Concurrent Resolution On The Budget, Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Thank you, Madam President. Let me begin by commenting on a few of the thoughts raised by my good friend Senator Enzi.

Senator Enzi says the economy today is not where it should be, and he is right. I don't think anybody thinks the economy is where it should be in terms of low unemployment and high wages--no debate about that. But I ask the American people to think back 6 1/2 years ago, at the end of President Bush's term, to what the economy was like. At that point, we were not gaining the 200,000 jobs a month we are gaining now; we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. At that point, the deficit was not at $480 billion, where it is today; it was at $1.4 trillion. At that point, the stock market was not soaring, as it is today; the American and world financial system was on the verge of collapse. So let's begin by putting issues into perspective.

No, nobody I know thinks we are where we should be economically in America today, but anybody who does not understand that despite enormous Republican obstructionism, we have made significant gains over the last 6 1/2 years would, I believe, be very mistaken.

As we all know, the Federal budget we are working on now is not an appropriations bill. It does not provide explicit funding for this or that agency. What it does do is lay the foundation for that process, the total amount of money the appropriations committees have to spend. In other words, this budget is more than just a very long list of numbers. The Federal budget is about our national priorities and our values. It is about who we are as a nation and what we stand for. It is about how we analyze and assess the problems we face and how we go forward in resolving those problems. That is the task the Senate is now about to undertake, and it is a very serious responsibility.

Let's be very clear. No family, no business, no local or State government can responsibly write a budget without first understanding the problems and the challenges it faces. That is even more true when we deal with a Federal budget of some $4 trillion.

As I examine the budgets brought forth by the Republicans in the House and here in the Senate, this is how I see their analysis of the problems facing our country. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, perhaps the most important issue facing this country--a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. My Republican colleagues apparently believe the richest people in America need to be made even richer.

It is apparently not good enough for my Republican colleagues that 99 percent of all new income today is going to the top 1 percent--not good enough.

It is apparently not good enough that the top one-tenth of 1 percent today own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Clearly, in the eyes of my Republican colleagues, the wealthy and the powerful and the big campaign contributors need even more help. Not only should they not be asked to pay more in taxes, not only should we not eliminate huge loopholes that benefit the wealthy and large corporations, some of my Republican friends believe we should protect these loopholes, not change them at all or maybe even make them wider.

It is apparently not good enough that corporate America is enjoying record-breaking profits and that the CEOs of large corporations earn some 290 times what their average employees make--290 times more.

It is apparently not good enough that since 1985, the top one-tenth of 1 percent has seen a more than $8 trillion increase in its wealth than it would have if wealth and equality had remained the same as it was in 1985--an $8 trillion dollar increase in wealth going to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. But apparently my Republican colleagues not only do not talk about this issue, they will do nothing to address the massive wealth inequality this country faces.

It is apparently not good enough for my Republican colleagues that the wealthiest 14 people in this country--14 people--have seen their wealth go up by more than $157 billion over the past 2 years alone. Fourteen people saw an increase in their wealth of $157 billion, and the Republican budget talks about cutting food stamps and education and nutrition, because we are presumably a poor nation. Well, we are not a poor nation. We just have massive wealth and income inequality, so that the vast majority of people are becoming poorer but the people on top are predominantly wealthy. That is the reality we must address.

As manifested in the House and Senate budgets, my Republican colleagues are ignoring a very significant reality, and that is that millions of middle-class and working families are people who are often working longer hours for lower wages and have seen significant declines in their standard of living over the past 40 years. My Republican colleagues say those people who are struggling, those people who are trying to feed their families, those people who are trying to send their kids to college--those are not the people we should be helping; rather, we have to worry about the top 1 percent.

At a time when over 45 million Americans are living in poverty, which is more than at almost any time in the modern history of our country--and many of these people are working people, people who are working 40 or 50 hours a week at substandard wages--my Republican colleagues think we should increase poverty by ending the Affordable Care Act, by slashing Medicaid, and by cutting food stamps and the earned-income tax credit.

At a time when almost 20 percent of our kids live in poverty--the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world--my Republican colleagues think that maybe we should even raise that poverty rate a little bit among our children by cutting childcare, by cutting Head Start, by cutting the refundable child tax credit, and maybe let's even go after nutrition programs for hungry children.

To summarize, the rich get much richer and the Republicans think they need more help. The middle-class and working families of this country become poorer and the Republicans think we need to cut programs they desperately need. Frankly, those may be the priorities of some of my Republican colleagues, but I do not believe those are the priorities of the American people.

Today, the United States safely remains the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right.

Today, despite the modest gains in the Affordable Care Act, we still have about 40 million Americans who lack health insurance and millions more who are underinsured.

What is the Republican response to the health care crisis? They want to abolish--do away with completely--the Affordable Care Act and take away the health insurance that 16 million Americans have gained through that program.

Here we have 40 million people who have no health insurance and the Republican response is: Well, let's make it 56 million people. And if you add the massive cuts they proposed to Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, even millions more would lose their health insurance.

Does anybody, for 1 second, think this vaguely makes any sense in the real world? People are struggling to try to find health insurance and the response is: Oh, let's cut 16 million people off of the Affordable Care Act and millions more off of Medicaid.

While the Senate budget resolution does not end Medicare as we know it, unlike the House budget last year, it does make significant cuts. Further, when you make massive cuts to Medicaid, it is not only low-income people who suffer, you are also cutting the nursing home care for seniors. These are elderly people--80, 90 years of age--in a nursing home, and one might argue these people are the most vulnerable people in this country, the most helpless people, fragile people, and we are going to cut programs for them.

I have talked a little bit about the devastating impact the House and Senate Republican budgets would have on the American people, but I think it is equally important, when we look at a budget, to talk about not only what a budget does but talk about what a budget does not do, the serious problems it does not address.

Poll after poll tells us the American people, when asked what their major concerns are, almost always respond: It is jobs, wages, and the economy. That is, generally speaking, what Democrats, Republicans, and Independents respond. It is the economy, jobs, and wages.

Despite a significant improvement in the economy over the last 6 years, real employment today is not 5.5 percent, it is 11 percent, counting those people who have given up looking for work and those people who are working part time. Youth employment, an issue we almost never discuss, is at 17 percent, and African-American youth employment is much higher than that.

What the American people want--and what the Republican budget completely ignores--is the need to create millions of decent-paying jobs. I think if you go to Maine, to Vermont, to Wyoming, to California and ask people what they want, they would say: We need more jobs, and those jobs should be paying us a living wage.

In my view--and in the view of many economists--if we are serious about creating jobs in this country, the fastest way to do it is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants, airports, rail, dams, levees, broadband in rural areas.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to invest over $3 trillion by the year 2020 just to get our Nation's infrastructure in good repair. When we make a significant investment in an infrastructure, we create millions of decent-paying jobs, which is exactly what we should be doing and what our side of the aisle will fight for, but it is an issue virtually ignored by the Republican majority. Crumbling infrastructure, need to create jobs--they don't talk about it.

At a time when millions of Americans are working for starvation wages and when the Federal minimum wage is at an abysmal $7.25 an hour, we need a budget that substantially increases wages for low-income and middle-income workers. In the year 2015, no one who works in this country for 40 hours a week should be living in poverty. I would hope that is a tenet all of us can agree on. No one should be making the totally inadequate Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Raising the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour--I personally would go higher than that--would not only be good for low-wage workers, it would reduce spending on Medicaid, public housing, food stamps, and other Federal programs by some $7 billion a year.

Sadly, when I offered an amendment in committee that called for a substantial increase in the minimum wage, not one of my Republican colleagues voted for it.

Well, we are going to give them an opportunity to rethink the error of their ways. We are going to bring an amendment onto the floor to do exactly what the American people want; that is, significantly increase the minimum wage in this country, so no one who works 40 hours a week lives in poverty.

We also need pay equity in this country so women do not make 78 cents on the dollar compared to what a man makes for doing the same work. Further, we need to address the overtime scandal in this country in which many of our people are working 50 or 60 hours a week but fail to get time and a half for their efforts.

I haven't heard--I sat through all of the committee meetings, Budget Committee meetings, I was at the markup on Thursday--I didn't hear one Republican word about the need for pay equity for women workers, about the need to address the overtime scandal, and about the need to address the minimum wage. These are the issues the American people want addressed, but look high and low in that long Republican budget, you will not find one word addressing these issues.

I can stay in Vermont and I suspect every State in this country, young people and their families are enormously frustrated by the high cost of college education and the horrendously oppressive student debt that many of them leave school with. In fact, student debt today at $1.2 trillion is the second-largest category of debt in this country, more than credit card debt and auto loan debt.

Does the Republican budget do anything to lower interest rates on student debt? No. In fact, their budget would make a bad situation even worse by eliminating subsidized student loans and increasing the cost of a college education by about $3,000 for some of the lowest income students in America.

Does the Republican budget support or comment on President Obama's initiative to make 2 years of community college free or do they provide any other initiative to make college affordable? Sadly, they don't. But what they do is cut $90 billion in Pell grants over a 10-year period, which would make college even more expensive for about 8 million low-income college students.

My Republican colleagues say they are concerned about the deficit--which, by the way, has been reduced by more than two-thirds since President Obama has been in office, and we should be clear this side of the aisle is concerned about the deficit.

My Republican colleagues are concerned about an $18 trillion national debt, which has skyrocketed in recent years. One of the reasons it has skyrocketed is that we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the experts tell us that by the time we take care of the last veteran, those wars may cost over $5 trillion, and my deficit hawk friends on the Republican side, how did they pay for those wars? What taxes did they raise? What programs did they cut? They didn't. They put it on the credit card. That is how they paid for it.

What concerns me very much is that, unfortunately, two wars unpaid for is not enough for my Republican colleagues. In the committee markup they put another $38 billion into defense spending on the credit card--off-budget.

So I think we should ask ourselves how does it happen that the move toward their balanced budget approach--they want to cut nutrition, education, health care, virtually every program that working families need--but when it comes to defense spending, another $38 billion. That is not chump change, even in Washington. That is off-budget--no problem, just add it to the deficit.

When we talk about sensible ways of addressing our deficit or sensible ways of addressing our national debt, we cannot ignore the reality that major corporation after major corporation, in a given year, pays what in taxes--20 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, zero percent. Profitable corporations such as General Electric, Verizon, Boeing, and many others have not only paid nothing in Federal income taxes in some recent years, they actually get rebates from the IRS.

Can we talk about that issue or is the only way toward a balanced budget to cut programs for the elderly, the children, and the sick and the poor?

A report from the Congressional Research Service: Each and every year profitable corporations are avoiding about $100 billion in taxes by stashing their profits in the Cayman islands.

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Mr. SANDERS. The point I was making is if we are serious about reducing the deficit, it is inconceivable that one does not look at the fact that corporation after corporation is paying zero in Federal income taxes. It is inconceivable that we do not recognize that in 1952 corporations contributed about 32 percent of all Federal tax revenue. Today, they contribute about 11 percent. It is inconceivable that we do not understand that according to the CRS, each and every year profitable corporations are avoiding $100 billion in taxes.

How can we not look at that issue? How could your only approach be to make it harder for kids to go to college or for little children to be in the Head Start Program?

I look forward to the debate we will be having over the next several days. I suspect there will be a lot of amendments being offered. I think it is fair to say, on this side of the aisle, what the amendments will be saying is that we need to create millions of jobs. We need to raise wages in America. We need a tax system that is fair and does not contain loopholes that allow the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

We need a budget that says women workers should earn the same as male workers. We need a budget that says we have to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

I think there will be a lot of very serious debates. I think the differences between the two sides will become very apparent, and I hope the American people pay strong attention to this discussion.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I was in the House of Representatives for 16 years, and I have been in the Senate now for 8 years. During all of that time, this country faced and still faces a major health care crisis.

As the Presiding Officer knows, the United States is the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all of our people. Today, despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, which I will discuss in a moment, we still have about 40 million Americans without any health insurance. By the way, despite so many uninsured and so many underinsured, we end up paying, by far, per capita the highest costs of any country.

How does it happen? Millions of people are uninsured, millions more are underinsured, and we end up paying per capita almost double what any other Nation faces.

Now, I was in the Congress during the years of the Bush administration, and I waited eagerly to hear what my Republican colleagues had to say about tens of millions of people without any health insurance and about the cost of health care being so expensive. I waited and I waited, and my Republican colleagues had nothing to say. Apparently, the private insurance companies were doing just great under that system. Drug companies were charging our people the highest prices in the world under that system. What is there to complain about? What is there to worry about? So 40 million, 50 million people have no health insurance and people can't afford health care, but it is no problem for my Republican colleagues.

Five years ago, the Congress, with no Republican support, passed the Affordable Care Act. Let me be very clear. I voted for the Affordable Care Act. I will be the first to say that the Affordable Care Act has many problems and, in fact, in many ways, it did not go anywhere near as far as it should have gone. By far, it is not a perfect piece of legislation. Yet I still wait to hear what my Republican colleagues have to say about how we address the health care crisis, other than doing what they are doing in this budget, which is to repeal the Affordable Care Act completely.

Let's take a look at what the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--has accomplished, which they want to end completely. After 5 years of the Affordable Care Act, more than 16 million Americans have gained health coverage. Many of those people never had health insurance in their entire lives. Many of those people were getting their health care through the emergency room at outrageously high costs. Since 2013, we have seen the largest decline in the uninsured rate in decades, and the Nation's uninsured rate is now at the lowest level ever recorded.

Just since October 2013, the uninsured rate for nonelderly adults has fallen by 35 percent, and 16 million more Americans have health insurance.

Republican response: Get rid of the ACA; throw 16 million Americans off of health insurance.

Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, health care prices have risen at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years. All of us can remember 7, 8, 10 years ago health care insurance rates with increases of 20, 30 percent. Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, health prices have risen at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years. Are they going up? Yes, they are, but at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years.

Thanks to exceptionally slow growth in per-person costs throughout our health care system, national health care expenditures grew at the slowest rate on record--on record--from 2010 through 2013. Are we making progress in controlling the growth in health care costs? Yes, we are.

Republican response: Throw it out.

Ten million low-income Americans are now able to get health insurance through Medicaid. And if one is a low-income American struggling to make ends meet and not able to afford health care, in many instances, this is health insurance that saves one's life. It saves one's life because they now have the opportunity--maybe for the first time in years--to be able to go into a doctor's office because they have Medicaid.

Republican response: Throw it out; 10 million low-income Americans no longer have health insurance.

All of us remember not so many years ago, before the ACA. You have health insurance for your family, and when your child reaches the age of 21, that child is now off of your health insurance plan. So we have huge uninsured numbers for young people in this country who are no longer able to be on their parents' health insurance plan.

Under the Affordable Care Act, some 5.7 million young adults have been able to stay on their parents' policies. The uninsured rate for young adults has dropped by 40 percent. I would like to see it drop even more than that, but 40 percent is nothing to sneeze at.

The Republican response: Let's make sure all of these young people from 21 to 26 rejoin the ranks of the uninsured.

One of the great scandals that existed in this country before we had the Affordable Care Act--when we think back on it, people find it hard to believe--somebody was diagnosed with diabetes, with cancer, with heart disease, with AIDS, or whatever it may be, and that person walked into an insurance company and said: I need some insurance. They filled out forms. The insurance company said: Oh, you had breast cancer 3 years ago; we are not going to insure you. You had diabetes; you are not going to get insurance. So the people who needed insurance the most were the people least likely to be able to get insurance. Can we imagine that--for people who had a history of heart disease, a history of cancer, scared to death it may reoccur, in absolute need of insurance, insurance companies said: No. We can discriminate against you. You are sick, you may get sick again, and we will have to pay out money. We don't want your business. Well, the ACA did something about that. It should have never been allowed to happen in the first place. It provides protections for people with preexisting conditions.

Republicans want to end the ACA. That is in this budget. They want to get rid of it. So for those people who have serious illnesses, understand that if the Republicans succeed, people may not be able to get health insurance, because we will go back to a time when companies could discriminate against people with serious illnesses.

Before the ACA, many individuals couldn't gain access to health insurance for a variety of ``illnesses,'' including pregnancy. I guess pregnancy is an illness for which a person doesn't deserve insurance. It doesn't make a lot of sense to most Americans, but that is what will reoccur if the Republicans are successful.

Millions of seniors in this country are struggling in terms of how to pay for their medicines. The cost of medicine in America is very high--the highest of any country on Earth. The Affordable Care Act moves to close the doughnut hole, which means money that has to come out of seniors' own pockets. If the Republican budget gets passed and if that gets implemented into law, seniors will now be paying significantly more for their prescription drugs. The Affordable Care Act includes important health care for seniors in the doughnut hole, including 45-percent discounts on the cost of their drugs, but allowing the full price of the drug to be counted toward the amount they need to spend to get out of the hole.

The Affordable Care Act gives people access to free preventive care that keeps them healthy and out of the hospital.

The Affordable Care Act ends discrimination against women by health insurance companies so that they don't have to pay more for health insurance simply because they are a woman. Are we going to go back to the days when because a patient was a woman, she had to pay more for health insurance than a man? I certainly hope not. But that is what happens if we end the Affordable Care Act.

The Affordable Care Act protects against a practice by insurance companies of including lifetime limits in their policies. Prior to the ACA, many insurance plans included lifetime limits--a limit on the amount of coverage that plan would provide an individual or a family in their lifetime. So, in other words, if somebody was racking up large claims because they were seriously ill, the insurance company said: Sorry, that is it. We are not going to pay any more. Are those the days we want to go back to?

I think we can all agree the Affordable Care Act is far from perfect. In my own view, we should provide health care to every person in this country as a right, and I would do it through a Medicare-for-all program. Other people have different ideas. But it is hard for me to imagine anyone thinking that the solution to America's health care problems today is simply to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.

Let me change topics and take a broader look at the Republican budget going beyond the Affordable Care Act, which they want to abolish.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we are such a poor country that we should move toward a Republican budget which forces more and more people to have no health insurance; which makes it harder for working families to send their kids to college; which makes it harder for low-income families to send their kids to Head Start; which cuts back on nutrition programs, whether it is the Food Stamp Program, the Meals on Wheels program, the WIC Program; which helps people who are struggling, literally, to try to come up with the income to adequately feed themselves. We have many people in this country who are actually hungry, and the Republican budget cuts those programs. Are we such a poor country that those are the choices that stand before us? I think not. I think the facts are quite the opposite. I think the facts tell us that the United States of America is, in fact, the wealthiest country on this planet. In fact, we have never been a more wealthy country. We are not a poor country. We are an extremely wealthy country.

The problem we face is that we have a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality such that tens of millions of families are struggling economically and many are hungry, while at the other side, people on top are doing phenomenally well. But when you add it all together, it turns out that we are a very wealthy country. And the idea that people would come forward and say: We are going to make it harder for low-income families to feed their kids, we are going to make it harder for working-class families to send their kids to college, and we are going to make it harder for working families to get their kids into childcare is a totally absurd argument. We are not a poor country.

Let me demonstrate how we are not a poor country. When some of us talk about the rich getting richer, that is a general statement. Let me be more specific. From the year 2013 to the year 2015, the wealthiest 14 Americans--14 people--increased their net wealth by more than $157 billion over the last 2 years. The wealthiest 14 billionaires in America saw their net wealth increase by more than $157 billion from 2013 to 2015.

Let me be even more specific, and tell me whether this is a poor nation that cuts kids off of health insurance, a poor nation that denies nutrition to families who need it, a poor nation that cuts back on Meals on Wheels for elderly, low-income seniors. Here is what is going on in this ``poor nation.'' From March of 2013 to March of 2015, Bill Gates, the wealthiest person in America, saw his wealth increase by $12.2 billion, going from $67 billion to $79 billion in 2015. During that period, Warren Buffett saw his wealth increase by $19 billion--one guy in 2 years. Larry Ellison saw his wealth increase by $11 billion. The Koch brothers saw their wealth increase by almost $18 billion in a 2-year period. The Waltons saw huge increases in their wealth--they are the wealthiest family in America--Christy Walton by $13.5 billion, Jim Walton by $13.9 billion, and S. Robson Walton by $13 billion. Michael Bloomberg saw his wealth increase by $8.5 billion. Jeff Bezos's wealth went up by $9.6 billion. Mark Zuckerberg's wealth went up by $20 billion, Sheldon Adelson's by $9.5 billion, Larry Page's by $7.6 billion, and Sergey Brin's by $6.4 billion. These are just the top 14. Added together, their wealth increased by $157 billion.

This is a reality my Republican friends don't want to deal with. They do not want to ask the wealthiest people in this country--many of whom are paying an effective tax rate lower than that paid by truckdrivers and nurses--to start paying their fair share of taxes. Their solution to the deficit problem is to cut programs for working families, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor.

Despite the fact that the billionaires of this country are doing phenomenally well, their view is, oh no, we can't go to those guys. They may be potential campaign contributors. We are going to go after the elderly--they don't contribute a whole lot. Elderly people on the Meals on Wheels program, elderly people making $14,000 a year--they have no political power here in Washington. They have no lobbyists out there. We will just go after the working families, the poor, the elderly, the children, the sick. They are easy. They are not actively involved. Many of them don't even vote. We can go after them, but we have to protect the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.

At a time when the richest 400 Americans paid a tax rate of just 16.7 percent in 2012--the second lowest on record--the Republican budget does nothing to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes to create jobs or reduce the deficit. They are immune. The rich get richer, but leave them alone. No problem. Working families pay a higher effective tax rate than billionaires--not a problem because we are going to cut the deficit by going after the most vulnerable people in this country, the people who don't have a lot of political power.

While the effective tax rate of large, profitable corporations was just 12.6 percent in 2010 and corporate profits are at an alltime high, the Republican budget does nothing to end the outrageous loopholes that allow major corporations to avoid $100 billion a year in taxes by shifting their profits to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.

Now, why would you ask large, profitable corporations that in some cases pay zero in Federal income taxes to start paying their fair share of taxes? These are powerful people. These are people who have lobbyists all over Capitol Hill. These are people who make campaign contributions. Why would we ask them to start paying their fair share of taxes?

At a time when billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street pay a lower effective tax rate than a truckdriver or a nurse, the Republican budget does not eliminate the carried interest loophole that will cost the Federal Government $16 billion in lost revenue over the next 10 years. The Republican budget protects over $40 billion in unnecessary and expensive tax breaks and subsidies for oil and gas companies even as the five largest oil companies alone made more than $1 trillion in profits over the last decade. Ask large, profitable oil companies to pay more in taxes? Don't be ridiculous--not when you can cut programs for hungry kids or cut Head Start or cut Pell grants for working-class young people.

Let me tell you what this budget does do. At a time when millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, the Republican budget paves the way for a tax hike averaging over $900 per person for 13 million families--$900 apiece for more than 13 million families with 25 million children--by allowing the expansions of the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit to expire.

So we can't ask billionaires who are doing phenomenally well to pay more in taxes. That we don't do. We can't ask corporations that stash their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands to start paying their fair share of taxes. We can't do that. But what we can do is impact the lives of millions of working families by allowing the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit to expire. In other words, we raise taxes for low-income Americans and working-class Americans and the middle class, but we do not ask the wealthy and large corporations to pay a nickel more in taxes.

Further, the Republican budget paves the way for a tax hike of about $1,100 for 12 million families and students paying for college by allowing the American opportunity tax credit to expire. So if you are a family trying to send your kid to college, you are going to have to pay more because our Republican colleagues are allowing the American opportunity tax credit to expire.

The Republican Senate budget would balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick, and the most vulnerable people in our society. It would slash investments in education, health care, nutrition, and affordable housing, while paving the way for another unpaid war by significantly increasing defense spending. It also would not ask millionaires, billionaires, and profitable corporations to contribute one penny for deficit reduction. No, it is only working families, the middle class, and low-income people who have to help us with deficit reduction, not billionaires or large corporations.

As we all know, the budget we are debating today is not an appropriations bill; it is a budget bill, which, by the way, is filled with magic asterisks--those little asterisks which tell us nothing about how Republicans are going to be moving toward a balanced budget. But by making over $5 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade--$5 trillion--reasonable estimates have been made about the harm those cuts would do to the American people.

At a time when the cost of college education is becoming out of reach for millions of Americans, the Republican budget would eliminate mandatory Pell grants, cutting this program by nearly $90 billion over 10 years, which would increase the cost of a college education to more than 8 million Americans.

Take a deep breath and think about this. Young people all over this country--and I know this because at a lot of Vermont high schools, when you talk to kids, they are wondering how they are going to be able to afford to go to college. They are worried about the high cost of college. The Republican solution is to cut--eliminate mandatory Pell grants, cutting this program by over $90 billion during a 10-year period. So what they are doing is making a very difficult situation even more difficult in terms of enabling the middle-class and working families in this country to be able to send their kids to college.

I think everybody who has children or grandchildren understands that we have a major preschool and childcare crisis in this country, and in Vermont and all over this Nation, it is very difficult for middle-income Americans to find decent, quality, affordable childcare or preschool education for their kids. Within that context of a crisis in childcare, the Republican solution is to give us a budget that would mean that 110,000 fewer young people, young children, would be able to enroll in Head Start over the next 10 years.

So we have a crisis in terms of higher education, and what they do is cut back on Pell grants, making it harder for families to send their kids to college. We have a crisis in childcare, and what the Republicans do is cut back on Head Start, meaning that 110,000 fewer young children would be able to get into the Head Start Program. Under the Republican budget, 1.9 million fewer students would receive the academic help they need to succeed in school because of some $12 billion in cuts to the title I education program. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act would be cut by $10 billion over the next decade, which would shift the cost to States and local school districts and could lead to increased property taxes for millions of Americans.

At a time when there are more than 20 million hungry Americans, people who in the course of the week are not quite sure how they are going to get the food they need to survive, when many working families are running to emergency food shelters in order to get the help they need to feed their families, the Republican budget would take some 1.2 million women, infants, and young people from the WIC Program, or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which goes to pregnant women and new mothers. They would cut that by $10 billion over a 10-year period, impacting some 1.2 million women, infants, and young children.

Once again, we do not ask billionaires to start paying their fair share of taxes, but we tell the pregnant mother or the mother of a young child that the nutrition programs she has been receiving to make sure her kids are eating well are going to be cut by $10 billion over a 10-year period.

I come from a cold-weather State, and we have had a very rough February. Only yesterday, the weather in my hometown was about 10 degrees.

Under the Republican budget, up to 900,000 families would be denied the help they need to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer by cuts to the LIHEAP program, or the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program--a $5 billion cut over the next decade impacting some 900,000 families. Many of the people on LIHEAP are seniors--a good percentage of them. These are elderly people without a lot of money in cold-weather States trying to keep warm in the wintertime. We are going to see a $5 billion cut in that program over the next decade.

In Vermont, and I think in many parts of this country, we have a real housing problem for low-income people. The cost of rent in many cases is much more than people can afford. People are spending 40, 50 percent of their limited incomes on rent.

To address that problem, the Republican budget would kick nearly half a million families off the section 8 affordable housing program and out of their homes by cutting section 8 by $46 billion over a 10-year period.

So you have low-income people all over this country--and I see it every day in Vermont--paying 40, 50, 60 percent of their income for rents, and what the Republican budget does is it cuts $46 billion over 10 years from section 8 housing, again, making a bad situation worse.

At a time when real unemployment is 11 percent, the Republican budget cuts job training and employment services for more than 2 million Americans.

So what we have is a budget which in many ways is a Robin Hood budget in reverse. At a time when the rich are getting richer and the middle class is getting poorer, the Republicans take from the middle class and working families to give more to the rich and large corporations.

The Republican budget has a set of priorities that are way, way, way out of touch with where the American people are.

During the next week, there are going to be a number of amendments being offered by Members on our side which will create jobs for the unemployed, raise wages for low-income workers, address the overtime crisis facing millions of Americans who are not getting time and a half when theyshould, provide pay equity for women workers, address this issue of tax breaks for the rich and large corporations, which are unconscionable and unsustainable. That is what we will be doing. I look forward to that debate and those amendments.

I note that Senator Markey is on the floor and has asked for 10 minutes.

I yield the floor

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I just want to reiterate what I think is the key point in this entire debate, and that point is whether we develop a budget that works for the vast majority of our families--working families, middle-class families who, in many instances, are working longer hours for lower wages--whether it works for our children at a time when we are experiencing the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country; whether it works for our elderly citizens who often have to make the choice about whether to heat their homes, buy the medicines they need or buy the food they need--and there are millions of people in that position--or do we have a budget that works for the top 1 percent of people who are doing phenomenally well or maybe even the top one-tenth of 1 percent.

I want to get back to this chart, which I think is real interesting. I want everybody to take a deep breath and think about this. At a time when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, when the people on top, the very wealthiest Americans, are doing well almost beyond imagination, do we really want to cut food stamps and nutrition programs for hungry kids? Do we really want to make college education less affordable for working families? Do we really want to ask seniors to pay more for prescription drugs--those people trying to live on $13,000, $14,000 a year.

So here is the chart. This comes from Forbes magazine, not notably a leftwing publication. They simply give us the facts, and here are the facts. The top 14 wealthiest people in this country have seen their net worth increase by $157 billion over the last 2 years--14 people.

Do my Republican colleagues go to these people and say: You know what, you are Americans. We have a lot of problems here. Our middle class is disappearing. We have an infrastructure which is crumbling. We have millions of families who can't afford to send their kids to college. You, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, are doing phenomenally well. Is it so hard for my Republican colleagues to say to these people: Maybe you will have to pay a little more in taxes.

Let me list them. Bill Gates, in that 2-year period from 2013 to 2015, saw his wealth increase by $12 billion; Warren Buffet, $19 billion; Larry Ellison, $11 billion; Charles Koch, almost $9 billion; David Koch, almost $9 billion; Christy Walton, over $13 billion; Jim Walton, almost $14 billion; S. Robson Walton, $13 billion; Michael Bloomberg, $8.5 billion; Jeff Bezos, $9.6 billion; Mark Zuckerberg, $20 billion; Sheldon Adelson, $4.9 billion; Larry Page, $6.7 billion; and Sergey Brin, over $6 billion.

That is just the increase in their net worth in a 2-year period. Who can deny the very richest people in this country are doing phenomenally well? How do you ignore that reality? How do you not say to those people: You are going to have to help us with our infrastructure, with education, with our deficit.

But my Republican colleagues have a different approach. Their approach is to say to working families: Well, we are going to make it harder for your kids to get into Head Start. We are going to make it harder for you to get the nutrition programs you need to keep your family from going hungry. We are going to make it harder for seniors to get the prescription drugs they need.

So I think, with this budget, the choices are pretty clear. It is laid right out there. Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, and protect all of these guys--not ask them to pay one nickel more in taxes. I think that is wrong from a moral perspective, from an economic perspective, and I think this is a budget that should be defeated.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, in a moment I am going to yield for Senator Kaine, but before I do that, I just want to make a few points based on the remarks from my friend, the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn.

When Senator Cornyn talked about military spending--and how much we should spend on the military is a very important debate. We now spend more money than the next nine countries combined. But as we talk about the deficit and the debt, I would remind my colleagues and the American people that one of the reasons our national debt is at $18 trillion and one of the reasons our deficit is as high as it is is because under President Bush, we went to war in Iraq and we went to war in Afghanistan, and we put those wars on the credit card. We didn't pay for them.

On Thursday, at the Senate Budget Committee meeting, an amendment was passed to add another $38 billion of defense spending to the deficit. So I have a little bit of a problem understanding all of my Republican friends coming down here and saying: We are really concerned about the deficit and the debt. We are going to have to cut back on Head Start. We are going to have to cut back on health care. We are going to have to cut back on the Meals On Wheels programs for seniors. We are going to have to cut back on Pell grants, making it harder for young people to go to college. We just can't afford those things anymore because the deficit is so high. But, when it comes to military spending, we don't have to worry about the deficit at all.

I have a real problem with that, and I suspect that within the next couple of days there will be an amendment on the floor which makes it very clear that if people want to go into another war--and I certainly hope we do not go into another war; I think two wars is quite enough--but if people want to vote for another war, they are going to have to pay for that war and not pass that debt on to our kids and our grandchildren.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor for the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Kaine.

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Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Kaine for his outstanding work on the committee and for his very cogent remarks.

In the Republican budget, we don't have to talk about protecting absurd loopholes for large corporations and for the wealthiest people in this country. We don't have to talk about significant cuts in Head Start, making it harder for working families to send their kids to that very important program. We don't have to talk about cuts in the Pell grant program, some $90 billion in mandatory funding, making it harder for working families to send their kids to college. We don't have to talk about raising taxes on working families by allowing the earned-income tax credit and the children's tax credit to expire. We don't even have to talk about that. All we have to do is to hear what Senator Kaine just said.

Does anybody in America think it makes sense to tell 16 million men, women, and children--who today have health insurance, some for the first time in their lives--that they are going to lose that health insurance, but, by the way, we will continue to collect the taxes from the Affordable Care Act?

Does anyone take that proposal seriously--throwing 16 million people off of health insurance, the equivalent of, what was it, the 15 smallest States in America--and having no plan with what to do with these people?

On the surface, I think the Republican budget makes no sense at all and has a very warped sense of priorities in terms of protecting the wealthiest people in this country--the largest corporations--but sticking it to the middle-class and working families.

Senator Kaine mentioned that one of the areas that we, in fact, are going to focus on is the need to create jobs. I think all of us who are not particularly partisan are aware of the fact that the economy today is a lot better than it was when President Bush left office and we were hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month. Is the economy where we would like it to be today? I don't think anyone believes that. But have we made some significant progress in the last 6, 6 1/2 years? Yes, I think we have.

But having said that, let's be clear. If you look at the unemployment rates, unemployment in this country is not 5 1/2 percent. Real unemployment is close to 11 percent. Youth unemployment, which we never talk about at all, is somewhere around 17 percent, and African-American youth unemployment is off the charts.

In addition to that, we have another major problem. That is, our infrastructure is crumbling. So what many of us think we should be doing is that at a time when our roads, bridges, rail systems, water plants, wastewater plants, dams, levees, and airports need a huge amount of work, and at a time when real unemployment is much higher than it should be--well, what about a commonsense approach which says: Let's start rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and let us put Americans back to work?

Do you know what, that is what the American people want. On every poll I have seen, the top priority of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, Independents--is the economy, create jobs, raise wages, and that is what we should be doing.

In about 1 hour or so I will officially offer an amendment which will, in fact, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create many millions of decent-paying jobs.

In terms of infrastructure, which is a fancy word for roads, bridges, water systems, rail, and so forth, I don't think you have to be a Ph.D. in infrastructure to know our infrastructure is really in quite bad shape. Every day somebody gets into a car--whether it is in Vermont or Washington, DC--and you see that pothole that takes away half of your axle, that is what infrastructure is about.

When you are in a traffic jam because the road is inadequate to deal with traffic, that is called infrastructure.

When your water pipes in your town are bursting and flooding downtown, that is called infrastructure.

The truth is that for too many years Congress has dramatically underfunded the maintenance and improvement of the physical infrastructure our economy depends upon. That has to change, and that is why I will be introducing an amendment to invest $478 billion over 6 years to modernize our infrastructure.

How will we pay for that? Will we pay for it by throwing children off of Head Start? Will we pay for it by throwing people off of the Affordable Care Act? No. We are going to pay for it in the right way, and that is to close tax loopholes that allow corporations and billionaires to shift their profits to the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and other tax havens. So instead of having these corporations putting their money in tax havens--paying zero in Federal income tax--and at a time when we are losing about $100 billion a year without reason, we are going to ask these corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes, and then we are going to use that money to repair our crumbling infrastructure and put millions of people back to work.

This amendment--by the way, I will tell you personally I have introduced legislation that is more expansive than this, but because I want all of the Members of the Senate to be supporting this, I have tailored it down a little bit, and we are talking about $478 billion over 6 years. This amendment will support more than 9 million good-paying jobs over 6 years, more than 1.5 million jobs a year. This is money that not only creates jobs and rebuilds our infrastructure, it makes the country more productive, more efficient, and safer.

Right now, Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, makes the point that if we take into account the impact of depreciation, our net investment in infrastructure is actually closer to zero of GDP, zero percent. In other words, what we are spending our money on is not rebuilding new infrastructure but replacing and patching old infrastructure.

The sad truth is that as a nation we are falling further and further behind. Throughout China, multibillion-dollar projects are underway to build new bridges, airports, tunnels, an $80 billion water project, and high-speed rail lines--in China, not in the United States.

This past November, China approved nearly $115 billion for 21 additional major infrastructure projects. While we are debating, while we refuse to invest in our crumbling infrastructure, China is doing just that--in spades.

It is no surprise that the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report now ranks our overall infrastructure at 12th in the world--12th in the world. That is down from seventh place a decade ago. There was once a time when the United States had an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. Now we are in 12th place.

Let's take a look at some of the problems we face and why we need to invest in infrastructure.

One out of every nine bridges in this country is structurally deficient, and nearly one-quarter are functionally obsolete. We need to rebuild crumbling bridges.

Almost one-third of our roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and nearly 42 percent of all urban highways are congested. We need to rebuild crumbling roads.

Transit systems across the country are struggling to address deferred maintenance, even as ridership steadily increases. People want to take advantage of transit, to get to work on transit, and yet the transit authorities are deferring maintenance because of limited funds.

Meanwhile, nearly 45 percent of American households lack any meaningful access to transit, which is a huge problem in rural areas across the country, including the State of Vermont. In Vermont, in most cases you have one way to get to work and only one way: That is in your automobile.

The amendment I would be offering also creates a national infrastructure bank. This idea, championed in the past by Senators on both sides of the aisle, will leverage private capital to finance more than $250 billion in transportation, energy, environmental, and telecommunications projects.

My amendment will also greatly expand credit assistance to projects of national and regional significance through the TIFIA Program, long championed by my good friend from California, Senator Barbara Boxer.

It will boost funding for the highly competitive TIGER Program that funds locally sponsored transportation projects across the country that increase economic competitiveness and promote economic innovations.

But we all know our infrastructure problems are not just limited to roads, bridges, and transit. Much of our Nation's rail system is obsolete, even though our energy-efficient railroads move more freight than ever and Amtrak's ridership has never been higher.

While we debate the merits of high-speed rail in Congress, countries across Europe and Asia have gone ahead and built vast high-speed networks. Guess what. They work. High-speed rail trains relieve congestion on roads, airports, and whisk people around quickly and efficiently.

China has already 12,000 miles of track with trains that run at least 125 miles per hour and several thousand miles with trains that can travel at 200 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the Acela, Amtrak's fastest train, travels at an average speed of just 65 miles per hour.

This amendment will invest $12 billion to make much-needed investments to upgrade our passenger and freight rail lines, and to move people and goods more quickly and efficiently.

It is time for America to catch up with the rest of the world. There was once a time when we were No. 1 in infrastructure. Today we are No. 12.

I hear my friends on the other side talking about the debt we are going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren, while we are going to be leaving them a crumbling infrastructure which at some point somebody is going to have to pay for unless we get our act together now.

America's airports are bursting at the seams as the number of passengers and cargo grows. The Airports Council International--North America says America needs $76 billion over the next 5 years to accommodate growth in passengers and cargo activity and to rehabilitate existing facilities.

Moreover, and rather incredibly, our airports still rely on antiquated 1960s radar technology because Congress chronically underfunds deployment of a new satellite-based air traffic control system.

This amendment will invest $6 billion to improve airports across the country. It will invest another $6 billion to bring our air traffic control system into the 21st century by accelerating deployment of NextGen technology that will make our skies safer and our airports more efficient. Anyone, as many of us do, who travels, who flies a lot, knows our airports need to be more efficient than they are.

Bottlenecks at our marine seaports, which handle 95 percent of all overseas imports and exports, cause delays that prevent goods from getting to their destinations on time. The same is true--perhaps even more so--for our inland waterways, which carry the equivalent of 50 million truck trips of goods each year.

My amendment will invest an additional $1 billion a year to clear the backlog of projects needed to improve inland waterways, coastal harbors, and shipping channels. Our businesses simply can't compete in the global economy if they can't move their goods and supplies to, from, and within our country more efficiently.

Right now, more than 4,000 of the Nation's 84,000 dams are considered deficient--not in need of a few repairs, but deficient--serious problems.

Even worse, one of every 11 levees has been rated as likely to fail during a major flood. I will talk a little more about this issue in a few minutes as this is something that could concern everyone in the Senate.

My amendment will invest $5 billion a year to repair and improve the high hazard dams that provide flood control, drinking water, irrigation, hydropower, and recreation across the country, and the flood levees that protect our cities and our farms.

Much of our drinking water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life. I like to tell the story of Rutland, VT. A few years ago that city--one of the largest in Vermont--had water pipes that were built before the Civil War--before the Civil War--and I think that is not all that uncommon. Cities and towns all over this country, in many instances, have pipes that go way, way, way back and are constantly breaking and causing serious leaks.

Each year, there are nearly one-quarter million water main breaks with the loss of 7 billion gallons of freshwater. Let me repeat that: Each year, there are nearly one-quarter million water main breaks with the loss of 7 billion gallons of freshwater. But that is nothing compared to the amount of water we lose through leaky pipes and faulty meters. In all, the American Water Works Association estimates that we lose 2.1 trillion gallons of treated drinking water every year--2.1 trillion gallons. Clearly, this is an issue that cannot continue to be delayed. We have to address that.

Our wastewater treatment plants aren't in much better shape than our freshwater pipes are. Almost 10 billion gallons of raw sewage is dumped into our Nation's waterways every year when plants fail or pipes burst, often during heavy rains. My amendment would invest $2 billion a year so States can improve the drinking water systems that provide Americans with clean, safe water.

The amendment would similarly invest $2 billion a year to improve the wastewater and storm water infrastructure that protects water quality in our Nation's rivers and lakes.

America's aging electrical grid consists of a patchwork system of interconnected power generation transmission and distribution facilities, some of which date back to the early 1900s. Not surprisingly, the grid suffers from hundreds of major power failures every year, many of which are avoidable. Our grid is simply not up to the 21st century challenges it faces, including resiliency to cyber attacks. It is no wonder the World Economic Forum ranks our electric grid at just 24th in the world, in terms of reliability, just behind Barbados.

My amendment will invest $3 billion a year for power transmission and distribution modernization projects to improve the reliability and resiliency of our ever more complex electric power grid. This investment will also position our grid to accept new sources of locally generated renewable energy and will address critical vulnerabilities to cyber attacks, an issue of great concern to many of us.

Another area where we are falling behind is Internet access and speed, and this is especially important to rural States such as Vermont. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, ranks the United States 16th in the world in terms of broadband access--16th in the world in terms of broadband success--not something we should be terribly proud of. We are only marginally better in terms of average broadband speed--12th in the world, according to Akamai's 2014 annual report.

How can it be that businesses, schools and families in Bucharest, Romania, have access to much faster Internet than most of the United States of America?

My amendment will invest $2 billion a year to expand high-speed broadband networks in underserved and unserved areas and to boost speeds and capacity all across this country. Let us be clear: Internet access is no longer a luxury, it is essential for 21st century commerce, for education, for telemedicine, and for public safety. We cannot continue to lag behind many of our global competitors in terms of broadband quality and access.

That is a brief summary of what my amendment does. It addresses a chronic funding shortfall. It addresses the need to start the kinds of investments we need to bring our physical infrastructure into the 21st century. If $478 billion over 6 years sounds like a lot of money, please consider this: The American Society of Civil Engineers--the people who actually know the most about the state of America's infrastructure--says we need to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020 just to get our Nation's infrastructure to a state of good repairs. So this amendment is a good start, but that is all it is. It is a good start. Much more has to be done.

Let me conclude by asking my fellow Americans to imagine an America where millions of people in our 50 States are hard at work earning good wages rebuilding our crumbling bridges, making our roads much better, dealing with wastewater plants, dealing with water systems, and dealing with our rail system. Think about what America looks like when we create an infrastructure that is 21st century.

Our job right now is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. As a former mayor, I can absolutely assure you infrastructure does not get better all by itself. You can't turn around and ignore it and think it gets better. Quite the contrary, it gets worse. If you have a bridge right now which is in serious disrepair, it does not get better by ignoring it. It only gets worse, and in fact it ends up costing more money to rebuild it as it deteriorates.

So we have an opportunity right now. We have an opportunity to make our country more efficient, more productive, and safer by creating a 21st century infrastructure, and at the same time we have an opportunity to create millions of decent-paying jobs. In many respects, this is a no-brainer. This amendment is paid for by ending outrageous corporate loopholes that allow large profitable corporations from paying any Federal income tax. So I hope we will have wide bipartisan support for this amendment, which, as I understand it, will be voted on tomorrow, and I will officially bring it up in about half an hour.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. SANDERS. I thank Senator Stabenow not only for her remarks this evening but for the great work she has done on the Budget Committee, and I certainly concur with the thrust of what she is saying. Our middle class is struggling, and the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well. Corporations are enjoying recordbreaking profits. CEOs make 270 times more than their average worker.

We don't need a budget that protects the top one-tenth of 1 percent and the CEOs of major corporations. We need a budget that protects working families and the middle class. I know that is something Senator Stabenow has been fighting for throughout this entire process, and I thank the Senator very much for that.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me just reiterate what I said a moment ago. The wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well. Ninety-nine percent of all new income created in America today is going to the top 1 percent. Those people are doing great. They don't need the help of the Senate. They are doing just fine. The top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Those people are doing extraordinarily well. They do not need the help of the Senate.

The people who do need the help are the working families and the middle class of this country, many of whom are working longer hours for lower wages. They, in fact, need our help. Seniors who are having to make the difficult choice of whether they heat their homes in the winter, buy the medicines they need, or buy the food they need, need our help. Young people in this country who would love to go to college but don't know how they can afford to go to college need our help. People graduating college with $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 of debt and don't know how to pay off that debt need our help.

We have to get our priorities right. We have to know whose side we are on.

The amendment I am offering, which I suspect will be voted on tomorrow, is very significant in that it addresses two major issues. At a time when real unemployment in this country is not 5.5 percent--if we count those who have given up looking for work--and I believe the Presiding Officer touched on that issue during her remarks--if we count those who have given up looking for work or those who are working part time when they want to work full time, real unemployment is 11 percent. We need to create millions of jobs. Youth unemployment is at 17 percent. African-American youth unemployment is off the charts. Right now, when we talk to people all over this country, they say: Help us. Create decent-paying jobs.

That is what this amendment does. This amendment creates 9 million decent-paying jobs over a 6-year period, and it does it in a very sensible way.

Mr. President, I think you know, I know, and every Member of this body knows and virtually every American knows our infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater plants, our levies, our dams, our airports, and our rail system are in need of significant improvements. We cannot be a first-rate economy when we have a third-rate infrastructure. Everybody knows that.

Let me be very clear. If we don't invest in infrastructure today, it is not going to get better all by itself. It will only deteriorate. We keep pushing it off, and we keep pushing it off, and the roads get worse, the bridges get worse, and the water systems get worse. Now is the time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and when we do that, we will create or maintain some 9 million good-paying jobs. I would hope that maybe once around here we can have bipartisan support for a piece of legislation that I believe in their hearts every Member of this body knows makes sense.

How are we going to pay for this? We are not going to pay for it by cutting Medicare. We are not going the pay for it by cutting Pell grants. We are not going to pay for it by cutting Head Start. We are not going to pay for it by asking low-income seniors to pay more for their prescription drugs. We are going to pay for it by an eminently fair way; that is, by undoing huge tax loopholes that enable large, profitable corporations in some cases to pay zero in Federal income taxes. It is time to end those loopholes. It is time to invest in our crumbling infrastructure. It is time to create millions of decent-paying jobs.

I would hope very much that we would have strong bipartisan support for this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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