Summary

The senate convene for a period of morning business. They discuss the White House compromise on the the GW Bush tax cuts. 14:00:09 BERNIE SANDERS under president bush alone, we lost some 48,000 factories. we lost -- we we need to from 19,000 manufacturing jobs to is 12 million manufacturing jobs and in many instances those were good jobs. where did they go? well, some shut dpowrn a variety 14:00:26of reasons. bur others shut down because we have trade laws that say you've got to be a moron not to shut down in america because you go to china, go to vietnam, go to mexico, go to a developing country, you pay workers there a fraction of the wages you pay in 14:00:43america. why wouldn't you go? and then you just bring your products right back into this country. a couple of weeks ago my wife and i did some christmas shopping. frankly, we won't went to a couple of stores. very hard to find a product 14:00:58manufactured in the united states of america. and you don't have to be a ph.d. in economics to understand that we're not going to have a strong economy unless we have a strong manufacturing capability, unless companies are 14:01:14reinvesting in colorado or vermont, creating good jobs here. you don't have an economic future when virtually everything you are buying is coming from china or another country. and we're not just talking about 14:01:30low-end products. it is not sneakers or a pair of pants. this is increasingly high-tech stuff. so we are -- we are really forfeiting our future as a great economic nation unless we 14:01:45rebuild our industrial base and unless we create millions and millions of jobs producing the goods and the products that we consume. we cannot continue to just purchase products from the rest of the world. 14:02:03mr. president, when we talk about the collapse of the middle class, it's important to also recognize the fact, as reported in "usa today" last september. 14:02:18"the incomes of the young and middle-aged, especially men, have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970's." end of quote, "usa today." 14:02:34the point being, for young workers, for example, when we had a manufacturing base in america in the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, you could graduate high school, go out and get a job in a factory. 14:02:49was it a glamourous job? no. was it a hard job? yes. was it a dirty job? in some cases. but if you worked in manufacturing and especially if you had a union behind you you the likelihood is that you 14:03:06earned wages to take your family into the middle class, you had decent health care coverage, and you might even have a strong pension. where are all those jobs now? during the bush years alone, we 14:03:21went from 19 million jobs in manufacturing to 12 million jobs, a horrendous loss of manufacturing jobs. so if you are a kid today in doll coul and -- or in vermont -- so if you are a kid today in colorado and -- or in vermont, 14:03:39and you are not going to college, 30 40r years ago i could go out a get a job in factory. today what are your options? you can get a minimum-wage job at mcdonald's or mabe maybe at walmart. 14:03:53benefits are minimal or nonexistent and that is a significant transition of the american economy. i want to tell you something else, when we talk about 14:04:03manufacturing. didn't get a whole lot of publicity, but it is worth reporting here. the good news is that we have recently seen, after the loss of 14:04:20many, many thousands of jobs in the automobile industry, we have seen the auto companies -- chrysler and others -- starting to rehire. what i think has not been widely 14:04:41reported is that the wages of the new workers who are being hired is 50% of the wages of the old workers in the plant. so you're going to have workers 14:04:56working side by side, where an older worker who has been there for years has been make $25, $28 an hour and right next to them a new hire is making $14 an hour. and if you understand that the 14:05:14automobile industry was perhaps the gold standard for manufacturing in america, what do you think going happen to the wages of blue-collar workers in the future, if all you can get 14:05:27with a union behind you in automobile manufacturing is $14 an hour today, what are you going to make in colorado or in vermont? going to make $10 an hour, $11 an hour? that enough money to raise a family on? 14:05:42are you going to have any benefits? unlikely. so that's what happens -- that's what happens when your manufacturing base disappears, and that, to a significant degree, in my view, is the result of a disastrous trade 14:06:00policy. i got to tell you, and i think in mind sight most -- in hindsight most people will agree when i was over in the house. most of the corporations were telling us how great free trade 14:06:16would be, nafta with mexico, free trade with china. i didn't buy t think of all the american products they're going to buy over there, create all kind of jobs in the united states. 14:06:29i never believed it for a moment. i'll tell you a story. i wasn't in china a number of years ago. and i walked into -- as part of a congressional delegation, we went to visit walmart in china. and the walmart store looked a lot like walmart in america, 14:06:46different products, but it looked kind of the same style. and you walk in there you walk up and down the aisles and you see all of these american products. remember, wilson basketballs and procter and gamble soap product. different products there for the 14:07:01china, but a lot of the products were american products. looked pretty familiar. so i asked the guy who was there with us who was the head, i believe, of walmart asia -- the guy that's in chaj of all of the walmarts in asia -- i asked him, tell me, how many of these 14:07:17products, these american company products, are actually manufactured in the united states? and he was a little bit sheepish and a little bit hesitant and he said, well, about 1%. so, obviously -- but everybody knew -- it is a lot cheaper for 14:07:33the american companies to set up plants in china, hire chinese workers at 50 cents an hour, 75 cents an hour, whatever it and have them build the products for the chinese markets than it is to pay american workers $15 an hour, $20 an hour, deal with the 14:07:50union, deal with the environment. that's not a great ref laismghts i think anybody -- nays not a great revelation. i think anybody could have figured that out. but those around here pushed it. and president clinton and those in congress signed it and we're 14:08:05off and running. so when we look at why the middle class is in the shape that it's in -- and it's important to make sure that everybody understands it because, you know, i think one of the things that happens in this world -- it is human nature, i suppose -- is that people feel very guilty and responsible if they are not 14:08:24taken care -- if they are that the taking care of their families. and right now, with unemployment so high -- these are not just statistics they're throwing out. these are people who not only were earning an income that supported their families, they 14:08:39had a sense of worth. every human being wants to be productive. they want to produce something. they want to be part of something. they want to go to work, earn a paycheck, bring it home. you feel good about that. you know what it does to somebody's sense of human worth 14:08:55when suddenly you are sitting home watching the tv, you can't go out and earn a living? 14:09:02it destroys people. people become alcoholic, people commit suicide, people have mental breakdowns because they're no longer utilizing their skills. they're no longer being a productive member of soavment that's what unemployment is 14:09:17about. and i think that one of the reasons unemployment is so hierks one of the reasons the middle class is collapsing has a lot to do with these disastrous trade policies. and i got to till, as we've been talking about all day long, 14:09:33these policies, these tax breaks, all of this stuff, emanates from corporate leaders whose sense of responsibility is such that they want themselves to become richer, they want mured and more profits for their company, but they could care less about the needs of the 14:09:48american people. i remember there was one c.e.o. of a large -- one of our largest american corporations, and he said, when i look at the future of general electric, i see china, china, china, and china. and, by the way, we understanded 14:10:05up bailing out that particular corporation. he didn't look to china to get bailed out. he looked to the taxpayers of this country. t-but the word has got to get out. to corporate america, they're going to have to start reinvesting in the united states 14:10:21of america. they're going to have to start building the products and the goods that the american people need rather than run all over the country in search of cheap labor. that is an absolute imperative if we're going to turn this economy around. 14:10:39mr. president, according to a "boston globe" article published last year, let me quote what they say. again, i'll trying to document here -- again, i'm trying to 14:10:53document here what is happening to the working class of america because i don't want individual workers, somebody who may be hearing this on the tv or on the radio, you know, it's my fawvment there's something wrong with me because i can't go out and get a job. well, you're not alone. 14:11:08the entire middle complas is collapsing, our economy has shedded millions and millions of jobs, and i know that there are people out there trying so hard to find work but that work is just not there. that's why we've got to rebuild the economy and create jobs. 14:11:25this is what "the boston globe" said last year. "the recession has been more like a depression for blue-collar workers." and this is an important point to be made here. you know, when we talk about the economy, we kind of lump 14:11:41everybody together. that's wrong. the friewj right now in the economy -- the truth is, right knew in the economy, the unemployment rate for upper-income people is very low. they're doing ofnlgt as opposed to, as this "boston globe" 14:11:56article points out, what is is happening to blue-collar workers. "the recession has been more like a depression for blue-collar workers who are losing jobs much more quickly than the nation as a whole." this is the working class of 14:12:11america. "the nation's blue-collar industries have slashed one in six jobs since 2007." let me repeat that. it's just an astronomical fact. "the nation's blue-collar industries" -- manufacturing -- 14:12:28"have slashed one in six jobs since 2007, compared with about one in 20 for all industries, leaving scores of the unemployed competing for the rare job opening in construction or 14:12:45manufacturing, with many unlikely to work in those fields again." again, never. "up to 70% of unemployed blue-collar workers have lost jobs permanently, meaning their 14:13:00old jobs won't be there when the economy recovers." end of quote. that's "the boston globe" last year. so when we talk about the economy, what we have got to do is understand that blue-collar 14:13:17workers, middle class, young workers are really hurting very, very much, and in the context again of the debate we are now having, the discussion about whether we should approve the 14:13:33agreement reached between the president and the republicans on tanches the idea of not -- on taxes, the idea of not slig investing in our economy but, rather, giving tens of billions of dollars to the very rich in more tax breaks makes no sense 14:13:49to many of us. when we talk about why people are angry in america, why people when asked a question by pollsters, "do you think america is moving in the right 14:14:02direction?" and overwhelmingly they think not, let me tell why you they think not. this is just during the presidency of president bush from 2001 to 2008. 14:14:19during that period alone, just in that period -- and, by the washing the pain is certainly continuing right now. i don't mean to suggest otherwise. during those eight years of bush, over 8 million americans 14:14:32slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. today nearly 40 million americans are living in poverty. 7.8 million americans lost their health insurance and that is continuing. i think a recent study came out 14:14:47that suggests that the uninsured now are about 50 million men' s. 50 million americans have no health insurance now. we hope that health care reform going make a dent in that. i think it will. but as of today, without the major conditions of health care 14:15:03reform being implemented, 50 million americans, 50 million americans without any health insurance. mr. president, during that period -- and we haven't talked about this a whole lot -- there's another thing going on with the economy in the working 14:15:18class. years and years ago if you worked in a manufacturing plant, you had a union, you stood a reasonable chance of having a pension, a pension. during the bush years, 3.2 million workers lost their pensions and about half of american workers in the private 14:15:34sector have no pension coverage whatsoever. the idea today of having a defined pension plan significantly paid for by your employer is going the way of the dinosaur. 14:15:51that is just not there anymore. workers are more and more dependent on social security, which has been there for 75 years, which we have got to protect and demand will be there another 75 years, because right now millions of workers are 14:16:09losing their pensions. i mean, i'm throwing these statistics out, and the reason i'm doing that is i want people to appreciate that if you're hurting now, stop being ashamed. it's not, yeah, we could all do 14:16:25better. every one of us could do better. but you're in an economy which is contracting, especially for the middle class and working families. according to an article in "usa today" from the year 2000-2008, middle-class men -- women have 14:16:43done better -- middle-class men experienced an 11.2% drop in their incomes, a reduction of $7,700 after adjusting for inflation. middle-class women in this age group saw a 4.8% decline in 14:17:01their incomes as well. so they did pretty bad but the men did even worse. so what we are seeing is an understanding of why people are angry and why people think that 14:17:16this country is moving in the wrong direction. mr. president, i think most people understand that today our country is experiencing the 14:17:37worst economic crisis since the great depression of the 1930's. and let me -- and it's important to say that because again, it is hard enough when you don't have a job, when you don't have 14:17:53income, when your dignity and self-respect is declining. but i don't want people to be banging their own heads against the wall, blaming themselves for all of the problems. something has gone on in the nation as a whole. you're not in this alone. when we talking about 14:18:09working-class families all across the country seeing a decline in their incomes, it's not because people are lazy, it's not because people are not working hard, it's not because people are not trying to find jobs. what we have is an economy which is rotting in the middle and 14:18:25we've got to change the economy. if there's nothing that we can say about the american people, we work hard. we, in fact, work longer hours than do the people of any other country -- industrialized country on earth. 14:18:39we are not a lazy people. we are a hard-working people. if the jobs are there, people will take them. if people have to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week, that is what they will do. but we have got to rebuild this economy. 14:18:55we don't need tax breaks for billionaires. we need to create jobs for the 14:19:00middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work. now, let me just take a few minutes to discuss how we got to where we are today and, in my view, what policies we need to 14:19:17move this country forward to create the kinds of jobs that we desperately need. now, let's just take a quick look back to where we were in january of 2009. it seems like a long time ago, 14:19:32but just a couple of years ago. and that was the last month of the administration of president bush. in that month, we lost over 700,000 jobs. that is a absolutely incredible 14:19:49number. in fact, during the last six months of the bush presidency, we lost over 3.5 million jobs, all of which was caused by the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on wall street. our gross domestic product, 14:20:04which is the total sum of all that our economy produces, had gone down by nearly 7% during the fourth quarter of 2008. that is -- that was the biggest decline in more than a quarter century. some $5 trillion of americans' 14:20:24wealthy evaporated in a 12-week period as people in vermont and all over this country saw the value of their homes, retirement savings and stocks plummet. and i want to say just one word again about wall street greed, 14:20:40because i think for a variety of reasons, we just don't talk about it enough. what you had was a situation in which a small number of folks at the head of huge financial 14:20:56institutions, through their greed, through the development of very reckless policies, through illegal behavior, through pushing out financial instruments which turned out in 14:21:09some cases to be worthless, that as a result of all of that, they plunged this country into the worst recession that we have seen since the great depression. from january -- is, at the end 14:21:32of the bush administration -- that is, at the end of the bush administration, but it's important to understand, very important to understand, that the wall street crisis took us over the wall in terms of precipitating the severe 14:21:47recession that we're in. but we have to remember that during those eight years, as i mentioned earlier, the middle class was also shrinking. so it wasn't oh, my goodness, everything has gone great, then you've got the wall street disaster, now we're in the midst 14:22:03of a terrible recession. this trend of a middle-class collapse went on long before bush. precipitated significantly during the bush years but it went on before as well. but just during the bush years. over the eight-year period of 14:22:19president bush, from 2001-2009, we lost 600,000 private-sector jobs. we lost 600,000 private-sector jobs and only 1 million net new jobs were created, all of them 14:22:36in the government sector. so for my friends, my republican colleagues to tell us that we need more tax breaks for the very rich because that's going to create jobs, that's what trickle-down economics is all 14:22:52about, what i would say to them, you had your chance, it failed. in case you don't know, losing 600,000 private-sector jobs in eight years is not good. that's very, very bad. 14:23:07that's an economic policy that has failed. we don't need to look at that movie again. we saw it. it stunk. it was a bad movie, bad economic policy. more tax breaks for the rich are not what our economy needs. in fact, what every economist 14:23:24will tell you, that is the least effective way to create jobs. during the bush era, median income dropped by nearly $2,200. that means that family in the 14:23:39middle over an eight-year period saw their income drop by $2,200. during the eight years of bush -- and i say all of these things just to tell you that we are not where we are today just 14:23:55because of the wall street crisis. 14:23:59that took us over the cliff. that made a very bad situation much, much worse. but it has been going on for a long time. it's gone on before bush. it's gone on after bush. during the eight years of bush, over 8 million americans slipped 14:24:14out of the milling class and into poverty. we don't talk about -- out of the middle class and into poverty. we don't talk about poverty anymore in america. we don't talk about the homelessness in america very much anymore. trust me, it's there. it's there three blocks away from where i'm speaking right now with a very large homeless 14:24:30shelter. it's in small towns in vermont, where people tell me that for the first time they are seeing families, more and more families with kids needing emergency shelter because they can't afford housing. in vermont, a lot of people 14:24:46don't have low-wage jobs, making 10 bucks an hour, and it is hard to find a decent apartment or pay a mortgage on $10 an hour. and that's true certainly all over this country. homelessness is going up. during the bush years, nearly 14:25:048 million americans lost their health insurance. one of the issues which i will likely talk about in a little while is health care. it's related to everything. we are the only country in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right of 14:25:19citizenship. according to harvard university, 45,000 americans will die this year because they lack health insurance and are not getting to a doctor when they should. during the bush administration, 14:25:385 million manufacturing jobs disappeared as companies shut down plants in the united states and moved to china, mexico, vietnam, and other low-wage countries. as i mentioned earlier, profound -- profoundly important 14:25:53to understand what's going on in america. in 2000, the year 2000, we had over 17,000 manufacturing jobs in this country. by 2008, we had less than 12,000. 17,000 to 12,000 in eight years. that's the loss of 5 million 14:26:10manufacturing jobs, a 29% reduction. and the fewest number of manufacturing jobs since the beginning of world war ii. under president bush, our trade deficit with china more than tripled and our overall trade 14:26:26deficit nearly doubled. again, the point that i am making now within the context of this agreement is we need agreements now that give tax breaks to millionaires or billionaires, that do not lower the tax rate for the estate tax, 14:26:42which is applicable only to the top .3%. we need agreements which rebuild our infrastructure, we build our manufacturing base and create the millions of good-paying jobs the american people desperately 14:26:59want. and, again, i think the point has got to be made -- and i'm going to make it over and over and over again -- is that when you look at the economy, it's one thing to say that everybody is hurting. you know? 14:27:12and sometimes that happens. you know, terrible hurricane comes, it knocks down everybody's home. well, the hurricane that has hit america for the last 10, 20 years has not impacted everybody. it has impacted the working class, it's impacted the middle class, the people on top are 14:27:31doing better than they ever were. our friends on wall street whose greed and illegal behavior caused this recession, they are now making more money than they ever did after being bailed out by the middle class of this 14:27:47country. during the bush years, the wealthiest 400 americans saw their incomes more than double. do you really think that after seeing a doubling under the bush 14:28:02years of their incomes that these people are in desperate need of another million-dollar-a-year tax break? in 2007, the 400 top income earners in this country made an average of $345 million in one 14:28:21year. that is a pretty piece of change. that's the average, $345 million. in terms of wealth as opposed to income, the wealthiest 400 14:28:36americans saw an increase in their wealth of some 400 billion during the bush years. imagine that, in an eight-year period, top 400 wealthiest people, each saw an increase on average of $1 billion apiece. and together these 400 families 14:28:53have a collective net worth of 14:28:59$1.27 trillion. does anybody in america really believe that these guys need another tax break so that our kids and our grandchildren can pay more in taxes because the national debt has gone up? 14:29:12i don't think most americans believe that and that is why, in my view, most americans are not supporting this agreement. and let me also say that when we look at what's going on around 14:29:27the rest of the world, what we have got to appreciate is that in the united states today -- and, again, this is not something that we can be proud of, it's something that we have got to address -- we have the most uny wall distribution of 14:29:43wealth and -- unequal distribution of wealth and income than any other country on earth. i remember talking not so long ago to somebody from scandinavia, it was finland. and he was saying, of course, we have rich people in our country but there's a level in which they would become embarrassed. we now have a situation where 14:29:59the c.e.o.'s of large corporations made 300 times more than their workers. in many other countries, yeah, everybody wants to be rich but there is a limit. you can't become a billionaire stepping over children who are sleeping out on the street. 14:30:17that's not what this scrt counts supposed to be enough. enough should be enough.mr. prey earns 23% of all income. in the 1970's that number was 8% 14:30:34in the 1990's it was approximately 16%, and now it is 23.5%. so the people on top are getting a bigger and bigger chunk of all income. 14:30:48furthermore, it's not just the top 1%. i mean there are economiests who write, yeah, you think the top 1% is doing well. yeah, they are. it's really the top .1% of 1%. i want people to digest this. 14:31:07the top .1% of 1%, you can do the arithmetic. that top .1% of 1% took in total income. 14:31:23.1% of 1% earned 11% of all income in america. in the 1970's, as i just said, the top 1% only made something like 8% of the total income. in the 1980's it rose, in 2005 it passed 21% and in 2007, the 14:31:44top 1% received 23.5% of all of the income earned in this country. the last time that people -- and people should be mindful of this. 14:31:57the last time that that type of income disparity took place was in 1928. and i think we all know what happened in 1929. and that's the point that senator mary landrieu was making a while back. what she understands quite 14:32:15correctly is that if working people, the vast majority of the people don't have the income to spend money to buy products and goods and services, we can't create the jobs. if all of the money or a big chunk of the money ends up with 14:32:31a few people on top there is a limit to how many limousines you can have and how many homes you can have and how many yachts you can have. so when you hit a situation where so few have so much, it is not just a moral issue. but it is also an economic 14:32:48issue. a strong and growing middle class goes out, spends money, and creates jobs. grossly unequal distribution of income and wealth creates more economic shrinking and loss of 14:33:03jobs because people just don't have the disposable income to go out and buy and create jobs for their neighbors. now, also to add insult to injury in terms of this agreement negotiated by the 14:33:18president and the republicans while the very wealthiest people in this country became much wealthier and the deficit soared, and under president bush, the national debt almost doubled, what else happened? well, the tax rates for the very 14:33:36rich went down. the rich got richer, tax rates go down. this is a result of not only the tax breaks for the rich initiated during the bush initiation, but also tax policy 14:33:54that took place before president bush. the result is that from 1992 to 2007 the latest statistics that we have, the effective -- effective federal tax rate, what people really pay for the top 400 income earners was cut 14:34:10almost in half. so these cry babies, these multimillionaires and billionaires, these people who are making out like bandits, they are crying and crying and crying, but their effective tax 14:34:27rates for the top 400 income earners in america was cut almost in half from 1992 to 2007. and i make a point -- i think a 14:34:43point that needs to be made is that when is enough enough? and that really is the essence of what we're talking about. when does greed -- and greed is -- is, in my view, like a sickness. 14:34:56like an addiction. we know people who are on heroin, they can't stop, there are people who can't stop smoking, they have problems with nicotine, get addicted to cigarettes, cost them their 14:35:14health. we all have our share of addictions. i would hope these people worth hundreds of millions of dollars, they will look around them and say there is something more important in life than the richest people becoming richer when we have the highest rate of 14:35:30childhood poverty in the industrialized world. maybe they will understand that they are americans. part of a great nation which is in trouble today. maybe they've got to go back to the bible or whatever they believe in understanding that 14:35:44there is virtue in sharing, in reaching out. that you can't get it all. and i think this is an issue that we've got to stay on and stay on and stay on. there's greed, this reckless under controllable greed is 14:35:59almost like a disease which is hurting this country terribly. how can anybody say that i'm a multimillionaire and i'm getting a huge tax break and one-quarter of the kids in this country is on food stamps. 14:36:14how can you be proud of that? i don't know. mr. president, as mentioned, it's not just income, it's wealth. the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. during the bush years, the wealthiest 400 americans saw their increase -- their wealth 14:36:30increase by some $400 billion. how much is enough? now, all of these things are related to the agreement that the president and the republicans worked out because we are all concerned about the 14:36:48national debt and our deficit. now, in terms of the federal budget when president bush first took office, he inherited a $236 billion surplus in 2001 and a projected 10-year surplus 14:37:06of $5.6 trillion. that's what senator landrieu was talking about a moment ago. but then some things happened and we all know the 9/11 was not his fault. what happened is we went to war 14:37:21in afganistan. we went to war in iraq. we -- and the war in iraq was the fault, i'm afraid, of president bush. something i certainly did not support nor do i think most 14:37:36americans support. and wart in iraq by the time our last veteran is taken care of will probably end up costing us something like $3 trillion, adding enormously to our national debt. so when we talk about iraq, it's not only the terrible loss of 14:37:52life that our soldiers and the iraqi people have experienced, let's not forget what it has done to the deficit and the national debt. we did not pay for the war in iraq. we just put it on the credit card. the president gave out -- 14:38:09president bush gave out $700 billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of americans. $700 billion. where was the offset? there was none. gave them tax breaks, that's it. adds to the national debt. president and republicans 14:38:28supported a $400 billion medicare part-d prescription drug program. i have always believed, as one of the leaders in believing that needed a strong prescription drug program for seniors, but the program that was passed was 14:38:44written by the pharmaceutical industry, written by the insurance companies, and nowhere near as cost effective as it 14:38:53could be. as the president undoubtedly knows, we are not even negotiating prescription drug prices with the drug companies at great expense and great cost to the american people where 14:39:08drug prices are much more expensive on the -- under medicare part-d than they are with the veterans administration or department of defense purchased. so we passed that unpaid for. great idea. just another $400 billion 14:39:25prescription drug program unpaid for and then we bailed off wall street. the original cost was $700 billion. a lot of that, in fact, has been paid back. but there's a lot of expense there as well. so you add all these things together in normal governmental 14:39:40growth and it turns out that the bush administration turned a $236 billion a year surplus into a $1.3 trillion a year deficit. and more or less that's where we are right now. in fact, the national debt nearly doubled under president 14:39:56bush going from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion in 2009 and now we are at $13.7 trillion borrowing huge sums of money from china and other countries in order to maintain our 14:40:12existence. that's where we are. that's where we are. now, have we been seeing in recentees some improvements in the economy? we sure have. there has been some job growth. nowhere near enough, but we're 14:40:29surely not losing 700,000 jobs a year. we're seeing some growth. but we need to do much better. and that takes me back to an issue i feel very, very strongly about, mr. president, and one 14:40:44that i want to say a few words on. in this agreement that the president negotiated with the republicans, there are a substantial -- there is a substantial sum of money going into tax -- various types of 14:41:04business tax breaks. and the fury which certainly -- the theory which certainly has some validity is that these business tax breaks will create jobs. the problem is that right now the business -- the large 14:41:19corporations, at least, are sitting on a huge bundle of money already that they are not spending. and the reason they're not investing that money is they perceive that working families don't have the money to buy their products and their services. 14:41:35i think that there is -- and in saying this i'm not alone, i think most economists agree with me, that there is a far more effective way that we can create jobs in this country rather than just a number of tax breaks 14:41:51going to businesses. and i touched on this point before and i -- i want to get into a little bit more detail now. and for this i am indebted to a very fine book written by a -- an old friend of mine recalled arianna huffington and the title 14:42:08of her book is called "third world america," "third world america." and the theme of that book, is if we do not get our act together in terms of 14:42:23infrastructure, in terms of education, that's where we are heading. we are heading -- this great country is heading in the direction of being a third world nation. and she has an interesting chapter that deals with one very important part of america and 14:42:39that is the crumbling of our infrastructure. and she writes from 1980 to 2005 the miles traveled by automobiles increased 94%, for trucks mileage increased 105%, 14:42:58yet there was only a 3.5% in highway lane miles. more and more cars, more and more traveling, we're not building roads. but she writes, "you don't need these numbs to -- numbers to 14:43:13know that our roads are badly congested." anybody who lives around d.c. knows that our roads are congested. it takes hours to get to work sometimes. according to the american society of civil engineers infrastructure report card -- 14:43:28quote -- "this is an -- this is an interesting point. this is where we should invest. "americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic." think about that. 14:43:45"4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost 14:43:54of $138 billion a year. think of all of the greenhouse emissions, all of the road rage, people are stuck on roads because our transportation system is totally inadequate. now, -- our roads, our public 14:44:05transportation. then she talks about -- she talks about an interesting point as well. in studying automobile accidents -- you know, when we talk about automobile accidents, what do we usually think? 14:44:22somebody is driving recklessly, maybe they're drunk. and those are serious issues. but she writes in studying car crashes across the country, the transportation construction coalition determined that badly maintained or managed roads are 14:44:39responsible for $217 billion a year in car crashes. far more than the headline grabbing alcohol related accidents or speed-related pileups. 14:44:54in other words, if you want to know why we are seeing automobile crashes, the issue of bad roads is even more significant than drunk drivers or people who are reckless drivers. i can remember -- and everybody has the same story -- i was driving down a road in vermont, 14:45:11whoops, huge pothole, went into it. it cost me a few hundred dollars to repair the car. so we're spending as a nation billions of dollars repairing our cars because the roads are not in good shape. when there is a traffic jam, people are emitting all kinds of greenhouse gas emissions. 14:45:27you're wasting gas, you're wasting money. if we invested in our transportation system, we can go a long way to addressing that. when we talk about transportation -- and by the way, again, i bring this issue up because in the bill agreed to 14:45:48by the president and the republican leadership, to the best of my knowledge, not one penny, not one penny is going into infrastructure, which is, to me, just doesn't make any sense at all. and again, arianna huffington 14:46:03writes -- "america's railway system is speeding down the tracks in reverse. it is one of the few technologies that has actually regressed over the past 80 years." 14:46:19regressed. i'm not talking about china where they're building all these high-speed rail lines. our rail situation in terms of the amount of time it goes from location one to location two has actually gotten longer. she writes -- "tom vanderbilt of slate.com came across some 14:46:40preworld war ii train timetables and made a startling discovery. many train rides in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's took less time than those journeys would take today." 14:46:56can you imagine that? in the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's, people were able to get on the train and get to their destination in less time than is the case today. for instance, in 1934, the burlington zephyr would get you from chicago to denver, to 14:47:13denver, mr. president, from chicago to denver in around 13 hours. the same trip takes 18 hours today. i don't know if the presiding officer is familiar with the burlington zephyr, which is a 14:47:29train that goes from chicago to denver, but what this rider is pointing out is that in 1934, it took 13 hours to make that trip. do you know how long it takes today? it takes 18 hours. so we're moving in the wrong direction. 14:47:43i know that in vermont -- i don't have any statistics right in front of me, but i can tell you that it -- i believe very strongly that it takes longer to get from the southern part of the state to the northern part of the state than it used to, and the frequency of the trips are less than they used to be. 14:48:01the trip from chicago to minneapolis via the olympian hiawatha in the 1950's took about four and a half hours. today via amtrak's train, the journey is more than eight hours. 14:48:15it used to be four and a half. so in terms of our public transportation, not only are we negligenting it, not only are we not moving forward, we're actually moving backwards. at the moment, the only high-speed train in the united states is amtrak's acela which travels the washington-new 14:48:35york-boston line, and i use the -- and she writes "i use the term high speed very loosely. while in theory the trains have a peak speed of 100 miles her hour, the average speed on that 14:48:49train is just 71 miles per hour." again, i read some statistics before, pointing out that china is building thousands and thousands of miles of high-speed rail. and here in the united states, we are moving backwards, taking us longer time for various train 14:49:06rides than used to be the case. but it's not just trains. it is not just our roads. it is not just our bridges. well, it is also our bridges. let me say a word on bridges. i think we all remember just 14:49:22four years ago, i think it was, the terrible tragedy in the minneapolis area when one of their major bridges collapsed and a number of people lost their lives. that got the front page headlines all over this country. i know in the state of vermont, we have closed down bridges. 14:49:37they are not safe to travel. according to the department of transportation, one in four of america's bridges is either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. the numbers are even worse when 14:49:54it comes to bridges in urban areas where one in three bridges is deficient. no small matter given the high levels of passenger freight traffic in our nation's cities. so a huge amount of traffic in urban reaches when it is 14:50:11sufficient in rural areas like vermont. mr. president, how are these bridges going to be built, rebuilt? it is likely not going to be done by local and state 14:50:25governments who right now are experiencing enormous economic crises. if it is going to be done, it is going to have to be done here at the federal level. i have to say that in vermont, we saw some significant improvements as a result of the stimulus package. in fact, in vermont recently, we have put more money in 14:50:43rebuilding our roads and bridges with very good success. i think the people of vermont see the difference in the last couple of years directly as a result of the stimulus package. we have improved, made significant improvements on a number of bridges, but nowhere 14:50:59near enough. so the point that i want to make is that with our infrastructure collapsing, with the american society of civil engineers suggesting that we need to spend spend $2.2 trillion in the next five years just to maintain where we are, we have an 14:51:13agreement before us which puts zero dollars in infrastructure. according to this book, we need to invest $850 billion over the next 50 years to get all of america's bridges into good 14:51:30shape. trust me, we are not coming anywhere near that right now. but it's not just our roads, it's not just our public transportation, not just our bridges. when we talk about infrastructure, we also have to 14:51:45talk about dams. on march 16, 2006, the kalokal dam in hawaii collapsed and seven people died. when the kalokal dam breached 14:52:01after weeks of heavy rain, sending 1.6 million tons of water downstream. dams are a vital part of america's infrastructure. they help provide for drinking, irrigation and agriculture and generate much-needed power and 14:52:19often offer protection from floods, yet our dams are growing old. there are more than 85,000 dams in america, and the average age is 51 years. at the same time, more and more 14:52:32people are moving into developments located below dams that require significantly greater safety standards, but we have had a hard time keeping up with the increase in these so-called high-hazard dams. indeed, we are falling further 14:52:50and further behind. so the point here is we have a major, major agreement. people are concerned about creating jobs. we are investing zero in our infrastructure, and dams are a very important part of our 14:53:06infrastructure, as are levees, and i suspect that senator landrieu who was here a little while ago would have something to say about levees. all right. so we're talking about an infrastructure which is 14:53:20collapsing, we're talking about china investing far more in terms of g.n.p. into infrastructure improvement than we are. we are talking about being in the midst of a major recession where we desperately want to grow jobs, and yet this proposal 14:53:38does not add one cent into our infrastructure. now, again, i'm going back to the very good book written by 14:53:51arianna huffington called "third world america." she writes -- "as bad as america's sewers, roads, bridges, dams, and water systems are, they pale in comparison to the crisis we are facing in our 14:54:04schools. i'm not talking about the physical state of our dilapidate ed public school buildings, although the national education association estimates that it would take $322 billion to bring america's school buildings into good repair." i have been in schools in 14:54:23vermont and elsewhere which were old and crumbling, and i have been in schools which are new and state of the art, and i think anyone who has seen the contrast in terms of the 14:54:39attitude of the students in those types of schools will understand that it is important to give these kids good places in which to learn and to grow. it means a lot to them when they see a building that is new, that has state-of-the-art equipment 14:54:58as opposed to the one that is crumbling. it suggests to them what we as a society feel about them. and she writes -- arianna huffington writes that "nothing is quickening our descent into third-world status faster than 14:55:14our resounding failure to properly educate our children. this failure has profound consequences for our future both at home and as we look to compete with the rest of the world and the global economy. historically, education has been 14:55:31the great equalizer. "and that -- great equalizer." and that is certainly the case. that has been the great virtue of our public school system. what we have taken is kids who spent -- my father never 14:55:47graduated high school, my mother did, that was it. and giving young people, millions of young people the opportunity to get a good education in school and to be able to go to college and use their potential. the springboard to the middle 14:56:03class and beyond has been education. it was a promise we made to all of our people. what we as a nation said, that regardless of your income, we're going to provide you with the best possible education in order to succeed in life, and that just -- that is something 14:56:20extraordinary. that no matter what your income is, we're going to provide you with a great education. i as a kid went to public schools, and i did have a very good education. but something has gone in recent years terribly wrong, and we have slipped further and further 14:56:37behind many other countries. among 30 developed countries ranked by the organization for economic cooperation and development -- that's the oecd -- the united states ranked 25th in math and 21st in 14:56:53science. 25th in math, 21st in science. even the top 10% of american students, our best and brightest, ranked only 24th in the year in math literacy. 14:57:08there was another study, i think probably just a more updated oecd study that came out just the other day, it was reported in "the new york times," where kids in shanghai were leading the world in these types of 14:57:25tests as compared to our own students. they have studied, they have better schools, better teachers, more investments in their education, and there is a culture there, there is a culture. it's not fair to blame the kids. 14:57:39does anyone seriously believe that in the united states of america, we take intellectual development seriously? i don't remember the guy's name, a basketball player o'a baseball player that was signing a contract for untold tens of millions of dollars, and yet you 14:57:54have teachers starting off at $30,000, $32,000. is anyone going to suggest in a serious way that we reward people who become childcare workers or teachers? we have childcare workers who leave, taking care of little 14:58:09kids, which may be the most important job in our society, because it is the brain development that takes place between 0 and 3 that is a large part of what a human being becomes. people leave early childhood education in order to move up 14:58:25the economic ladder and get a job at mcdonald's because pay is so low, benefits are so low. what are we doing as a nation? what are we doing as a nation? and she writes that a national assess many of educational progress report found that just 3% of -- 33% of fourth graders 14:58:47and 43% of eighth graders were proficient at reading, et cetera, et cetera. so i think her point is that if we are not going to become a third-world nation, we have got 14:58:58to start investing in this country, in our physical infrastructure, in our human infrastructure, and in our educational infrastructure. and let me just give you some examples of what this means in 14:59:14real terms. today, unemployment in our country, the official unemployment, is 9.8%. for those without a high school diploma, it is 15.6%, compared to 5.6% for college graduates. 14:59:3467% of high school graduates don't have enough of the skills required for success in college in the 21st century work force. as many as 170,000 high school graduates each year are prepared 14:59:50to go on to college but can't afford that. let me repeat that. about 170,000 young people in this country who graduate high school who want to go to college are unable to do it because they can't afford it.