The Economy

Floor Speech

THE ECONOMY -- (Senate - January 29, 2008)

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, last night I listened intently to President Bush's State of the Union speech, and, frankly, I had a hard time understanding what country the President was talking about and what reality he was talking about. Certainly, if the State of the Union refers to what is happening to the shrinking middle class of this country and how we as a people are doing, the President had almost nothing to say that rang true. In fact, last night's speech just reminds many of us how far removed from the reality of ordinary life this President is and how little he and his administration know about what is going on in the lives of millions and millions of people in cities and towns across this country.

In my view, the President's speech was lacking not just for what he said but, perhaps more importantly, for what he didn't say. Somehow, President Bush forgot to mention some of the results of his failed economic policies and how they have impacted the lives of ordinary people. So let me take

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a moment, therefore, to review the record the President refused to talk about last night.

Since George W. Bush took office in 2001, nearly 5 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. These are mostly low-income working people whose wages have not kept up with inflation. These are people all across the country who are trying to make it on $6 or $7 an hour without any health insurance, desperately trying to keep their families above water. These are, by the way, parents and kids in Pennsylvania and in Vermont who are now flocking to emergency food banks because they simply don't have the income to buy the food they need in the United States of America in 2008. It might have been a sign of decency on the part of the President to at least recognize that reality which is impacting so many of our people, and the reality that hunger in America is actually going up.

Since George W. Bush has been in office, median household income for working-age Americans has declined by almost $2,500. That is a lot of money. Also, overall median household income has gone down by nearly $1,000. This is the shrinking middle class, and maybe as people are working longer hours for lower wages, maybe as people are working 50 or 60 hours a week trying to bring in enough money for their families to pay the bills, maybe the President might have said a few words to them that he understands the reality they are experiencing. Maybe he might have said to the young people of our country that he is concerned if we don't turn around our economy, for the first time in the modern history of this country their generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents; maybe just a few words to those young people so they know he knows what is going on in their lives.

But I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that at all.

Mr. President, since George W. Bush has been in office, 8.6 million Americans have lost their health insurance, and we are now up to 47 million Americans without any health insurance whatsoever. Meanwhile, health insurance premiums have increased during Bush's tenure by 78 percent--a huge increase in the cost of health care.

Last night, while the President gave us his usual rhetoric about all of the virtues of free market health care, he somehow forgot to tell us why we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation, and why we are the only major country on Earth without a national health care program guaranteeing health care to all people. The President didn't even tell us why he vetoed legislation that would expand health insurance to millions more children; just the usual rhetoric about free market health care, which is failing us every single day.

During his remarks last night, somehow President Bush neglected to mention that 3 million workers, since he has been in office, have lost their pensions--the promises that were made to them for their retirement years--and about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension coverage whatsoever. I didn't hear much from the President about that.

What I did hear is the President's rhetoric about ``Social Security reform,'' which are code words for the privatization of Social Security. At a time when seniors are facing more and more insecurity than they have seen for a very long time, privatizing Social Security is the last thing this country needs.

Last night, President Bush once again pushed for more unfettered free trade agreements, despite the fact that since he has been in office the annual trade deficit has more than doubled, and over 3 million manufacturing jobs--good-paying jobs--in this country have been lost. It astounds me that, despite the horrendous record of these unfettered trade agreements--NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations--we have a President who says: Look, we have failed year after year, we have lost millions of good-paying jobs, our trade deficit is soaring, and do you know what the answer is? We need more of this failed trade policy. In my own small State of Vermont, never one of the great manufacturing States in this country, we have lost, since the President has been President, 10,000 manufacturing jobs--25 percent of the total or one out of four manufacturing jobs. And President Bush says we need more outsourcing; we need corporations to throw more American workers out on the street so they can run to China and pay people 50 cents an hour there, and then bring the products back into this country.

Last night, President Bush did say a word about gas prices going up. But he did forget to tell us that since he has been President the price of gas at the pump, and home heating oil, has more than doubled. For whatever reason, he also forgot to tell us that, year after year, while Americans are paying outrageous prices for oil and gas, the oil companies are enjoying record-breaking profits. I didn't hear him mention anything about that, not one word.

A couple of years ago, for example, ExxonMobil--which has enjoyed huge profits while Americans are paying $3.15 for a gallon of gas at the pump--gave a $398 million retirement package for its former CEO, Mr. Lee Raymond. And our people are paying $3.15 for a gallon of gas. The President forgot to talk about that.

Also, I found it interesting that President Bush neglected to discuss that for the first time since the Great Depression the personal savings rate in this country is below zero. This means that because of the dire economic conditions facing so many of our people, we as a people are actually spending more money than we are earning. In fact, today, millions of Americans are buying their groceries with credit cards. They don't have the cash to buy the food they need. They are going into debt to buy groceries. And our friends in the credit card industry are then charging them 25 or 30 percent interest rates for the groceries they are buying on credit.

For some reason, last night in his State of the Union Address, the President also neglected to mention that home foreclosures are the highest on record, turning the American dream of homeownership into an American nightmare for millions of our fellow citizens.

The reason I am raising these issues is because if we as a Senate, as a government, do not talk about and discuss the reality of life in this country for the vast majority of the people, if we do not understand what is going on in the cities and towns across our Nation, then it will be virtually impossible for us to formulate the public policies we need to transform our economy so that it begins to work well for all of the people and not just the wealthiest people on top.

Also, we do not do this enough. It is important to take a look at what is going on in our country compared to what is going on in many other industrialized nations. Very often, I hear people on the Senate floor say we are the wealthiest and the greatest Nation in the world. We are all of these things.

Let's look at some of the facts as they apply to the lives of ordinary people. What country in the industrialized world has, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty, where one out of five children are living in poverty? Is it France, Germany, or the U.K.? No. It is the United States of America. One out of five children in this country live in poverty. And shock of all shocks, we end up having the highest rate of incarceration--putting people behind bars--of any other country on Earth. If you think there is not a correlation between those two factors, I would strongly disagree with you.

Unfortunately, the U.S. today has the highest infant mortality rate of any major country on Earth, the highest overall poverty rate, the largest gap between the rich and the poor, and we are the only major country in the world not to provide health care to all of their its people as a right of citizenship.

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