with the Republican Senate leadership and overwhelming numbers of Republicans in the Senate and House—I assume they are going to vote for it—they are going to say: Look at the huge budget deficit President Obama created. From that day on, they are going to go after ways to cut the budget. That is OK. I agree we need to deal with spending and taxes and the whole picture.
But I also know from watching Republicans—I saw them in the House when they moved toward Medicare privatization in 2003, 2004, and 2005. They had some success. Fortunately, we were able to beat back most of it. I remember that in 2005, after President Bush was reelected in a very close race, he spoke repeatedly about privatizing Social Security. I know that is what they want to do. In the 1990s, Speaker Gingrich—fortunately beaten back by President Clinton—tried to privatize Medicare.
That is the way they cut the budget, they go after Medicare and Social Security. So this vote on this package—to me, we need to call the President, write the President, work with the President to say: No deal, and this has to be something very different from what it is now because it will cause huge deficits our children and grandchildren will have to bear. It will not help the economy appreciably because we saw what the trickle-down economic policies of the Bush years did. It does not help the middle class enough.
So it is pretty clear to me how this jeopardizes Social Security, how it jeopardizes Medicare, how it will force more cuts and more pressure on those programs that have lifted so many people into the middle class. In 1965, when Medicare was first passed, half of the senior citizens in this country had no health insurance—half of the seniors had no health insurance. Today 99 percent of seniors have health insurance, something like that.
I know we are a country now that has created a strong middle class. We have seen that middle class—because of these tax cuts for the wealthy, trickle-down kind of economic policy, we have seen the middle class shrink in the last few years. I do not want that to keep happening. That is why I am very concerned about this. That is why I am working with the Senate to say: No deal. We need to much more seriously focus on not running up a huge debt, on making sure Social Security is protected, on an economic policy that works for the middle class, on a tax policy that is fair to the middle class.
That is why Senator Sanders' work is so important on the floor today, taking the floor for a longer period than anybody I have seen since I have been in the Senate, in a filibuster kind of setting, where he is raising these questions, asking these questions, educating the public, talking to people all over the country, in this Chamber and outside to change this policy.
Mr. SANDERS.If I could interrupt my friend from Ohio and ask him a question, it is on an issue the Senator dealt with last night. Talk about the kind of priorities we have seen in the Senate recently, where just a couple of days ago the Senator and I worked very hard to try to make sure seniors on Social Security and disabled vets were able to get a $250 check at a cost of $14 billion, we could not get one Republican vote for that, while at the same time Republicans are pushing tax breaks of over $1 million a year for the richest people in this country. Does that seem
Mr. BROWN of Ohio.It tells a story. I came to the floor right after that vote. I had supported it all along. I cosponsored Senator Sanders' effort to bring that to the floor, for the $250 check for all seniors and all disabled veterans, I might add, not just Social Security beneficiaries. But I came to the floor right afterwards because I was pretty amazed.
I know there is partisanship here. I know some people think their whole view of the world is to give tax cuts to the richest people of the world and it will all trickle down and we will all do better, it will lift all boats. That is a pretty good economic theory you might have learned at Harvard or you might have learned at Johns Hopkins near here or wherever. But it does not work. It is a nice theory, but it does not work to lift all boats.
So Senator Sanders' effort was to provide a $250 check, one time, at a cost of $14 billion. But one time, not continued $14 billion—one time for seniors who had not had a cost-of-living adjustment in 2 years. It just seemed to make so much sense when the average senior in this country gets about a $14,000-a-year Social Security check. I think that is about $1,200 a month. That is not their entire income for most seniors, but it is a big part of it. Many seniors live only on that. Many more seniors live on that, but only another couple $300, $400 a month.
There is not inflation maybe for people my age so much in this country, but if you are older and you have a lot of health care costs, there is inflation because the health care costs seem to go up higher than maybe anything but higher education, and maybe as much as that. So it was important that $250 be provided, we think, to every senior in the country and every disabled vet.
What was so amazing about it was that 42 Republican Senators signed a letter saying they would do nothing, nothing in the Senate, until tax cuts for the rich were approved, until they were signed into law.
Now, I have never seen Senators engage in a work stoppage or a strike. I mean, it was not quite a strike, which it is probably illegal for us to strike. I do not know, maybe. But it was a work stoppage.
They are saying: We are not doing anything until you give tax cuts to my rich friends, and I might say also to many people in the House and Senate whose income is in that bracket too. I am not accusing them of that, to be sure, but they were there for their rich friends and their biggest contributors and the wealthiest people in this country. But they were not there for a senior citizen living on $1,200 a month that could use that extra $250.
I have met too many seniors, and I know the Presiding Officer, when he travels to Colorado Springs or he goes to Cimarron or he goes to Denver, I know he hears seniors say: I cut my pills in half because I need my prescription to run for 2 months rather than I because I cannot afford it. Or I skipped my medicine today because my house is too cold, and I do not have enough heat. We know seniors make those choices. We make choices here, and the choice we made is 42 Republicans made it and blocked it because we need 60 votes. We had a majority of voters, an easy majority, for Senator Sanders' effort, 53 votes, 53 votes to do this, the $250, but we need 60 votes.
So 42 Republican Senators engaged in their work stoppage saying: We are not doing anything until we get these tax cuts for the rich. They said no to seniors. I am amazed by that, the callousness. I guess I am even more amazed when you consider—what is today, the 10th—when you consider in 2 weeks it is Christmas Day. That does not seem to bother them. It does not seem to bother them on unemployment benefits. And 85,000 Ohioans, a week and a half ago, lost their unemployment benefits—85,000. Their holiday season is ruined.
But I guess all of us will go home. I want to go home and be with Connie and my kids on Christmas. My children are grown. We have one grandchild. I want to be with him for as much of Christmas as I can. But we have a job to do today, this week and next week and this month and this year; and that is to extend unemployment benefits to people who have lost them, who are looking for jobs as hard as they can in a great majority of cases, and extending the tax cuts for the middle class and doing the right thing. So far, we have not done that.
I need to go to the airport. But I want to yield back to Senator Sanders for his work today. I hope next week, when we come back on Monday, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to say no deal on this one and to make this work for the middle class, make it work for Social Security beneficiaries, make it work for unemployed workers.
Mr. SANDERS.I thank my good friend from Ohio, one of the real fighters for working families in the Senate, not only for coming down here but for his years of efforts. But he makes a very important point. We have a job to do and the job is—I know some people do not believe it. It is a rather radical concept. But our job is to represent working families, the middle class, and not the wealthiest people in this country.
I have four kids, six grandchildren. I look forward to spending the holidays
