The Economy
Floor Speech
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Mr. BROWN of Ohio. My sense is similar to yours. I was just on a TV show a minute ago. I was asked, the liberals or the conservatives, what they think about this. This really is not a liberal-conservative issue. First of all, the tax cuts overwhelmingly go to the wealthiest taxpayers. We are seeing the kinds of tax cuts that millionaires and billionaires get from the income tax and from the estate tax. But it is also equally important that it blows a hole in our budget deficit.
In some sense, we are borrowing tens of billions of dollars every year now--if this agreement becomes law, we are borrowing tens of billions of dollars every year from the Chinese, and we are putting it on the credit cards of our children and grandchildren for them to pay off who knows when, and then we are giving these tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. In those simple terms, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense in our relationship with China. It doesn't make sense in the lost jobs that come from that China trade policy. It doesn't make sense in undermining the middle class. It doesn't make sense in terms of fairness in the tax system. It doesn't make sense for our children and grandchildren and the burden they are going to have to bear to pay off this debt. Giving a millionaire a tax cut and charging it to our kids, who are paying taxes on, unfortunately, in the last few years, declining wages, is morally reprehensible.
I know Senator Sanders has been on the floor 2 hours now talking about this and how important it is and really analyzing it and educating about it and all that. I think about the economic policy, too, that this embodies.
Nine or 10 years ago, Senator Sanders and the Presiding
Officer, when he was a Member of the House, Senator Udall from Colorado, and I and others voted against the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, principally because those tax cuts overwhelmingly went to the wealthy and ended up adding to our national debt. We had a surplus then. We sure don't now. We had the largest surplus we ever had in 2001. It blew a hole in that. But we passed those tax cuts under the belief, those who supported it--President Bush and Senator McConnell and so many others--under the belief that that kind of trickle-down economics would grow our economy.
In the 8 years--and this is not partisan, this is not opinion, this is fact--from January 1, 2001, to January 1, 2009, President Bush's 8 years, we actually had private sector job loss in this country. Contrast that with a different economic policy--January 1, 1993, to January 1, 2001, the Clinton 8 years. Again, this isn't partisan, this isn't opinion, this is fact. During the Clinton 8 years, we had 21 million private sector jobs created--21 million private sector jobs created--and literally zero private sector jobs in the Bush 8 years of trickle-down economics.
Why would we blow a hole in the budget, which this bill does, for our kids to pay off? Why would we continue an economic policy that clearly did not work for this country? It didn't work for the middle class. We saw middle-class wages--not only no job increase during those 8 years, except for the people at the very top, we saw actual wage stagnation or worse. Most Americans did not get a raise during the 8 Bush years. Most Americans simply saw their wages flat or in many cases decline. The superwealthy saw a big increase in their incomes and in their net assets. And now we are going to give a tax break to them.
This is not class warfare. Lots of people I know have a lot of money. I don't have any ill will for them. But why would we help those people who have done so very well and then have our children pay for it?
Senator Sanders just mentioned the letter from Barbara Kennelly from one of the largest seniors organizations in the country and what this will mean for Social Security. Here is my fear. If this is passed, we are going to see our budget deficit increase, according to the Congressional Budget Office, about $900 billion because of this package, $800-some billion over the next couple of years.
As soon as it is signed by President Obama, even though it was negotiated
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with the Republican Senate leadership and overwhelming numbers of Republicans in the Senate and House--I assume they are going to vote for it--they are going to say: Look at the huge budget deficit President Obama created. From that day on, they are going to go after ways to cut the budget. That is OK. I agree we need to deal with spending and taxes and the whole picture.
But I also know from watching Republicans--I saw them in the House when they moved toward Medicare privatization in 2003, 2004, and 2005. They had some success. Fortunately, we were able to beat back most of it. I remember that in 2005, after President Bush was reelected in a very close race, he spoke repeatedly about privatizing Social Security. I know that is what they want to do. In the 1990s, Speaker Gingrich--fortunately beaten back by President Clinton--tried to privatize Medicare.
That is the way they cut the budget, they go after Medicare and Social Security. So this vote on this package--to me, we need to call the President, write the President, work with the President to say: No deal, and this has to be something very different from what it is now because it will cause huge deficits our children and grandchildren will have to bear. It will not help the economy appreciably because we saw what the trickle-down economic policies of the Bush years did. It does not help the middle class enough.
So it is pretty clear to me how this jeopardizes Social Security, how it jeopardizes Medicare, how it will force more cuts and more pressure on those programs that have lifted so many people into the middle class. In 1965, when Medicare was first passed, half of the senior citizens in this country had no health insurance--half of the seniors had no health insurance. Today 99 percent of seniors have health insurance, something like that.
I know we are a country now that has created a strong middle class. We have seen that middle class--because of these tax cuts for the wealthy, trickle-down kind of economic policy, we have seen the middle class shrink in the last few years. I do not want that to keep happening. That is why I am very concerned about this. That is why I am working with the Senate to say: No deal. We need to much more seriously focus on not running up a huge debt, on making sure Social Security is protected, on an economic policy that works for the middle class, on a tax policy that is fair to the middle class.
That is why Senator Sanders' work is so important on the floor today, taking the floor for a longer period than anybody I have seen since I have been in the Senate, in a filibuster kind of setting, where he is raising these questions, asking these questions, educating the public, talking to people all over the country, in this Chamber and outside to change this policy.
Mr. SANDERS. If I could interrupt my friend from Ohio and ask him a question, it is on an issue the Senator dealt with last night. Talk about the kind of priorities we have seen in the Senate recently, where just a couple of days ago the Senator and I worked very hard to try to make sure seniors on Social Security and disabled vets were able to get a $250 check at a cost of $14 billion, we could not get one Republican vote for that, while at the same time Republicans are pushing tax breaks of over $1 million a year for the richest people in this country. Does that seem----
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. It tells a story. I came to the floor right after that vote. I had supported it all along. I cosponsored Senator Sanders' effort to bring that to the floor, for the $250 check for all seniors and all disabled veterans, I might add, not just Social Security beneficiaries. But I came to the floor right afterwards because I was pretty amazed.
I know there is partisanship here. I know some people think their whole view of the world is to give tax cuts to the richest people of the world and it will all trickle down and we will all do better, it will lift all boats. That is a pretty good economic theory you might have learned at Harvard or you might have learned at Johns Hopkins near here or wherever. But it does not work. It is a nice theory, but it does not work to lift all boats.
So Senator Sanders' effort was to provide a $250 check, one time, at a cost of $14 billion. But one time, not continued $14 billion--one time for seniors who had not had a cost-of-living adjustment in 2 years. It just seemed to make so much sense when the average senior in this country gets about a $14,000-a-year Social Security check. I think that is about $1,200 a month. That is not their entire income for most seniors, but it is a big part of it. Many seniors live only on that. Many more seniors live on that, but only another couple $300, $400 a month.
There is not inflation maybe for people my age so much in this country, but if you are older and you have a lot of health care costs, there is inflation because the health care costs seem to go up higher than maybe anything but higher education, and maybe as much as that. So it was important that $250 be provided, we think, to every senior in the country and every disabled vet.
What was so amazing about it was that 42 Republican Senators signed a letter saying they would do nothing, nothing in the Senate, until tax cuts for the rich were approved, until they were signed into law.
Now, I have never seen Senators engage in a work stoppage or a strike. I mean, it was not quite a strike, which it is probably illegal for us to strike. I do not know, maybe. But it was a work stoppage.
They are saying: We are not doing anything until you give tax cuts to my rich friends, and I might say also to many people in the House and Senate whose income is in that bracket too. I am not accusing them of that, to be sure, but they were there for their rich friends and their biggest contributors and the wealthiest people in this country. But they were not there for a senior citizen living on $1,200 a month that could use that extra $250.
I have met too many seniors, and I know the Presiding Officer, when he travels to Colorado Springs or he goes to Cimarron or he goes to Denver, I know he hears seniors say: I cut my pills in half because I need my prescription to run for 2 months rather than 1 because I cannot afford it. Or I skipped my medicine today because my house is too cold, and I do not have enough heat. We know seniors make those choices. We make choices here, and the choice we made is 42 Republicans made it and blocked it because we need 60 votes. We had a majority of voters, an easy majority, for Senator Sanders' effort, 53 votes, 53 votes to do this, the $250, but we need 60 votes.
So 42 Republican Senators engaged in their work stoppage saying: We are not doing anything until we get these tax cuts for the rich. They said no to seniors. I am amazed by that, the callousness. I guess I am even more amazed when you consider--what is today, the 10th--when you consider in 2 weeks it is Christmas Day. That does not seem to bother them. It does not seem to bother them on unemployment benefits. And 85,000 Ohioans, a week and a half ago, lost their unemployment benefits--85,000. Their holiday season is ruined.
But I guess all of us will go home. I want to go home and be with Connie and my kids on Christmas. My children are grown. We have one grandchild. I want to be with him for as much of Christmas as I can. But we have a job to do today, this week and next week and this month and this year; and that is to extend unemployment benefits to people who have lost them, who are looking for jobs as hard as they can in a great majority of cases, and extending the tax cuts for the middle class and doing the right thing. So far, we have not done that.
I need to go to the airport. But I want to yield back to Senator Sanders for his work today. I hope next week, when we come back on Monday, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to say no deal on this one and to make this work for the middle class, make it work for Social Security beneficiaries, make it work for unemployed workers.
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