost on their minds is the very high price of gas and the price of oil. I know that is true in all 50 States in this country and in thousands of communities. It is especially true in rural States because in rural States, especially cold-weather States, it is not uncommon for people to travel 50 miles to their jobs and then 50 miles back. If you drive 100 miles to work, the mileage runs up. I should mention, I know it probably didn't snow in Florida, but it did snow in Vermont. We had a small amount of snow. That simply indicates that people know when it gets cold in Vermont it gets very cold. We have a lot of elderly people right now wondering how they are going to heat their homes next winter. We have a combination of working people in a rural State--this is true all over rural America--paying outrageously high prices in order to get to work and, in colder weather States, people very worried about whether they can stay warm next winter. The arithmetic is not really hard to figure out. If you put 25,000 miles on your car going to work every year and you are paying a buck more than you used to and you get 25 miles per gallon on your car, that is a thousand dollars. If you make $30,000 a year and you get a 3- percent raise, that is 900 bucks. So all of your raise, all of your cost-of-living increase on your job is now in your gas tank. That is happening to millions of American workers. Then these same workers are paying more for health care, are paying more for food, more for education, which, added together, is why the middle class in America is collapsing. For many years, as good-paying jobs have gone to China, as our people are struggling to make ends meet, people have been worried about how they are going to survive economically. On top of that, we now have the foreclosure crisis and we have the escalating cost of gas and oil in this country, which then leads some 80 percent of the people in this country to believe this country is going in the wrong direction, and one wonders, really, what the other 20 percent are thinking. Clearly, for the middle class in this country, we are facing a very serious problem. I did an interesting thing a few weeks ago in Vermont. We were having some town meetings on the economy. We brought a professor from Harvard Law School, one of the best writers in America on the economy. Her name is Elizabeth Warren. In preparation for that meeting, we sent out an e-mail to people in my State and said: Tell me what is going on in terms of the collapse of the middle class and how that impacts your life. Frankly, we expected a few dozen people to reply. As of today, we have received over 700 responses. This is doubly surprising because in Vermont people are quite reticent, not wanting to talk about personal aspects of their lives--700 people. I recommend you and Members of the Senate read some of these responses. They are up on our Web site. The tales people are telling are heartbreaking, they are poignant, they come from the heart, and there are hundreds of them. Let me just read a few segments of some of the letters we have received and how they touch on gas prices and the general collapse of the middle class in our country. We are hard-working people. We want to pay our bills. We want to keep what we worked so hard for. The constantly increasing cost of gas, oil, groceries are drowning us. I hear the same thing from most of our friends on a daily basis--hanging on by a thread, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is such a stressful way to live. There are days when I get so discouraged I just want to call the banks and say just take it all. I don't have it in me to fight for it anymore. This is a family in the State of Vermont. Here is another one. This comes from an elderly couple in Vermont: My wife and I are both 77, retired and living on a very limited income. We live in the country, and driving the 60- plus miles round trip for shopping and health care has become a financial hardship. Traveling 60 miles for shopping and health care has become a financial hardship. Even though we drive a car that gets 35 miles to the gallon, a tankful of gas eats up an awfully large amount of our disposable income. That is true all over America. You have older people who get in their car, they go out to buy groceries, they go to the doctor, and suddenly they are finding that just getting into their car and going where they have gone their whole lives is now a very expensive proposition, in this case eating up a large part of their disposable income. Another family writes: I live in the Northeast Kingdom, which is a very rural area in the northern part of Vermont near the Canadian border, and I have to drive a 30-mile round trip to work in Morrisville and even farther to Stowe, where most of the jobs are now. With the gas prices high and most employers paying $8.50 to maybe $10 per hour, you spend much of your paycheck traveling to and from work. In other words, in the real world, there are millions of people in rural Vermont and all over this country and in Florida who are making $8.50, $9, $10 an hour, and if you are paying $3.50 a gallon to get to work and you have to travel any kind of distance, what do you have left? Not a lot. The average price for a gallon of gas recently hit a recordbreaking $3.62 a gallon, which is more than double what it was when President Bush first took office. The price of diesel fuel is now averaging over $4.17 a gallon, which is more than $1.36 higher than it was just a year ago. The price of oil is now $110 a barrel. I think these prices say it all. They tell every Member or should tell every Member of Congress what the American people understand, which is that we have a national emergency on our hands. If we do not act boldly and rapidly to lower gas and oil prices, the economic situation for millions of working families will only deteriorate even further. What we are talking about is not just the worker who can't afford to fill up his gas tank, it is the entire economy. It is small businesses, it is farmers, it is truckers. The trucking industry is convoluting right now with these high prices. It is the increased cost of groceries, it is tourism. People come to Vermont and people go to Florida to enjoy vacations. They are not going to be able to drive there with these prices. In fact, what we are looking at is a major economic crisis impacting every segment of our economy. Sadly, as in so many other areas regarding the needs of ordinary Americans, when it comes to gas prices the Bush-Cheney administration is just not there. This is an administration where, in area after area, you can count on them to stand up with the large multinational corporations. You can count on them protecting the wealthiest people in the country. Now, when the middle class is in crisis, when people cannot afford the rapidly rising costs of gas and oil, they are nowhere to be found. What is particularly interesting, of course, as most people know, is both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have backgrounds in the oil industry. That is what they did before they assumed the Presidency and Vice Presidency. Ironically--and this would really be almost funny if it weren't so sad--when President Bush ran for office in the year 2000, he touted his experience in oil as one of the reasons he should be elected President. He knew the oil industry. He would make the energy situation better based on his experience. Here is a direct quote from what candidate Bush said in the year 2000, in his first campaign, regarding how he would improve our relations with some of the OPEC countries. This is what he said: I will use the capital that my administration will earn with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis and convince them to open the spigot. That is what candidate George Bush said in the year 2000. Then he said, also in that campaign: The President of the United States must jawbone OPEC Members to lower the price. End of quote from candidate George Bush in the year 2000. That was 8 years ago. When then-candidate Bush made those comments, the price of oil was $30 a barrel. Today, after 7\1/2\ years of the Bush-Cheney administration, the price of oil is now $110 a barrel. It seems to me that it is imperative that among many other things, many other actions Congress must take, one of them is to do what President Bush talked about in 2000 but never did, and that is we must demand that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait produce the kind of oil they can. We must also move forward as a Congress to address the reality that OPEC is a cartel. That is their reason for existence. A cartel is formed in collusion in order, in this case, to prevent production of oil, control the production of oil in order to artificially keep prices high. This Congress must demand two things: that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and other OPEC members increase their production so we can lower prices, and second, we must be aggressive in telling the World Trade Organization that OPEC is a cartel; it must be disbanded. Back to President Bush. In 2004, when Saudi Arabia led the fight within OPEC to cut production and raise prices, the Miami Herald reported that President Bush ``refused to lean on the oil cartel'' and ``refused to even personally lobby OPEC leaders to change their minds.'' It is true that last January President Bush did visit Saudi Arabia to ask OPEC nations to increase production, but guess what. The Associated Press reported that President Bush's request was ``ignored.'' In 2000, as a candidate, he told us he was going to open the spigot, he was going to get them to produce more oil, but that, of course, has not happened. Last March, after meeting with Saudi Arabia's oil minister, the Wall Street Journal reported that ``Vice President Dick Cheney suggested there is little more Saudi Arabia can do to increase oil production and relieve price pressures in global markets.'' But Stephen Brown, the energy economist at the Federal Reserve, has disputed this. He has said that ``Saudi Arabia is restraining its production, probably by about 1.8 million barrels a day. And OPEC is probably holding back 2.3 million barrels a day altogether.'' In other words, despite all of the rhetoric from President Bush, all of his experience in the oil industry, the reality is that Saudi Arabia is not producing the kind of oil it should be producing and we are hurting as a result of that. Many of us are tired of waiting for the Bush administration to act. Congress must act. There are a number of things we must do in order to lower the price of gas and oil in this country. One of them is to demand that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other OPEC countries start producing the quantity of oil we know they can produce. That is one thing we can do, but it is certainly not enough. The national oil emergency we currently face in our country and in many other countries demands both short-term and long-term solutions. Long term, I think many people in the Senate and the vast majority of the American people understand that we must break our dependency on fossil fuel. We must move to energy efficiency. We must move to such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and others. In my view, the potential is absolutely staggering in terms of the amount of energy we can produce through sustainable energy and the amount of energy we can save through energy efficiency. Not only that, obviously we need to significantly improve public transportation. Our railroads today lag far behind Europe and Japan. In doing that, building a broad mass-transportation system, we can break our dependency on the automobile. In terms of automobiles, people are just now beginning--and we must help them--to move to electric cars, move to hybrid plug-in cars. There is just enormous potential out there. Clearly, that is the long-term solution of where we have to go. But I sometimes hear my friends coming here and they talk about a long-term solution and yet they forget about what is going on in America today for a family making $30,000 or $40,000 a year, and maybe they have two cars because they have two workers, and those people are going broke today. So I do not think it is an either/or. I think we have got to be aggressive right now in moving toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy, but we have also got to be aggressive today in lowering the price of gas and oil. It is not an either/or. We move forward in parallel tracks. One of the steps we have to take is to put pressure on OPEC nations to increase the production of oil. I think also we have got to break up OPEC, and let the free market work in that area. But that is only one of the things we have got to do. Second, I believe it is absolutely imperative that we impose a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. The American people do not understand, nor do I understand, why they are paying record- breaking prices at the gas pump, while ExxonMobil has made more in profits than any corporation in the history of the world for the past 2 consecutive years. I know ExxonMobil and their propaganda machine will no doubt explain it. But the average person does not believe it and the average person should not believe it. ExxonMobil and the other major oil companies are ripping off the American people. That is clear. We need a windfall profits tax to address that. Last year alone, ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits, and rewarded its CEO Rex Tillerson with a $21 million compensation package. That is nothing. He is getting shortchanged, because the guy who went before him, when he retired--his name was Lee Raymond--got a $400 million retirement package. So my suggestion to Mr. Tillerson is: Go back to your board. You are getting ripped off 21 million bucks. How are you going to make it on that? Here you have a company charging record-breaking prices, having given its former CEO a few years ago $400 million in a retirement package. But ExxonMobil is not alone. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP have also been making out like bandits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made over $600 billion in profits since George W. Bush has been President. Not bad, $600 billion in profits in 7.5 years. And people in Vermont and Florida cannot afford to fill their gas tanks. Last year alone, the major oil companies in the United States made over $155 billion in profits and, not surprisingly, those profits continue to soar. Today, ExxonMobil reported a 17-percent increase in profits, totaling $10.9 billion, $10.9 billion for one quarter. Earlier this week, however, BP, British Petroleum, announced a 63- percent increase in their profits. Shell's first quarter profits jumped by 25 percent to over $9 billion; one quarter, 3 months. ConocoPhillips' profits increased by over 16 percent in the first quarter to over $4 billion. It is hard to come up with the words to describe it, because I know, and I am sure you know, Mr. President, the problems middle-class people are facing today and what these high oil and gas prices are meaning to families, and at the same time this is going on, these major oil companies are enjoying obscene levels of profit. With their profits, among many other things, they are very lavish in the kind of benefits and salaries they provide their CEOs. Last year, Occidental Petroleum, one of the ``smaller'' companies, gave its CEO $34.2 million in total compensation. The CEO of Anadarko Petroleum received $26 million. Chevron's CEO made $15 million, as did ConocoPhillips' CEO. He made $15.1 million in compensation. Let me be clear. I believe oil companies should be allowed to make a reasonable profit and CEOs of big oil companies should enjoy decent compensation. That is a tough job and they should earn a good salary. But they should not be allowed to rip off the American people at the gas pump, especially at this moment in our history when the middle class is stressed out and in many ways collapsing. The time has come to impose a windfall oil tax on those companies so they cannot continue to gouge the ordinary people of our country. Unfortunately, however, imposing a windfall profits tax on big oil will not be easy. I think we all know the reason, and that is, since 1998 the oil and gas industry has spent over $616 million on lobbyists. And dare I say that right now on the floors of the Senate, and on the floors of the House, you have very well paid lobbyists, former congressional leaders, big-time law firms, floating all over this place right now trying to convince Members of the House and the Senate to leave big oil alone. Not only have they spent, since 1998, $616 million on lobbying; since 1990 they have spent over $213 million in campaign contributions. That is the way the world goes--lobby, campaign contributions from powerful multinational corporations. What is the end result? Their profits are soaring and ordinary Americans are hurting. The time has come, it seems to me, for the Senate to stand with working families all over this country, to have the courage to stand up to this very powerful industry and say ``yes'' to a windfall profits tax and ``no'' to the continued urges of the oil and gas industry to pat them on the back and do nothing. While it is true that oil companies and their executives are making money hand over fist, it is also true they are not the only culprits in this situation. We must begin focusing on the very powerful speculators and hedge fund managers who have also been making obscene sums of money by speculating on futures and driving an unregulated market up and up and up. There are some people who estimate, in fact, that half of the increase in oil costs is attributable to the cost of production but to the speculation that takes place. In my view, Congress must act to rein in greedy speculators by closing what has been referred to as the Enron loophole and increasing oversight over the energy futures industry. The Enron loophole was created in 2000 as part of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. At the behest of Enron lobbyists, a provision in this bill was inserted in the dark of night and with no congressional hearings. Specifically, the Enron loophole exempts electronic energy trading from Federal commodities laws. Virtually overnight, the loophole freed over-the-counter energy trading from Federal oversight requirements, opening the door to excessive speculation and energy price manipulation. Since the Enron loophole has been in effect, crude oil prices jumped from $33 a barrel in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, to over $110 a barrel today. Last January, a veteran oil analyst at Oppenheimer estimated there is as much as a $57 a barrel ``speculative premium'' on the price of oil. In other words, he estimates that about half of the price of a barrel of oil is due not to the production and distribution of that product but simply to speculation. The CEO of Marathon Oil said late last year that $100 oil is not justified by the physical demand in the market. In other words, those guys see that the price of oil is being driven up by speculation. Closing the Enron loophole would subject electronic energy markets to proper regulatory oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent price manipulation and excessive speculation. I thank Senators Levin and Feinstein. I know Senator Dorgan and others have been involved in producing legislation and ideas to close this loophole. We must move forward and pass that type of legislation as soon as possible. In addition--and this is an issue where there appears to be a degree of bipartisan support--some of our Republican friends also agree the Bush administration must stop the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and in my view, my view, immediately release oil from this Federal stockpile to reduce gas prices. This action has been taken in the past. It is not a new idea. Goldman Sachs has estimated that continuing to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has increased gas prices at the pump by as much as 25 cents a gallon, and that clearly is unacceptable. Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the past, under both Democratic and Republican administrations has, in fact, lowered the price of gas and crude oil. For example, when President Clinton ordered the release of 30 million barrels from the SPR in 2000, the price of gas fell by 14 cents a gallon in 2 weeks. When President George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush, released 13 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR in 1991, crude oil prices dropped by over $10 per barrel. Let me conclude by saying that the issue we are dealing with today, in my view, is not only the high price of gas and oil. As serious as that is, and as much impact as that is having on our economy, the deeper issue here is the degree to which people in our country, the hard-working citizens of our country, will or will not continue to have faith that their Government represents them. It is no secret that President Bush will likely go down in history as perhaps the least popular President and, in my view, one of the worst Presidents we have ever had. But it is also true that the ratings of this Congress are extraordinarily low; they are even lower than where President Bush is. I think the reason for that is people are suffering terrible problems right now. In almost every area you can think of, this country is going in the wrong direction. The middle class is hurting. We talked about oil prices, food prices, the loss of good-paying jobs, the health care system, Social Security falling apart, people are paying 25, 30 percent interest rates on credit cards. People are in trouble. In a Democratic society, when people are in trouble, they look to the people whom they elected, to their Government, to protect their interests. They are looking to Washington right now. They are looking here. They are hurting, and they are asking whether the Congress of the United States has the courage to stand up to the very powerful financial interests which have so much influence over what goes on here. So I hope very much we have the courage to once again earn the confidence of the American people, that we understand the pain they are feeling, and that we act properly, that we lower gas prices, that we lower oil prices. We can do this with bold action, and we can move this country to a new energy policy dealing with energy efficiency and sustainable energy. I think the American people want us to do that. I think that is, in fact, what we should do. I yield the floor, and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I think virtually everyone in America understands our country is in extremely difficult straits; that the middle class is collapsing; that poverty is increasing; and that one of the immediate factors that is driving so many Americans over the edge is outrageously high energy prices. This impacts every community in America, but it especially impacts rural States such as the State of Vermont, where workers are forced to drive long distances to work and end up spending an inordinate amount of money at the gas tank. It is not uncommon in my State for people to travel 100 miles a day to work and back. If you do the arithmetic, you will find that in many cases, as oil prices and gas price have risen, people today are paying $1,000 a year more than a year and a half ago to fill up their gas tanks. If you are a worker earning $30,000 or $35,000 a year, and you got a 3-percent increase in your wages, that is pretty good; in some cases all of your wage increase is going down that gas tank. You have to pay higher health care costs, higher educational costs, higher property taxes, and you are in a lot of trouble, which is why the middle class in America is, in fact, shrinking significantly. Not only is this a major crisis in terms of what is happening at the gas pump, there is also severe worry about what happens next winter when people have to fill up their home heating oil furnaces and stay warm in the winter in States such as Vermont. I can tell you that all over my State, a lot of senior citizens and other people are extremely worried about how they are going to stay warm next winter with the price of home heating fuel soaring to the degree it is. Meanwhile, while prices at the gas pump are soaring, while home heating oil and diesel fuel are soaring, the profits of huge oil companies are going up to recordbreaking levels; hedge fund managers make billions speculating on oil futures, and OPEC continues to function as a price-fixing cartel in violation of World Trade Organization rules. The average price for a gallon of gas recently hit a record breaking $3.60 a gallon, which has more than doubled since President Bush has been in office. The price of diesel fuel is now averaging over $4.17 a gallon, which is a $1.36 more than a year ago, and the price of oil is well over $114 a barrel. These prices say it all. What they say is we have a national emergency on our hands. It is absolutely imperative for the Congress to begin to act in order to lessen this onerous burden on tens of millions of families. These record-breaking oil and gas prices at the pump are impacting not only consumers of oil and gas but, obviously, our entire economy. They are impacting family farmers, small businesses, airlines, grocery stores, restaurants, tourism and, of course, the price of food. This national oil emergency demands both short-term and long-term solutions. One of the issues that concerns me is, I hear people getting up and saying: Long term, we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. There is nobody in the Senate who believes that more than I do. We are on the cusp of a major transformation of our energy system. We need an Apollo- type project to invest heavily in wind, solar, and geothermal energy efficiency. We can do that. In the process, we can create millions of good-paying jobs. We have made a start in that direction, but we have not gone far enough. But to say we must focus on long-term solutions does not mean we can ignore the immediate crisis. Yes, we have to break our dependency on fossil fuel, but that is not going to solve the problem for a worker in Vermont who is paying $3.50 for a gallon of gas today. We have to address his and her problem as well. So it is not either/or. Yes, we break our dependency on fossil fuel and move to sustainable energy, but we also address the crisis of today. We tell workers all over this country that we understand they cannot afford to pay outrageous prices for gas. There have been literally dozens of ideas from both sides of the aisle, good ideas, an understanding of the crisis as to why oil prices are soaring and also good ideas as to how we might solve the problem. I applaud all of those Senators who have come up with ideas. But it seems to me if we are going to be successful in helping the average American, we have to come forward with a comprehensive package. It is not good enough to say: I have an amendment in this bill and I have some language in that bill which may come about in 2 years or may never come about, and I have something over there. What we need is a comprehensive piece of legislation which understands the cause of this crisis is not just one thing--it is a multipronged problem which is causing oil prices to soar, and we will not solve this crisis through one simple action. We need a series of actions, but we have to bring our solutions together in a comprehensive package which says to the American people if that package is passed, oil and gas prices are going down. That is what we need to do. I have been working with a number of my colleagues in order to do that. Let me briefly talk about what I believe should be in that package. It is about four provisions that could play a major role in lowering gas prices today. First, we need to impose an excise tax on the profits of the oil and gas industry. The American people simply do not understand why they are paying record-breaking prices at the pump while ExxonMobil has made more profits than any company in history in the last 2 years. Last year alone, ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits, and they rewarded their CEO with a $21 million package in total compensation. A couple of years ago, they rewarded their former CEO, Lee Raymond, with a retirement package of $400 million. But it is not ExxonMobil alone. We have seen BP come in the other day with a 63- percent increase in their profits. Shell made a huge increase in their profits. Since President Bush has been President, the five largest oil companies have made over $595 billion in profits, and that number is only going to go up as the oil companies report last quarter's profits. Last year alone, the major oil companies made over $155 billion in profits. People are sitting at home saying: I can't afford to fill up my gas tank to go to work, and ExxonMobil and Conoco and Shell, all the big oil companies, are making huge profits. What is the Congress doing about it? Well, up to now, the truth is, the Congress is doing nothing about it. Obviously, the President is not doing anything about it. But I think most people understand the President and Vice President are never going to do anything to represent the interests of ordinary Americans. The question is, what do we do about it? The time is now that we should move forward with an excise profits tax. If we enacted a 23-percent excise tax on oil company profits, that would bring in about $35 billion this year. That sum of money would be enough to provide a 6- month suspension in Federal gas and diesel taxes and would also allow States to suspend all or part of their gas and diesel taxes as well. In other words, we are not just talking about Federal taxes; we are talking about State taxes. That would lower gas prices at the pump by almost 37 cents a gallon and up to 48.8 cents for diesel during the next 6 months. Is that going to solve all of the problems? No. But if you can't afford to get to work right now, it will help. Having an excise profits tax on the oil companies is only one of the things we should be doing. Congress has to also address another area where there is strong evidence that speculators, both in hedge funds and in other financial institutions, are driving the price of oil to outrageously high levels. What we have to address is undoing the so-called Enron loophole. This loophole was created in 2000, as part of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. At the behest of Enron lobbyists, a provision in that bill was inserted in the dark of night with no congressional hearings. Specifically, the Enron loophole exempts electronic energy trading from Federal commodities laws. Virtually overnight the loophole freed over-the-counter energy trading from Federal oversight requirements, opening the door to excessive speculation and energy price manipulation. Of course, nobody knows exactly what the impact of the Enron loophole is. But we do know huge amounts of money are being made, not simply in the production of oil but in driving oil futures prices up. Let me quote Stephen Simon, a senior vice president of ExxonMobil, on April 1, 2008, in recent testimony before the House: The price of oil should be about $50 to $55 per barrel. Right now it is more than double that. He attributes the addition, the almost doubling of the price, to speculation that is taking place. Closing the Enron loophole would subject electronic energy markets to proper regulatory oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent price manipulation and excessive speculation. I applaud Senators Levin, Feinstein, Dorgan, and others who have focused on this issue. In addition to an excise profits tax on the oil companies, we must go after the speculation on the part of people within hedge funds and in the financial institutions industry who are simply playing games, making money, and driving the price of oil up. Those are two important steps we must take to lower the price of gas and oil. Thirdly, the Bush administration must stop the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and, in fact, release oil from this Federal stockpile. At a time of record-breaking prices, it makes no sense to continue to take oil off the market and put it into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is not just my opinion. We have seen staff at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve recommend against buying more oil for the SPR in the spring of 2002. This is not a new idea. The truth is, this is an idea that has been used before under Democratic and Republican administrations. For example, when President Clinton ordered the release of 30 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR in 2000, the price of gas fell by 14 cents a gallon in 2 weeks. When the first President Bush released 13 million barrels of crude oil from SPR in 1991, crude oil prices dropped by over $10 a barrel. This is an approach which has been used in the past. It has worked in the past, and it is something we should do right now. That is the third provision I believe we should undertake. Further, and in terms of where I think the comprehensive package should be, we must begin to address the OPEC cartel. I hear a lot of folks around here talk about the wonders of the free market and capitalism and free enterprise. But every single Member of the Senate understands that by definition, OPEC is a cartel. That is what they are. They are a group of oil-producing nations that come together to control oil production, to limit oil production, and, therefore, to artificially raise the price of oil. That is what a cartel is, and that is what OPEC is doing. In that regard, we have to do two things. No. 1, the President must file a complaint with the World Trade Organization. The truth is, OPEC itself is a violation of the rules of the WTO which is presumably about creating the free flow of goods and free trade. On the surface, OPEC is in violation of those rules and agreements. The second thing we must do is to tell people in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, people whom American soldiers died for in 1991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait: Friendship is a two-way street. We protected you in 1991. Now the United States economy and much of the world's economy is in serious trouble. What you, Saudi Arabia, have to do is increase the production of oil. My understanding is that right now Saudi Arabia is producing less oil than they did 2 years ago. There are experts who believe Saudi Arabia can produce almost 2 million barrels a day of oil more than they are currently producing. So that is where we are. Where we are right now is, we have a national crisis. We have working people suffering and wondering about how they are going to be able to afford to get to work or keep warm in the wintertime, at the same time as oil companies are enjoying recordbreaking profits, and at the same time as speculators are making billions and billions of dollars in profits. Now, it is no secret--everybody knows--that the oil and gas industry is enormously powerful. Everybody understands these people have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last 10 years on lobbying, and we know their lobbyists are hard at work at this very moment. We know those people have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. That is the reality and that is the American political system. That is the way it is. It is a system we have to change, but that is the way it is. I think the time is now for the Congress and for the Senate to begin to stand up to these very powerful special interests. I think we need a comprehensive energy approach, and I have outlined it. I think we need a long-term approach moving away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy. I think we need a short-term approach, and I have outlined the four provisions I believe should be in it. Let me conclude by saying this: The crisis we are facing as a nation is not just an energy crisis. It is a crisis as to whether the American people have faith in their own Government, in the people they elect. It is no secret that the President's approval ratings are perhaps as low as any President in American history, and the approval ratings of this Congress are even lower. That is the simple reality. We are a democratic society. When people have problems, they look to their elected officials to respond to those problems and, hopefully, to address them. If we cannot do that, I am not quite sure why we are here. If the oil companies and the gas companies are so powerful with all of their money and their lobbyists and their campaign contributions that we cannot address the crisis facing working Americans, well, maybe we should rethink about what we do here. But I think we can do something, and I have outlined what I think is a series of ideas that, if passed, would address, in a very significant way, this crisis. I look forward to working with my colleagues to do just that. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business on the energy crisis taking place in our country.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, this country faces many problems. All over this country people are worried about decent-paying jobs, the high cost of college education, and a disintegrating health care system. They are worried about the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else. But on Saturday, I held three town meetings around the State of Vermont: one in Norwich in the morning, one in Radford in the afternoon, and one in a small town in northern Vermont in Danville in the evening. To nobody's surprise, the issue that is paramount on people's minds today is the outrageously high price of gas and home heating oil. Vermont is a rural State, which means people very often have to travel long distances to work. When they pay $3.50 for a gallon of gas, it essentially means in most cases that any wage increase they might have gotten over the last year goes right into that gas pump. People are hurting. Wages, in fact, are often not going up. So the end result is that people are working longer hours for lower wages. I have talked to many people who say: We used to go places. We used to travel. We can't afford to do that anymore. Also, obviously, in a State such as Vermont, where the weather gets very cold in the wintertime, the cost of home heating oil is a real burden. There are many people in my State and all over the country who are worried about how they are going to be able to heat their homes next winter. We have a national crisis. It is a crisis that is not only impacting on gas prices at the pump or home heating oil prices. It impacts food and every other product we purchase because as oil prices go up, prices on so many of the products we buy are going to go up as well. This is a national crisis. The time is long overdue for the White House and for Congress to begin to move forward in a comprehensive way. I would be less than honest if I told you I have a lot of confidence that the Bush-Cheney administration is going to do what is right. Just a month ago, President Bush, when asked about the high price of gas at the pump, was very surprised to learn, in fact, that it was going up. Vice President Cheney, who was the former CEO of Halliburton, deeply involved in the oil industry when they first came into power, met with representatives of the oil industry. They are representing, unfortunately, the oil industry. They are not representing the consumers of this country or working families. So it is incumbent on the Congress now in a comprehensive way to start moving forward. This is a complicated issue. I don't think anyone believes there is one single cause for the rapid increase in oil prices, nor does anybody believe there is one single solution. But we do know some of the causes and what we have to do to lower the price of oil. If we are going to protect middle-class Americans, working Americans, that is exactly what we have to do. While oil prices are soaring, what we should acknowledge is that the profits of huge oil companies are also soaring to recordbreaking levels. We know hedge fund managers make billions speculating on oil futures, and we know OPEC continues to function as a price-fixing cartel in violation of the World Trade Organization. The average price for a gallon of gas recently hit a recordbreaking $3.53 a gallon, which has more than doubled since George W. Bush has been President. The price of diesel fuel is now averaging over $4 a gallon, and the price of oil is hovering at close to $120 a barrel. These prices say it all. We have a national emergency on our hands. The time is now for this Congress, this Senate, to act boldly to protect consumers. Recordbreaking oil and gas prices at the pump are posing a crisis not only to commuters going to work, especially in rural areas, but family farmers, consumers, small businesses, truckers, airlines, grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, tourists, and every sector of our economy. High oil prices are one of the reasons we are moving toward a serious recession which will impact not just this country but the entire world. The national oil emergency we are currently experiencing demands both a short-term and a long-term solution. Long term, we must reduce our dependency on fossil fuel, we must move to energy efficiency, we must move to sustainable energy--and the potential there is enormous. It is enormous. We can save huge amounts of energy when we have a transportation system that enables us to drive hybrid cars, to get cars that get 70, 80 miles per gallon, where we have a mass transportation system. There is enormous potential in terms of solar thermal plants, which produce huge amounts of electricity. There is enormous potential in terms of wind, other forms of solar. We have to focus and invest in those technologies. But over the short term, today, we have to understand that while we move forward in transforming our energy system, we must respond to the pain and the distress and the fear Americans are feeling today as gas prices soar. While this is a complicated issue, there are a number of ways I believe Congress can act to lower the price of oil. Let me mention a few ideas I believe we should be pursuing. First, we need to impose a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. The American people do not understand--I do not understand-- why they are paying recordbreaking prices at the gas pump, while ExxonMobil has made more profits than any other company in the history of the world for the past 2 consecutive years. The price at the pump: $3.50 a gallon; ExxonMobil making more profits than any company in the history of the world. Last year alone, ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits, and rewarded its CEO, Rex Tillerson, with $21 million in total compensation. Now, you may think that is a lot of money. But a few years ago, they rewarded their former CEO, Lee Raymond, with a $400 million compensation package when he retired. Outrageously high prices for oil and gas and CEOs at ExxonMobil with huge compensation packages. But ExxonMobil is clearly not alone. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP have also been making out like bandits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made over $595 billion in profits since George W. Bush has been President. Let me be very clear. I believe oil companies should be allowed to make a reasonable profit, but they should not be allowed to rip off the American people. Enacting a true windfall profits tax would not raise a dime in revenue but would lead to significantly lower gas prices at the pump--something we need to do today. The reason for that is quite simple. There would no longer be an incentive for the big oil companies to gouge consumers at the pump because they would not be able to keep any of their windfall profits. Imposing a windfall profits tax will not be easy. Since 1998, the oil and gas industry has spent--this is quite amazing--over $600 million on lobbying. Since 1998, a 10-year period, they have spent over $600 million on lobbying. They own the law firms. They are former Republican leaders, former Democratic leaders, besieging Congress to do everything we can to protect the big oil companies rather than people who are getting ripped off at the gas pump. Since 1990, these very same oil and gas companies have made over $213 million in campaign contributions. So the folks back home may get an understanding of why we are not as a body aggressively standing up to these people, that has to do with huge amounts of money in lobbying, huge amounts of money in campaign contributions. But the time is now for the Congress to have the courage and for the President of the United States to say no to the oil and gas lobbyists and their outrageous campaign contributions and yes to consumers who simply cannot afford to pay these outrageously high prices for gas and oil. While it is true oil companies and their executives are making out like bandits, it is also true that is not the only cause of the problem. What we are seeing today is that wealthy speculators and hedge fund managers have also been making obscene profits--billions and billions of dollars, in some cases going to individuals--by driving up the price of oil in unregulated energy markets with no Government oversight. That is why Congress must act to rein in these greedy speculators who often have nothing to do with oil at all. They do not care what they are speculating on. They are just making money by driving up profits, and we must act by closing what has been referred to as the ``Enron loophole,'' the loophole that enabled Enron to do disastrous things in California some years ago and on the West Coast. This loophole was created in 2000 as part of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. At the behest of Enron lobbyists, a provision in this bill was inserted in the dark of night and with no congressional oversight, no congressional hearings. Specifically, the Enron loophole exempts electronic energy trading from Federal commodities laws. Virtually overnight, the loophole freed over-the-counter energy trading from Federal oversight requirements, opening the door to excessive speculation and energy price manipulation. Since the Enron loophole has been in effect, crude oil prices have jumped from $33.39 a barrel, in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, to over $117 a barrel today. Last January, a veteran oil analyst at Oppenheimer has estimated there is as much as a $57 a barrel ``speculative premium'' on the price of oil. Others have estimated that speculators are driving up the price of oil by about 20 to 30 percent. Closing the Enron loophole would subject electronic energy markets to proper regulatory oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent price manipulation and excessive speculation. I would like to thank Senators Levin and Feinstein for introducing legislation to close this loophole. It should be passed and signed into law as soon as possible. In addition, the Bush administration must stop the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and immediately release oil from this Federal stockpile to reduce gas prices. At a time of record-high prices, it simply makes no sense to continue to take oil off the market and put it into the SPR. But do not take my word for it. Even the staff at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve recommended against buying more oil for SPR in the spring of 2002. Let me quote from what they had to say about this 6 years ago: Commercial inventories are low, retail prices are high and economic growth is slow. The Government should avoid acquiring oil for the Reserve under these circumstances. If that advice was relevant in the spring of 2002, it is even more relevant today. Yet that is exactly the policy the administration is following. Even though there are over 700 million barrels of oil in the Reserve, the administration has plans of putting an additional 13 million barrels of oil into our Nation's stockpile. There is another issue out there that we must address, and that is beginning to understand that OPEC is a cartel whose function in life is to control oil production and artificially drive up the price. It is my view that OPEC is operating in violation of World Trade Organization rules. The President of the United States should begin action to break up OPEC. Yesterday, I signed a letter, as I believe the Presiding Officer did, demanding that Saudi Arabia--one of the key OPEC nations; the largest oil-producing country in the world--increase their production. Amazingly, Saudi Arabia is producing less oil today than they were several years ago. There are experts who believe they can be producing 1.8 million barrels a day more, which would have a significant impact on driving oil prices down. We have to remind Saudi Arabia that in 1991, when Saddam Hussein's army was going to overrun that country and take their oil, soldiers from the United States of America put their lives on the line--died--defending Kuwait, defending Saudi Arabia. That was their time of need. Today it is our time of need. It is the world economy's time of need. Saudi Arabia wants to buy sophisticated aircraft from the United States of America. Well, I say to them, as many of my colleagues say: Friendship is a two-way street. Increase your production. Drive down the prices of oil. Lastly, we must give the President the power to impose temporary price caps to stabilize oil prices when markets are being manipulated. Today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, has the authority to impose temporary price caps on electricity. When it used this authority to deal with the California energy crisis created by Enron, electricity prices fell dramatically. The President should have similar authority over gas prices. These are a few of the ideas that are out there. Other people have good ideas. My view is we should bring these ideas together in a comprehensive way. If we do that, and if we stand together in a bipartisan way--if the President of the United States decides to represent the consumers of this country rather than just the oil companies--we can keep faith with the American people. We can lower prices. We can deal with the very severe national crisis this country is now facing. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay Day is the day that marks the extra months into the next year that a woman needs to work in order to receive pay equal to what a man would make for the equivalent job in only 12 months. Yes, Mr. President, as astonishing as it is, in the year 2008, it takes nearly 4 extra months for a woman to bring home the same amount of money as her male counterpart. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, 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. And today we can take a small but very significant step to make sure that Americans have the legal opportunity to challenge pay discrimination by supporting the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Before I begin, let me thank Senator Kennedy for his efforts to ensure that we don't just stand by doing nothing, following an ill-advised Supreme Court ruling that takes us a step back in time by making it extraordinarily difficult for victims of pay discrimination to sue their employers. This Congress must not stand by while the Court forces an unreasonable reading of the law. Through this decision, it tosses aside its own precedent and weakens protection provided by the Civil Rights Act to rule in favor of an employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. That is why I call on all of my colleagues, on a bipartisan basis, to stand together today to send a clear signal that pay discrimination is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by voting to move forward to debate the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This legislation overturns the Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire. The Court held employees who are subjected to pay discrimination must bring a complaint within 6 months of the discriminatory compensation decision, meaning the day the employer decides to pay her less, and that each paycheck that is lower because of such discrimination does not restart the clock. Under this decision it doesn't matter if the discrimination is still ongoing today or if the worker initially had no way of knowing that others were being paid more for the same work just because of age, race, gender or disability. Most inexplicably, the majority insisted it did not matter that Goodyear was still paying her far less than her male counterparts when she filed her complaint. Mr. President, if you asked anyone on the street, they would tell you that this decision simply defies common sense. In fact, it is so clearly contrary to Americans' sense of right and wrong that everyone should be outraged. Lilly Ledbetter, a loyal employee for 19 years, discovered she was being paid significantly less than the men in her same job. 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. How was she to know that this discrimination was happening? Hardworking Americans do not have the time to sit around talking about their salaries. It is clearly not her fault she didn't discover this inequity sooner. In closing, it is disturbing that the Court chose to gut a key part of the Civil Rights Act that has protected hardworking Americans from pay discrimination for the past 40 years. It is our duty to send a message to employers that this type of discrimination is unacceptable. Fortunately, Congress can amend the law to undo this damaging decision. And, it should do so without delay.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I commend my friend from North Dakota. He is exactly right. The middle class in our country is in deep trouble. Some would argue the middle class is collapsing. And the people of our country are looking to Washington, to us, to get something done. What they are finding is a filibuster on a corrections bill and inaction in every single area that faces working people in our country. A couple of weeks ago in Vermont we held several town meetings on the economy. I invited Vermonters to respond to our Web site about what the collapse of the middle class means to them personally. I think it is one thing for those of us to give a speech, to use huge numbers, to talk in an extravagant way; it is another thing to hear directly from people in terms of what is going on in their lives. What I promised that I would do, and continue to do, is read some of these very poignant e-mails I received, mostly from Vermonters, some from other parts of the country, where people are simply saying: Look, this is what is going on in my life today. I thought I was in the middle class, but I no longer am. So what I want to do is read a few of the e-mails that I received, to put what we are debating and discussing in a very personal tone, in the real words of real Americans. This is the collapse of the middle class as described by ordinary people. We received an e-mail from an older couple in the State of Vermont. This is what they wrote. The woman writes: My husband and I are retired and 65. We would like to have worked longer, but because of injuries caused at work and the closing of our factory to go to Canada, we chose to retire early. Now with oil prices the way they are, we cannot afford to heat our home unless my husband cuts and splits wood, which is a real hardship as he has had his back fused and should not be working most of the day to keep up with the wood. Not only that, he has to get up two to three times each night to keep the fire going. We also have a 2003 car that we only get to drive to get groceries or go to the doctor or to visit my mother in the nursing home 3 miles away. It now costs us $80 a month to go nowhere. We have 42,000 miles on a 5-year-old car. I have Medicare but I cannot afford prescription coverage unless I take my money out of an annuity, which is supposed to cover the house payments when my husband's pension is gone. We also only eat two meals a day to conserve. This is a 65-year-old couple in the State of Vermont in the year 2008, and I suspect this story is being told all over America. Here is another story about a woman who lives in our largest county, Chittenden County. She writes: First of all, I am a single mother of a 16-year-old daughter. I own a condominium. I have worked at the hospital for 16 years and make a very good salary, in the high $40,000 range. I own a 2005 Honda Civic. I filled up my gas tank yesterday, and it cost me almost $43. That was at $3.22 a gallon. If prices stay at that level, it will cost me $160 per month to fill up my gas tank. A year ago, it would cost me approximately $80 per month. I now have to decide what errands I really need to run and what things I can do over the phone or the Internet. But the other issue is, if I use my cell phone too much during the month, my bill will increase and that will cost me more money. I feel as though I am between a rock and a hard place no matter how hard I try to adjust my budget for the month. I am watching my purchases in the grocery store and department stores more closely because of increased prices. I am not sure that can I afford to take a summer vacation this year. I usually take a day off during my daughter's spring vacation so we can go shopping in New Hampshire somewhere. I have already cancelled those plans for this year. I am hoping that I can take a few days off this summer to go to Maine. We will see how the gas prices are this summer, but I hear it is going to get worse. Not much hope for someone on a tight budget. Here we have somebody who asks nothing more than to be able to take a few days off with her daughter to go shopping. Somebody who works very hard cannot even do that because the price of gas is soaring. Here is another e-mail that comes from a woman living in a small town in Vermont. This is what she writes: Yesterday I paid for our latest home heating fuel delivery, $1,100. I also paid my $2,000 plus credit card balance much of which bought gas and groceries for the month. My husband and I are very nervous about what will happen to us when we are old. Although we have three jobs between us, and participate in a 403(B) retirement plan, we have not saved enough for a realistic post-work life if we survive to our life expectancy. As we approach the traditional retirement age, we are slowly paying off our daughter's college tuition loan and trying to keep our heads above water. We have always lived frugally. We buy used cars and store-brand groceries, recycle everything, walk or carpool when possible, and plastic our windows each fall. Even so, if and when our son decides to attend college, we will be in deep debt at age 65. P.S. Please do not use my name. I live in a small town and this is so embarrassing. Well, it is not embarrassing. That is the story being told from one end of this country to the other. People who thought that after working their entire lives, they would be able to retire with a little bit of security and a little bit of dignity are now wondering, in fact, if they will be able to survive at all. After working your whole life and being frugal, you should not have to retire in debt dependent upon a credit card. The e-mails we receive from people who are young, middle age and old, each in its own way is a work of poetry because it comes from people's hearts. It is poignant. It is true. This is what a younger person from Vermont writes: I am 23 years old. I have about $33K of education debt + $12K of credit card debt and only make about $26K a year + benefits. I barely make enough to support myself and whenever unexpected expenses come up I end up having to use credit to cover them. I feel like I will never catch up and now everything is getting even more expensive; it seems hopeless. Meanwhile I listen to the news and how the rich are getting richer and it is making me hate this country. I am not an economics expert but I know that things could be done differently to help people like me who work hard and get little in return instead of rewarding those who have the ability to use their money to make more money. We heard Senator Dorgan talk about huge tax breaks that go to some of the wealthiest people, people who don't pay their taxes because they move to the Cayman Islands and set up phony front offices. This writer, who may not have a PhD. in economics, hit it right on the head. This young man and these old people are the people we should start worrying about, not the wealthiest people who are having it very good. Let me talk briefly about a woman. This is another piece of reality. She writes: As a couple with one child, earning about $55000/year, we have been able to eat out a bit, buy groceries and health insurance, contribute to our retirement funds and live a relatively comfortable life financially. We've never accumulated a lot of savings, but our bills were always paid on time and we never had any interest on our credit card. Over the last year, even though we've tightened our belts (not eating out much, watching purchases at the grocery store, not buying ``extras'' like a new TV, repairing the washer instead of buying a new one . . . ), and we find ourselves with over $7000 of credit card debt and trying to figure out how to pay for braces for our son! I work 50 hours per week to help earn extra money to catch up, but that also takes a toll on the family life--not spending those 10 hours at home with my husband and son makes a big difference for all of us. My husband hasn't had a raise in 3 years, and his employer is looking to cut out any extra benefits they can to lower their expenses, which will increase ours! Here is a woman who has to work longer hours in order to try to catch up, and she can't spend time with her husband and son, which is what her life is about. How many millions of people are in the same boat? What is not usually talked about on the floor of the Senate is the fact that here in the United States, our people work longer hours than do the people of any other industrialized country. Not talked about terribly often is that to make ends meet now, in the vast majority of middle-class life, you need both the husband and the wife working long hours. Despite those two incomes, people have less disposable income today than 30 years ago in a one-income family. But when you talk about the collapse of the middle class, one of the manifestations of much of it is that people have to claw and scratch and work so hard that their family lives deteriorate. In this case, a woman cannot even spend the time she would like with her son and husband. Here are a few more e-mails. This comes from a veteran from the State of Vermont: The real killer is the price of heating fuel. Up here in northern Vermont we need heat in the winter. With a Military Pension I make too much to get any assistance. We got a 2.8% pension increase in January, and the price of heating fuel has increased by about 50%. We have to cut back on food in order to stay warm. Thank you. Somebody trying to live on a military pension that goes up 2.8 percent, the price of home heating fuel soars, not making it. This is another short e-mail we received: The company I work for has just announced a ``raise freeze'' which means not even a cost of living increase can be expected this year . . . this will be tough for us, as we were counting on at least a cost of living increase in a year where the cost of living has surely increased, be it groceries, fuel, wood, gasoline, etc! Let me finish by reading an e-mail from another young Vermonter: As a graduating law student I am particularly concerned with the potential reduction of jobs available to me. I am leaving school with a great amount of debt in student loans and credit cards and entering the uncertain job market. I currently pay a tremendous amount of money in rent. I would like to work in poverty law but those jobs only pay about 36,000 so it is unlikely going to happen. Here is an example of a young man who goes to law school, wants to work in poverty law, but because his debts are so high and the interest rate on that debt is so high, he no longer has a choice of careers. This is happening to young people all over the country. The middle class in America is collapsing. Poverty is increasing. The gap between the very wealthy and everybody else is growing wider. Today we have by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. We are the only major country on this planet without a national health care program. The cost of college education is very high, while the oil companies make huge profits. Our people cannot afford to fill up their gas tanks. As Senator Dorgan said, the time is long overdue for this Congress to start focusing on the real issues facing ordinary Americans. The time is now for us to develop the courage to stand up to the big money interests, the 35,000 lobbyists who surround us every day, the big campaign contributors who want benefits for the wealthy and the powerful. We have an obligation to stand up for the middle class. I hope we can begin doing that as soon as possible. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wanted to say a few words in support of the Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act, an amendment to the housing bill offered by Senators Cantwell and Ensign. Before I begin, let me thank Senator Cantwell for her determined efforts to ensure that we don't stand by while our renewable energy industry and energy efficiency industry lose jobs due to expiring tax policy. In these times of economic uncertainty, while we work to create new jobs in the green economy of the future, we must also make sure we do not lose existing jobs in the small green economy we already have, and Senator Cantwell, along with many of my colleagues, has made that a priority. I thank her for that. The clean energy tax stimulus amendment which the Senate is expected to vote on later today and which is based on a stand-alone bill introduced last week, which I am strongly cosponsoring, extends financial incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency that would otherwise expire this year, and that is something we must make absolutely sure does not happen. More specifically, the amendment would extend for 1 year the current production tax credit--commonly called the PTC--which supports the generation of electricity from renewable energy such as wind, biomass, and geothermal. Additionally, the amendment would extend for 8 years the business investment tax credit which provides financial help for larger scale fuel cell and solar investments and the residential investment tax credit that helps homeowners by giving them the tax credit for up to 30 percent of the cost of a solar PV unit and up to $2,000 for the installation of solar hot water heaters. Finally, in terms of energy efficiency, the amendment we will vote on today would extend for 1 year the current credits for energy efficiency improvements for heating and cooling systems, windows, and other qualified residential property, and it also extends the tax credit for building homes that are energy efficient. In addition, the amendment extends tax credits for the purchase of energy-efficient appliances. As you know, wind energy is the fastest growing source of energy throughout to entire world. Unfortunately, in our country today, the wind industry is seeing a dropoff in investment which will quickly lead to the loss of thousands of jobs. This is totally absurd. The American people want to move to sustainable energy. They want to move to wind energy. There are businesses out there prepared to build and install wind turbines. Yet we are not providing them the help they need to help us deal with global warming and also to create many good-paying jobs. Every month that passes without a production tax credit extension diminishes the industry's capacity to create jobs, spur economic growth, and produce electricity that helps us reduce global warming. In fact, the American Wind Energy Association projects that the rate of growth in American wind power will decrease by more than 70 percent between this year and next in the absence of an extension of the production tax credit. This is totally absurd. All over the world, countries are growing good jobs in terms of wind, and we are on the verge of losing jobs despite the fact that the American people want to move us toward sustainable energy. What we are doing contrasts sharply with the current trend of dramatic wind power growth that could otherwise be expected to continue. People want sustainable energy, people want wind power, and here we are sitting back, not providing the help the people in the wind industry desperately need. If we do not extend the PTC, we will waste a tremendous opportunity to preserve existing jobs, create many thousands of new good-paying jobs this year alone, and build, in addition, another 5,000 megawatts of new wind energy, which will spur another $10 billion in economic activity. Let me say a few words about the solar tax credit. The investment tax credit is responsible for an estimated 6,000 high-quality jobs that were created in the solar sector in 2007 alone, and another 9,000 to 12,000 are expected in 2008 if Congress sends the signal that this tax credit is here to stay. That is, of course, exactly what we must be doing. Without an extension of the ITC, some have estimated that we would lose over $8 billion in investments that would have been made, leading to a net loss of almost 40,000 jobs in the solar photovoltaic sector alone in 2009. The ITC has real implications also for utility-scale solar projects. I have talked to people in the solar thermal plant business, talked to some of the major utility companies. We have a potential in this country to produce an enormous amount of clean, relatively inexpensive electricity through solar thermal plants which are now beginning to move in the Mojave Desert, in Nevada, in New Mexico, and Arizona. It turns out that based on the geography of the Southeast, there is enormous potential for dozens of solar thermal units that could produce a significant amount of electricity that our country needs. That electricity could be produced at a reasonable cost, in an effective way, emitting virtually no greenhouse gas emissions. It is sitting there waiting to happen, and our job has to be to help those people in the utilities that want to move forward. Without an extension of the ITC, these types of projects will be in jeopardy or, in fact, face a significant delay. Additionally, we are seeing a new solar powerplant located 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, AZ, and scheduled to go into operation by 2011 which would not go on line without the benefits of the ITC. The 280- megawatt facility is expected to generate revenue of over $4 billion, bringing over $1 billion in economic benefits to the State of Arizona and enough electricity to power 70,000 homes. The solar thermal unit being planned by Pacific Gas and Electric would provide electricity of 553 megawatts for over 400,000 homes. All of this is sitting there waiting to happen, and all over the world people are wondering, What is the U.S. Congress doing to stimulate this type of activity? Today is our day. Let's take a quick look at the importance of extending the PTC and the ITC, but let's not forget that extending these credits has a ripple effect on other sectors of the economy. For example, the American Council on Renewable Energy estimates that for every job created in renewable manufacturing, there are an additional three high-quality jobs created to design, install, operate, and maintain the renewable energy infrastructure. So I think it is pretty clear that we must act today to, at the very least, extend some of the current renewable energy and energy- efficiency tax credits. I myself hope we are going to go a lot further than this, but what we have to do is an absolute necessity. Let me conclude once again by thanking Senator Cantwell for her leadership on this issue. This is enormously important. The rest of the world is moving in order to deal with global warming, in order to create good-paying jobs. We have to pass this legislation today, and we have to go beyond that in the future. I yield the floor.