Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m., Wednesday, October 17; that on Wednesday, 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 reserved for their use later in the day, there then be a period of morning business for 60 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the majority and minority, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half; provided that Senator Stevens be recognized to speak in morning business for up to 7 minutes prior to the start of the controlled time; that following morning business, the Senate proceed to H.R. 3043, as provided for under a previous order; that on Wednesday, the Senate stand in recess from 1 to 2 p.m.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me take this opportunity in this few minutes to touch on a few issues that I think we do not discuss enough on the floor of the Senate; for that matter, on the floor of the House. There are a lot of people in the United States who turn on the television every night and they hear the President of the United States and other people tell them how wonderful the economy is doing; that the economy is robust; that we have never had it so good. This is what they hear over and over again. And people start scratching their heads and saying: I don't quite understand it. The economy is supposed to be doing well when I am working longer hours for lower wages? Why is it that my job has just gone off to China, and the new job I have maybe pays half as much as the job that I lost? Why is it that in the last several years, actually since President Bush has been President, over 8 million Americans have lost their health insurance? Does that sound like an economy that is working well for ordinary people? Since George Bush has been President, 5 million more people have slipped into poverty. Median family income today is less than it was back when President Bush first came into office. I think we have to be honest and say, yes, the economy is doing very well, in fact, for those people who have a lot of money. In fact, what we can say today is that if you are within the top 1 percent of American wage earners, you are probably doing extraordinarily well. What we can also say is that the wealthiest 1 percent today are doing better than at any time since the 1920s. So I take my hat off to the CEOs of large corporations and to the wealthiest people in this country. But you know, I just had a series of town meetings in the State of Vermont. I talked to a lot of people. The message I get back in Vermont--and I doubt it is terribly different in Colorado or any other State in this country--is that the middle class is hurting. The reality is, if you look at the cold statistics, what you find is that in America today the middle class is, in fact, shrinking. People are working longer hours for lower wages. Today, amazingly enough, because of lowered wages huge numbers of women are now in the workforce. Yet, despite that, a two-income family today has less disposable income than a one-income family had 30 years ago. The reason for that is people are spending an enormous amount of their limited income on housing. The cost of housing is soaring. They are spending money on health care. They are spending money on child care. They are spending money on college education. At the end of the day, they do not have a whole lot left. In fact, there are many millions of families today that are one paycheck away from economic disaster. It seems to me we have to be honest with the American people and not talk about how great the economy is but talk about an economy which is splitting right down the middle: the people on top doing fantastically well, people down below doing very poorly, and the middle class in many cases struggling against economic desperation. The statistics with regard to income distribution in this country are staggering in terms of their inequality. We do not talk about this terribly much. I guess it is something we are not supposed to be mentioning. But the reality is that according to the latest analysis, in 2005 the top 1 percent of earners made more money than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. One percent earned more income than the bottom 50 percent, which translates to the top 300,000 earners making more money than the bottom 150 million--300,000 making more money than the bottom 150 million. While the top earning one one-hundredth of 1 percent received an average income increase of $4.4 million in 2005, the bottom 90 percent saw their average income decline by about $172. What we are looking at is tens of millions of Americans working hard, and they are seeing their health care costs go up, they are seeing their housing costs go up, they are seeing education costs go up, they are seeing the price they are paying for a gallon of gas to get them to work going up, home heating oil going up, basic supplies going up, and at the end of the year they have less money than they did the previous year. But the people on top are making out like bandits. And it is a fact, many of them are bandits, and it is high time we began to address the issue of income inequality in this country. I talked a moment ago about income. That is how much money people make in a year. But the same phenomenon takes place regarding wealth. The unfair distribution of wealth, which is accumulated income, is even more appalling. Forbes magazine recently found that the wealthiest 400 Americans--400 people, not a whole lot--were worth $1.54 trillion in 2006; 400 people, $1.54 trillion. That is up $290 billion from the previous year. In other words, while inflation-adjusted real wages declined for the vast majority of working people in our country, the top 400 wealthiest individuals saw, on average, a $750 million increase per person. That is not bad, on average: $750 million. Today, disgracefully--and this is a issue I am going to come back to time and time again until this body does something about it-- disgracefully, and despite all the rhetoric we hear around here about family values, the United States has, at 18 percent, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. Eighteen percent of our kids are living in poverty. You go to Scandinavia, the numbers are 3 percent, 4 percent; Europe, 5 or 6 percent. Eighteen percent--almost one in five children in this country lives in poverty. Since President Bush has been in office, as I mentioned earlier, nearly 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty. We have 37 million people in this country living in poverty. Almost 9 million have lost their health insurance. Three million have lost their pensions. People work their entire lives, they expect to have a pension when they retire, and in many cases corporate America says: By the way, we are changing the rules of the game; thanks for working us for 30 years, but you are not getting the pension you were promised. And median income has declined since Bush has been President by about $2,500. Thirty-five million Americans struggled to put food on the table last year. That is called food security. We have 35 million Americans in this country who worry about whether they are going to have enough to eat. That number is going up. Within that reality, we have another reality in that the wealthiest people in this country are increasingly emulating the robber barons of past decades as they garishly look for ways to spend their fortunes. They have a very difficult time. If you are worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, what are you going to buy? Another pair of shoes? It is hard to say. What they are doing is looking into things like yachts that are longer than football fields and all kinds of excesses to show everybody just how wealthy they are. Robert Frank is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He has written a recently published book called ``Richistan.'' He writes in his book that households of a net worth of between $100 million and $1 billion, the very top of the top, spent last year on average $182,000 on watches--on watches. I have a good watch. It worked well for 5 years. It cost me 30 bucks. But they managed to spend $182,000 in 1 year on watches. That is what they do. It is very important that we continue to give these people tax breaks. I really do think so. If you could only spend $182,000 on watches, clearly the President is right and we need massive tax breaks to help these folks out. But it is not just the money they spend on watches. Mr. Frank, the author of ``Richistan,'' details how, during this 1-year period, the same economically elite households spent $311,000 on automobiles. How many cars do you buy for $311,000? I don't know how many cars people need. And $397,000 in one year on jewelry. Obviously, the stress is very great figuring out how you are going to spend that money, so they had to spend on average $169,000 on spa services. You are sitting around, it is a tough thing, what new watch do you buy? What new vehicle do you buy? It is tough, and you need spa services. That is where they are spending the money. But also, as it happens, during that same year, 400,000 qualified young people in this country couldn't afford to go to college. They didn't have enough money to go to college. Our Nation is in desperate need of a well-educated workforce. We all know that a ticket to the middle class in many cases is a college education. So while the richest people in this country are spending $182,000 a year on watches, we have hundreds of thousands of kids who cannot go to college. The decline of the middle class, combined with the growing income inequality in our Nation, is a national scandal, and it is something we must address. I think it is high time Members of Congress kind of look beyond the wealthy campaign contributors who fund the operations in both the House and the Senate and begin to deal with the needs of the middle class and working families. Obviously, there are a lot of issues out there as to how we can improve the economy. We can go on for hours talking about that. There are a lot of thoughtful ideas here in the Senate and in the House. But let me mention five areas, at least, where I think we should be paying some more attention. First, I think we have to reorder our national priorities. What we have to say to the wealthiest people in this country: President Bush has given you hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, and yet we have children in this country who are hungry, we have millions of children who lack health insurance, we have kids who are going to inadequate schools. You know what. We are going to rescind the tax breaks that have been given to you so that we can take care not only of our children but we can take care of those people who are disabled. I don't know about Colorado, but I can tell you in Vermont one of the serious problems we have is higher and higher property taxes. One of the reasons the property taxes for education are going up is because the Congress has not kept the promises it made in terms of funding special education. Special education, as you know, is a very expensive proposition, so local school districts have to come up with the money the Federal Government promised but has not committed. I think we should be adequately funding that and actually keeping the promise we made to special education. We should make sure our seniors get what they need. Our veterans--I am proud to say we are beginning to make some progress in adequately funding the needs of our veterans, but more needs to be done. We have to begin to stand up for all Americans and not just for the wealthiest. When my Republican friends talk about tax breaks and tax breaks for the richest people in country, I say enough is enough. At a time when we already have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income, the very richest who are doing phenomenally well do not need more tax breaks. Second, I think we have to take a very hard look at our trade policies. I think it is clear to anyone who has studied these issues that NAFTA, CAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China, and other trade agreements were essentially written by large multinational corporations in order to benefit large multinational corporations, and they have done that. They have done that. What is going on as a result of many of our trade policies is that corporate America is shutting down plants in America. We have lost 3 million good-paying manufacturing jobs in the last 6 years. In my own State of Vermont, we have lost 25 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the last 6 years. We are beginning to see the loss of many good-paying white-collar information-technology jobs--jobs going to China, jobs going to India, jobs going to low-wage countries all over the world. On the other side, what we are seeing, because of these trade agreements, is increased poverty in Mexico, for example, as a result of NAFTA. As a result of NAFTA, 1.3 million small farmers have been driven off the countryside, off the farms they held for generations, because they couldn't compete with cheap American corn. Poverty has increased. But we do have the good news, I guess, in Mexico: as a result of this NAFTA stuff, there is one gentleman named Carlos Slim Helu, a big guy in telecommunications coming from the poor country of Mexico, now the richest guy in the world, worth $60 billion; he passed Mr. Gates. You have a guy worth $60 billion, poverty in Mexico increasing, and small farmers driven off the land. We can create trade agreements which work for working people in this country and working people abroad, not for the CEOs of large corporations, and that is what we have to do. I think given the failure of trade agreements, it is time to take a moratorium to stop these trade agreements until we get them right. On another issue, we have discussed, as you know, a whole lot about the SCHIP program. I strongly support what the leadership here is trying to do. But let us be clear. Let us be clear. While it is a good step forward, bringing 4 million more kids into the SCHIP program, there are millions of children, after we pass this legislation, or if we can override the President's veto, who will still not have health insurance. We are living in a nation in which 47 million Americans have zero health insurance. Even more are underinsured. I met recently in Burlington, VT, with a group of young people who said: Yes, they have health insurance. They have to pay 50 percent of the cost of the health insurance. There is a large deductible. So at the end of the day, despite the health insurance they have, they are paying out a lot of money for health care. It is time that we place on the table the fact that we are the only Nation in the industrialized world, the only one that does not have a national health care program which guarantees health care for every man, woman, and child. The programs are different in Germany than Canada, than in the United Kingdom, than Scandinavia. They are all different. But essentially what every other major country on Earth has said is that health care should be a right, not a privilege--a right. Meanwhile, we spend twice as much per person on health care as any of the people of any other country. Yet, if you look at the health care index situation, our infant mortality rate is very high; in many countries people live longer than we do. Our health care system is disintegrating and the time is long overdue that we have the guts to take on the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, and move toward a national health care program which provides health care to all people as a right of citizenship. Lastly, I am on both the Energy Committee and the Environmental Committee. Both committees are working very hard on one of the great crises facing our planet today; that is, global warming. It is clear to me that as a nation, we have got to radically change our course, which for many years under President Bush has almost denied the reality of global warming. We have got to move away from that and not only understand its severity but move in an aggressive way to reverse greenhouse gas emissions and to make sure our kids and our grandchildren can live on a planet with the quality of life we enjoy today. In addition to that, as the tragedy in Minnesota a few months ago indicated, our infrastructure is in very serious shape. The engineers tell us we need to spend over a trillion dollars to rebuild our bridges, our culverts, our waste water systems, and our water plants. In my view, we should be investing substantially in sustainable energy, in energy efficiency, in solar technology, in wind technology, and geothermal. When we do those things, we will accomplish two goals: No. 1, we are going to reverse global warming, and, secondly, we will create millions and millions of good-paying jobs. Instead of spending $10 billion a month on the civil war in Iraq, we should be rebuilding our infrastructure and moving away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency, to sustainable energy as we take a leadership role in this world to reverse global warming. Let me conclude by saying it is no secret that the American people now are not looking terribly favorably on the White House or the Congress. I can understand why. I think one way we can begin to win the respect of the American people is to at least acknowledge the reality of their lives, to acknowledge what is going on, and then to begin to start addressing some of those problems. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I have three. I often think that one of the funniest bumper stickers I have ever seen in my life is one that says: If I had known how much fun grandchildren would be, I would have had them first. So congratulations.

Mr. SANDERS

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 348, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the State of Vermont is proud that one of its residents, Dr. Jerold F. Lucey, recently received the Alfred I. duPont Award for Excellence in Children's Health Care. The award is offered each year to an individual in the health care profession who has made a major contribution to preventing childhood diseases. Dr. Lucey helped pioneer phototherapy to prevent infant jaundice. He also played an essential role in bringing artificial surfactants from Japan to this country. The surfactants help premature newborns breathe, and since their introduction in the United States just over 15 years ago they have helped reduce infant mortality respiratory distress rate by 90 percent. In addition, Dr. Lucey has developed the Vermont Oxford Network, which links 700 medical institutions in 25 nations to a network that tracks data on underweight-newborns, managing the data of more than 50,000 infants each year. This collaborative system has enabled advanced research, and the sharing of medical procedures that work, among pediatricians all over the globe. Jerrold Lucey is Professor of Neonatology at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, where he has taught for more than 50 years. He also was the chief of Newborn Services at Fletcher Allen Health Care medical center in Burlington, VT, and in addition served as editor-in-chief of the journal Pediatrics for 35 years. We in Vermont are very proud of the work Dr. Jerold F. Lucey has done, both with infants in our State, and for the health of children everywhere.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Let me congratulate Senator Murray, Senator Boxer, and Senator Isakson for their very important work on this asbestos issue. What I wish to focus on is a front-page story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The headline reads: ``Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade.'' What it says is: The new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll posed two statements to voters. The first was, ``Foreign trade has been good for the U.S. economy because demand for U.S. products abroad has resulted in economic growth and jobs for Americans here at home and provided more choices for consumers.'' The second statement was, ``Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products.'' Asked which statement came closer to their own view, 59 percent of Republicans named the second statement, while 32 percent pointed to the first. Back to the headline, ``Republicans Grow Skeptical On Free Trade.'' That is the Republicans. In terms of the Democrats, earlier in the article: Other leading Democrats have been harshly critical of trade expansion, pleasing their party's labor union backers. In a March 2007 WSJ/NBC poll, before recent scandals involving tainted imports, 54 percent of Democratic voters said free- trade agreements have hurt the U.S., compared with 21 percent who said they have helped. So what do we have? We have the overwhelming percentage of Republicans who are now telling us that unfettered free trade is not working for American workers. We have the overwhelming percentage of Democratic supporters telling us free trade has not been working for the American people. Yet despite those numbers, and a growing consensus among working families in this country, what we continue to see is people in the White House, people in the Senate and the House who keep telling us how great free trade is. Well, let me be very clear. Free trade is very good for the large multinational corporations who can throw American workers out on the street, move abroad to China and other low-wage countries, hire people there for pennies an hour, and bring their products back into this country. For those people, we concede--for the CEOs of large corporations--unfettered free trade has been a very good thing. But for the middle-class and working families of this country, for working families and poor people in Mexico and in other low-wage countries, unfettered free trade has been an unmitigated disaster. Now, there are a lot of reasons the middle class in America is shrinking. There are a lot of reasons nearly 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty since George Bush has become President. There are a number of reasons. Certainly, one of the processes by which we as a Nation are engaged in a race to the bottom has been the unfettered free-trade agreements negotiated by the President of the United States and passed by the Congress. And by that I mean NAFTA. I mean permanent normal trade relations with China. The reality of those trade agreements, plus other economic decisions being made by the U.S. Government, is not just that poverty is increasing, it is that median income for working-age families has declined by about $2,400 since the year 2000. It is that personal savings rates in this country are below zero, and have been below zero for eight consecutive quarters--something that has not happened since the Great Depression. Unfettered free trade has a lot to do with the fact that over 8 million Americans have lost their health insurance since 2000, and we are now up to 47 million Americans without any health insurance. Hunger in America is growing. The cost of college education is becoming harder and harder for middle-class families to afford. It is interesting to note that a few months ago, in a poll done by, again, the Wall Street Journal, more than two-thirds of the American people believe the U.S. economy is either in a recession now or will be in a recession next year. That is a poll from August done by Wall Street Journal/NBC News. In my view, it is imperative that our country trade. Nobody I know of believes we should place a wall around this country. Trade is a good thing. But what we must begin doing is negotiating fair trade agreements that reflect the interests of working families in America, working families in other countries, and not just large multinational corporations and the CEOs who help write these trade agreements. I just returned the weekend before last from a trip to Costa Rica, where I witnessed something that was really quite extraordinary. Costa Rica will be the first country in the entire world to actually have a referendum to vote up or down whether they want to enter these CAFTA agreements. I have no idea who is going to win that referendum. It looks as if it is going to be very close. But on one side you have all of the moneyed interests. What I heard is, the ``yeses,'' the people who want that free-trade agreement, CAFTA, are spending 100 times more than the people who are in opposition. You have a media which is almost universally supportive in Costa Rica of this CAFTA agreement. On the other side you have students, you have environmentalists, you have trade unionists, you have environmentalists, you have an extraordinary grassroots movement such that in a nation of fewer than 4 million people, a week ago, 150,000 people came out in a rally--150,000 in a nation of less than 4 million people--to express their opposition to the CAFTA agreement. We have--especially with the fact that fast track is no longer in existence--the opportunity as a Congress to begin rethinking our trade policies, to create trade policies which create good jobs in the United States and good jobs in the countries of our trading partners, policies which benefit all of the people and not just the people on top. So I conclude by saying, if some of my Republican friends think it is just progressives or people who are concerned about the needs of working people on this side who are concerned about trade, I suggest you go to the Wall Street Journal today, and what you will find is the vast majority of Republicans now have serious concerns about our current trade policies because they see those trade policies as being harmful to the middle class and working families of this country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the poll from the Wall Street Journal be printed in its entirety.

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for a few minutes to speak as in morning business.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, yesterday, as part of the managers' package, the Senate approved an amendment that I offered to the Defense authorization bill. That amendment would establish a pilot program at the Department of Defense to deal with a very important problem. That problem is that all across our country, men and women are returning home from the war in Iraq, from the war in Afghanistan, they are coming home to big cities, small towns, and rural communities, and they and their families, in many cases, are hurting. These are soldiers and military family members who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who are suffering from traumatic brain injury, who are suffering from depression, and who are watching their marriages and their families coming apart. They are suffering nightmares, they are suffering panic attacks and sometimes uncontrollable anger and various physical symptoms. Because of the stigma, many of these brave soldiers do not come forward for help, and others, where the military infrastructure is not strong, simply don't know where to turn. They are hurting, but they don't know how to get help. In my view, we have a moral responsibility to reach out to these soldiers and their families and to help them. The program, approved by unanimous consent yesterday, would create a pilot program at the Department of Defense. Under this pilot, funds would be provided to adjutant generals to conduct person-to-person outreach to soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, the heart of this program is outreach quality. We can't be successful in dealing with PTSD if soldiers do not get involved in the program, if they are not involved in counseling. I fear very much that unless we are aggressive in our outreach efforts, especially in rural areas, especially with the National Guard's people, we are going to see folks who don't know where to turn. These trained outreach personnel will be meeting with the soldiers and their families. They will be able to make sure the soldiers and their families know about the help that is available to them. In other words, it doesn't matter how much help we have if our soldiers don't know where to turn and what is available. These outreach workers would make sure that America's heroes and our military families don't fall through the cracks. As I mentioned, this body unanimously approved this new pilot as part of yesterday's Defense authorization bill. I thank the Members for their support. That pilot program amendment was cosponsored by Senators Sununu, Kerry, Harkin, and Brown. I also point out that this amendment is supported by the National Guard Association of the United States. My amendment today, cosponsored by Senator Leahy, is to make sure the commitment we made yesterday to returning servicemembers and their families is a real commitment backed by the necessary resources. This amendment would provide $10 million to carry out the pilot program for State-based outreach programs to assist servicemembers and their families created by the Sanders-Sununu-Kerry-Harkin-Brown amendment No. 2905 to the Defense authorization bill. This amendment is fully offset. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANDERS. I thank the chairman and the ranking member, and I look forward to working with them. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and to call up the Sanders amendment, which has been filed at the desk.

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wanted to take this opportunity to say a few words about an amendment I have offered, No. 2905, that is cosponsored by Senators Sununu, Kerry, Harkin, and Brown. This amendment addresses a problem that is huge, that is going to continue to grow in coming years, and is something the Congress must address. All across our country, veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to come home with what we believe to be very high levels of post- traumatic stress disorder as well as traumatic brain injury. These are the signature injuries of the war in Iraq. I worry very much that we are not yet prepared to address this serious problem which not only impacts the returning soldiers, it impacts their wives, their kids, and their communities. The amendment I have offered would develop a pilot program for State- based outreach to assist servicemembers and their families. The concern I have is that those who return home with TBI or PTSD are not going to get the care they need unless somebody makes contact with them and makes them aware of services and help that might be available. We can have all of the money we want allocated to addressing TBI or PTSD, but unless somebody goes out and brings those people into the system, that money is not going to do any good. I worry about that, especially for those returning soldiers who are in the National Guard who are not part of the active duty, who do not have a military infrastructure in front of them. I worry about soldiers coming home to small towns in Vermont and all across this country who suddenly find that their world is very different than the world they left, that they have nightmares, cold sweats, panic attacks when they go through a tunnel, and they don't know how to address those very serious symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. What this amendment does uniquely is create an outreach effort by which trained personnel from the National Guard or elsewhere are literally going to knock on doors and chat with the individual returning soldier and his or her family and get a sense of what is going on in the family, letting those veterans understand that what they are experiencing is something being experienced by tens of thousands of other soldiers, and there is nothing to be ashamed of about the kinds of problems that individual is having. The essence of this program is its nature as an outreach effort, not to sit back but to aggressively go out, knock on doors, have dialog, and bring people into the system which might be able to help them. This amendment is supported by the National Guard Association of the United States. They have pointed out that this amendment, with its unique emphasis on outreach, is a perfect compliment to the reintegration and readjustment policies laid out by the Yellow Ribbon Program in the previously adopted Chambliss amendment to the Defense authorization bill. This is a very strong amendment. I look forward to having support on both sides of the aisle. If we are serious about addressing the problems of PTSD and TBI, we have to be aggressive in outreach. That is what this amendment does. I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the recent passing of Grace Paley. Grace, who called Vermont her home, was a renowned and award-winning short story writer, a political activist, a wife and mother. Although she spent much of each year in Thetford, VT, and we considered her an adopted Vermonter, her fiction was set in the apartments, streets and neighborhoods of New York City. Grace Paley was not attracted to the bright lights or famous personalities or glitter of New York; however, she was attracted to the quotidian lives and the interpersonal and ethical problems faced by people very like ourselves. As Grace once said, ``I'm not writing a history of famous people, I am interested in a history of everyday life.'' She wrote about them in her two most noted collections of stories, ``The Little Disturbances of Man'' and ``Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.'' And she wrote beautifully, and with great sensitivity to both the spoken language and to human relationships. Her work gathered enormous critical acclaim. She was one of the great short fiction writers of our age. Her home in Thetford, VT, was not some weekend getaway, some means of unwinding from the hectic pace of life in the big city. For Grace, Thetford--and the State of Vermont--was a place where she could carry on her long-standing struggle for peace and for social justice. She was an active, a very active, presence in the local community. Whether it was through her long-standing commitment to bringing peace to the world or her many local readings of her fiction, Grace Paley was a presence in our lives--and a beloved local figure. She never sought the spotlight, but she did not shy away from it when she felt her cause was just. She lived her convictions and served as a model for generations of women, of Vermonters, of activists. In recognition of her contributions to Vermont, Grace Paley was awarded the title of ``Vermont State Poet'' in 2003, a position that had been held previously by Robert Frost, among others. She was also awarded the title of ``New York State Writer'' by Mario Cuomo in 1986. It is a fitting testimony to the quality and importance of her literary work that both States, which she called home, chose to honor her in this fashion. Grace Paley will be sorely missed, but her work, her passion for peace and justice, and her love of her fellow Vermonters will not be forgotten.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Michigan. I know his heart is in the right place. He will agree that we can spend zillions of dollars, but it doesn't do any good if it doesn't reach the people we want to reach. And we cannot turn our backs on people who fought in another war which is not in the newspaper today.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Warner very much for his consideration, and Senator Reed, Senator Levin, and Senator McCain. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and that the Sanders-Byrd-Burr-Bond-Webb-Feingold amendment No. 3082 at the desk, and later the Sununu-Kerry-Brown amendment at the desk, No. 2905, be called up.

Mr. SANDERS. Yes, it is. I thank the Senator very much.

Mr. SANDERS. That is correct.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by discussing amendment No. 3082. I appreciate the opportunity, and I look forward to working with Senator Warner and others early next week on this issue. The amendment I am offering, along with my colleagues Senators Byrd, Bond, Burr, Feingold, and Webb, would authorize $15 million in funding for gulf war illnesses within the Department of Defense's congressionally directed medical research programs. These funds would go to a peer-reviewed research program open to researchers inside and outside of Government, focusing on the chronic effects of neurotoxic exposures, body functions underlying the illnesses, and the identification of treatments. This funding level matches the funding level that is included in the Defense appropriations bill passed out of the committee a few weeks ago. This research is done by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, which is a research organization focused on finding and funding the best research to eradicate diseases to protect the health of current, future, and former members of the Armed Forces, while also benefiting the overall health of the American public. Importantly, a few days ago, as a member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, I can tell my colleagues that we had a very interesting hearing where we heard from the colonel at the DOD who runs this program using the $5 million appropriated by Congress last year to them, and the colonel described what has been happening. She reported to us that there was a great deal of interest in the initial solicitation for research proposals. They received 80 proposals. They recently granted $4.4 million to nine researchers from prestigious academic institutions across the country to find treatments for gulf war illnesses. The truth is, this is an issue that I and many others in Congress have been working on for many years. The reality is that in the first gulf war, as a result of service in the first gulf war, we have today well over 100,000 soldiers who are suffering--veterans who are suffering from a myriad of illnesses which we call gulf war illness. Some of these illnesses reflect themselves as fibromyalgia. Some people have headaches. Some people have short-term memory loss. Some people have gastrointestinal problems. We heard testimony from a young woman whose life, as a result of her service in the gulf, has been radically changed and her health has significantly deteriorated. There is a great deal of evidence that many of the children born to those men and women who served in the gulf, including this particular woman, were born with significant problems and disabilities. I would be less than honest if I did not say that substantial sums of money went to the DOD and the VA--and believe me, as a member of the Government Reform Committee in the House, I spent dozens of hours-- dozens of hours--along with Representative Chris Shays of Connecticut listening to testimony. I have to tell my colleagues that from many people in the veterans organizations, there was extreme frustration with the actions of the VA and the DOD; that, in the very beginning of this process, refused to even recognize the problem, and then what they said is: Well, maybe it is a psychological problem. There was a widespread feeling that the VA and the DOD were not responding to the real problems impacting tens and tens of thousands of our soldiers who returned. We have an obligation. Obviously, right now, all kinds of attention is being paid, appropriately enough, to our soldiers who come home from Iraq, who come home from Afghanistan. We are worried about TBI, traumatic brain injury; we are worried about post-traumatic stress disorder, and we should be. But we cannot in good conscience turn our backs on the tens and tens of thousands of soldiers who today are suffering from their service in the first gulf war. They are hurting. The good news is there is now a line of research being developed through the DOD organization that I mentioned before, and that is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program that is beginning to have some results. Without going into great medical and scientific analysis, what they are beginning to find is that as a result of the extremely toxic theater that existed in the gulf war, including burning oil wells, bromide given as an anti-nerve gas agent, DEET being used to protect soldiers from mosquitoes, and of course the saran released into the air, what researchers are now beginning to find is that there appears to be brain damage that is the cause of some of the symptoms our soldiers are seeing, and we are beginning to see more, very promising research in this area. My concern is if you talk to the veterans of the gulf war, they will tell you that there is a very high level of frustration about the huge amounts of money being spent by people who didn't even acknowledge or appreciate the pain our soldiers were experiencing. So what this amendment does is focuses research into those areas where we are already seeing some significant progress. That is what this amendment is about. I look forward to discussing this issue further with the members of the relevant committees when we return next week. That is one of the amendments we are working on. Amendment No. 2905 The other amendment is amendment No. 2905, which deals with a very immediate crisis. The former amendment deals with what happened 16 years ago. This is an amendment dealing with the problem we are seeing today. I don't have to tell anyone in this body that the studies are very clear that we are likely to see a record-breaking level of post- traumatic stress disorder coming from service in the theater in Iraq. It appears at this point, based on several studies I have read, that the numbers will be a lot higher than Vietnam, and God only knows that Vietnam was high enough. I think the evidence is pretty clear that we did not do a good job in addressing the post-traumatic stress disorder of those soldiers who came home from Vietnam. Now, what this amendment does is it would create a $30 million pilot project--and I should indicate this amendment is supported by Mr. Sununu of New Hampshire, Mr. Kerry of Massachusetts, and Mr. Brown of Ohio, the sitting Presiding Officer. It builds on a program, a small program we developed in the State of Vermont. Here is what the issue is. We can put zillions of dollars into research and into treatment for PTSD, but it will only do a limited amount of good if we don't bring those soldiers who are hurting into the facilities and into the counseling for them and their families that could provide help. I can tell you that in a rural State such as Vermont, where you have people from the National Guard who do not have the active-duty military infrastructure, a lot of these men and women will come home from Iraq, they will return to their small towns, and they will be hurting, their kids will be hurting, their wives will be hurting, and they are not going to stand up and say: You know what. I am having nightmares or when I go through a tunnel, I am having a panic attack. That is not what they are going to do. They are going to sit home and suffer and not know how to reach out for counseling. Some of them will be embarrassed; that is part of the problem. The history of the VA and the DOD is not good in knocking on doors and reaching out. What we have done in Vermont, working with the National Guard, in cooperation with the VA, is we established what we call a door-knocking program where we have men and women who have served in Iraq who are going into our communities and knocking on doors, sitting down and having a cup of coffee, talking to the families, asking them how things are going. The conversation might be: My husband hasn't been able to sleep. Oh, really. And they have that discussion. It is reaching out. The problem they may be having is a problem that may be experienced by tens of thousands of other people who went to Iraq. That is what this program is about. Some people say the VA has done a good job historically in outreach, but I don't believe that. I offered an amendment when I was in the House to counteract a rule that said the VA cannot do any outreach at all. So we have a major problem called post-traumatic stress disorder. Part of the problem is people are not going to stand up and say: I am hurting, how can I get help? I think the answer, to some degree, is to have people who served in Iraq knock on doors, and maybe they are dressed in blue jeans, maybe they are not, but to come in an unofficial and informal way, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and try to assess what is going on. I appreciate the support of the Presiding Officer for this amendment, as well as others in the Senate. It is a very important amendment. I believe we owe it to our soldiers. I look forward to continuing this discussion early next week with my colleagues. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Will my friend yield?

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The question is on the third reading of the joint resolution.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act of 2007. Since 2000, key economic indicators confirm that the economic security of Americans is moving in the wrong direction: nearly 5 million more Americans are living in poverty; nonelderly household income has declined by nearly $2,500; over 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost; and 8.6 million more Americans are without health insurance. While the rich have gotten richer, every other income group over the past 7 years has lost ground economically, with the middle class and working families losing the most. The Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act would begin to reverse this downward economic trend for workers employed in construction, forestry, ski resorts, stone quarries, asphalt paving, hotels, restaurants, landscaping, housekeeping and many other industries by reforming the H-2B guest-worker program. Under current law and existing Federal regulations, employers applying for H-2B visas must first certify that capable U.S. workers are not available, efforts were made to recruit U.S. workers for these positions first, and the employment of guest workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers. As documented by the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups, the H-2B program is frequently used by employers to drive down the wages and benefits of U.S. workers, while cheating H-2B workers out of earned benefits. These abuses have clearly undermined the legislative and regulatory intent of this temporary guest-worker program. The Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act would reform the H-2B program to ensure that workers receive the wages and benefits they deserve and prevent employers from abusing the system. Specifically, this legislation: requires employers to do a much better job at recruiting American workers first at higher wages before being able to hire H-2B guest-workers; provides the Department of Labor with the explicit authority to enforce labor law violations pertaining to the H-2B program; allows workers who have been directly and adversely affected by the H-2B program to have their day in court against unscrupulous employers; prohibits companies that have announced mass lay-offs within the past year from hiring H-2B guest-workers. Allows the Legal Services Corporation to provide the same legal services to H-2B workers as it provides to H-2A workers; requires employers to pay for the transportation expenses for H-2B guest workers both to the United States and back to their country of origin once the employment period ends; and provides other important protections for H-2B guest-workers. This legislation improves and strengthens the H-2B program so that it can be used by employers during emergency labor shortages, while increasing the wages and benefits for both American workers and guest- workers. I am proud that the Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act has the strong support of the AFL-CIO; the Service Employees International Union, SEIU; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the Southern Poverty Law Center; the Building and Construction Trades Department; the Laborers' International Union of North America; the United Food and Commercial Workers; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters; the United Farmworkers of America; and the Farmworkers Support Committee. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters of support.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act of 2007. Since 2000, key economic indicators confirm that the economic security of Americans is moving in the wrong direction: nearly 5 million more Americans are living in poverty; nonelderly household income has declined by nearly $2,500; over 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost; and 8.6 million more Americans are without health insurance. While the rich have gotten richer, every other income group over the past 7 years has lost ground economically, with the middle class and working families losing the most. The Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act would begin to reverse this downward economic trend for workers employed in construction, forestry, ski resorts, stone quarries, asphalt paving, hotels, restaurants, landscaping, housekeeping and many other industries by reforming the H-2B guest-worker program. Under current law and existing Federal regulations, employers applying for H-2B visas must first certify that capable U.S. workers are not available, efforts were made to recruit U.S. workers for these positions first, and the employment of guest workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers. As documented by the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups, the H-2B program is frequently used by employers to drive down the wages and benefits of U.S. workers, while cheating H-2B workers out of earned benefits. These abuses have clearly undermined the legislative and regulatory intent of this temporary guest-worker program. The Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act would reform the H-2B program to ensure that workers receive the wages and benefits they deserve and prevent employers from abusing the system. Specifically, this legislation: requires employers to do a much better job at recruiting American workers first at higher wages before being able to hire H-2B guest-workers; provides the Department of Labor with the explicit authority to enforce labor law violations pertaining to the H-2B program; allows workers who have been directly and adversely affected by the H-2B program to have their day in court against unscrupulous employers; prohibits companies that have announced mass lay-offs within the past year from hiring H-2B guest-workers. Allows the Legal Services Corporation to provide the same legal services to H-2B workers as it provides to H-2A workers; requires employers to pay for the transportation expenses for H-2B guest workers both to the United States and back to their country of origin once the employment period ends; and provides other important protections for H-2B guest-workers. This legislation improves and strengthens the H-2B program so that it can be used by employers during emergency labor shortages, while increasing the wages and benefits for both American workers and guest- workers. I am proud that the Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act has the strong support of the AFL-CIO; the Service Employees International Union, SEIU; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the Southern Poverty Law Center; the Building and Construction Trades Department; the Laborers' International Union of North America; the United Food and Commercial Workers; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters; the United Farmworkers of America; and the Farmworkers Support Committee. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters of support.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, before he leaves the floor, let me congratulate Senator Grassley for his very fine work on this legislation, and Senator Hatch as well. It has been a true bipartisan effort. I want to take this discussion in a little different direction. I strongly support the SCHIP program. I happen to believe it is a disgrace that the United States of America remains the only country in the industrialized world which today does not guarantee health care to all of its people. I just came back the other day from a trip to Costa Rica, and this small, poor country manages to cover all of its people. Yet, in our country, we have 47 million Americans who have no health insurance, and we have some 9 million children who have no health insurance. I always find it ironic that the American people seem to get from the White House what they don't want, and they don't get what they do want. The American people want to end the war in Iraq as soon as possible, a war which will soon be costing us, if you can believe it, $750 billion--three-quarters of $1 trillion--which even in Washington is a lot of money. For the war in Iraq, for Halliburton contracts, we seem to have an endless supply of money. The American people don't want it, but that is what they are getting. On the other hand, the American people do want health insurance for their children. The American people strongly support--and the polls are very clear about this--the SCHIP program. The American people would like all of the children in this country to be covered. That is what they want, but that is what they are not getting. What this bill, in fact, does do, which is very good--and I mentioned a moment ago my congratulations to Senator Grassley and Senator Hatch for their efforts--is it takes us somewhere. It provides health insurance for 5 million more children, which is clearly a significant step forward, and I will strongly support this legislation. It is interesting to me that from the White House the main argument, it appears, for opposition to this particular piece of legislation, and the reason they are threatening to veto it, one of the key reasons is this is an expansion of ``government health care''--government health care. Let me read to my colleagues to whom it might be of interest, and to the American people, a poll on the economy done a few weeks ago by CBS News, from September 14 to September 16. This is the CBS poll. Question No. 1: Which do you think would be better for the country: Having one health insurance program covering all Americans that would be administered by the government--administered by this terrible government--and paid for by taxpayers, or keeping the current system where many people get their insurance from private employers and some have no insurance? So CBS asked: Do you want a government-administered program covering all people or do you want the current system? The response from the American people was 55 percent believe in one health insurance for all Americans administered by the government; 29 percent want to maintain the current system. We hear a lot of discussion from the White House about how terrible ``government health care'' is, and yet what the polls show by an almost 2-to-1 majority is that the American people would like a health insurance system guaranteeing health care to all people administered by the Government and paid for out of the tax base. When I go back to Vermont, I find strong support for the Medicare Program, I find strong support for the Medicaid Program. Veterans want to see a significant increase in VA health care, which is, in fact, a 100-percent controlled Government program. In fact, Mr. Nicholson, who is head of the Veterans' Administration, former head of the Republican Party, says--and I think he is quite right--that the Veterans' Administration provides some of the very best quality health care in the United States of America, and they have been honored by national organizations who have looked at health care quality and have awarded distinction to the Veterans' Administration, which is, by the way, a 100-percent Government-run health care system. We have federally qualified health systems, health care programs all over America which time and time again are acknowledged to be tremendously successful. They are supported in a very strong, bipartisan way here in the Congress. They provide health care to millions of Americans--Government health care. So I think we should perhaps end this bogeyman mentality of Government health care--how terrible an idea it is. In fact, the American people want more Government health care in this country. Our health care system has serious problems. In fact, it is in the midst of disintegrating. We have 47 million Americans today who have no health insurance, and that number, since President Bush has been in office, has gone up by over 7 million. The cost of health care is soaring. More and more people are not only uninsured, they are underinsured. Despite all of that, our country continues to spend twice as much per capita on health care as any other Nation on Earth. Meanwhile, despite all of that spending, despite all of the people who are uninsured, our health status measures--including infant mortality and life expectancy and the kind of work we do in disease prevention-- ranks very low compared to other developed countries. We spend more, we get less value, we have more and more people uninsured, our health care system is disintegrating, and it is high time, in my view, that the United States ends the national disgrace of being the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide health care to all people. Not only are more and more people uninsured; this system is even incapable of providing the doctors we need, especially in rural America. In cities we have doctors who are specialists earning millions of dollars a year, but somehow this system can't get doctors into rural America, into primary health care, into internal medicine. We lack dentists all over this country. We have a major nursing crisis, such that we are depleting the health care systems of the Philippines and other countries, because we are not educating our own nurses. So we have some major problems. In terms of the SCHIP program, it is hard for me to understand--it is hard for me to begin to understand--how this President can be threatening to veto this legislation. We hear in the Congress a whole lot about family values. Well, if taking care of our children is not a family value, then I don't know what a family value is. It is clear also that providing health insurance to our children is what is cost effective. Forget the suffering involved. Forget the children who deal with illness they are not getting treated for because their parents don't have health insurance. Look at the cost-effective aspect of this. What kind of thinking is involved when we say: No, we can't provide health insurance for you, but when you get sick because you haven't gone to the doctor, oh, yes, we will operate on you and we will spend tens and tens of thousands of dollars to take care of you when you are in the hospital? Let me conclude by saying that the time is long overdue for this country to get its priorities right. We should not continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a war the American people don't want. We should not, as the President and some in this institution want, give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent by repealing the inheritance tax. One trillion dollars over 20 years, we have money to do that, but we don't have, apparently, $35 billion to provide health insurance to 4 million children in this country. This Congress has to reorder and change the priorities established in the White House, and I believe that passing this SCHIP program will be a good step forward, a first step forward to be followed by much more. I yield the floor.