But despite the fact there are some good and important provisions in this proposal, when we look at the overall package, when we look at a $13.7 trillion national debt and a declining middle class, I think what we have to say is this package just doesn't do it. It is just not good enough.
The President says he knows how to count votes. I understand that. He says: Well, you had a couple of votes here to make sure that we would not give tax breaks to millionaires. And the President has been very clear he does not want to do that. I understand that. But he says: What choice do I have?
I think the answer is that we have to fight this issue. In my view, the solution ultimately will not be resolved inside the beltway, in the Senate or in the House. It will be resolved when millions of Americans get on their telephones, get on their computers, and let their Senators and their Members of the House of Representatives know they are profoundly outraged that at a time when the rich never had it so good, and when we have a huge national debt, this agreement contains huge tax breaks for those people who don't need it. That is how we defeat this.
I am not sure that all alone here in the debate I am going to turn any of my Republican or even some Democratic colleagues around. But I do believe that, if people all over this country stand up and say: Wait a minute, how much do the richest people in this country want? I just documented a few moments ago that the top 400 wealthiest people in this country saw a doubling of their income under President Bush—a doubling of their income—and tax rates went down. When is enough enough? How much do they need?
I think and I would hope, by the way, that this is certainly not just a progressive issue. I am a progressive. This is a conservative issue. Year after year, I have heard our conservative friends telling us: My goodness, we just cannot continue to raise the national debt; we have to do something about this unsustainable deficit. This agreement grows, increases the national debt. What kind of honest conservative can vote to increase the national debt? And if they do, please, no more lectures here on the floor of the Senate. Your hypocrisy will be known to everybody. Don't tell us you are concerned about the national debt and give tax breaks to billionaires and raise the national debt so our kids and grandchildren in the middle class will have to pay higher taxes in order to pay off the debt that was caused by you giving tax breaks to millionaires. Please, no more lectures on that issue. Just say: OK, rich people contributed to my campaign; I have to do what they want. That will be honest. Please, no more lectures about your concern about the national debt.
Again, I want to reiterate this point. Everybody says: Don't worry, these are only 2 years. These are not, in my view, 2 years. If you do them for 2 years, the same old argument will be back 2 years from now, and we will be in the midst of a Presidential election. What our Republican friends will say, as sure as I am standing here—and I am glad we have a gentleman putting this in the Congressional Record. I want people to go back to the Congressional Record. I am sure I will be proven right that 2 years from now our Republican friends will come back and they will say: Oh, my word, if you repeal these tax breaks, you are going to be raising taxes. We can't do that.
What will make the situation even more difficult 2 years from now than today is you have President Obama—if he is the Democratic candidate 2 years from now, he will say: I don't believe in these tax breaks for the rich, and I will do my best to repeal them. But his credibility has been damaged because that is what he said in the last campaign. That is what he has been saying all along. The President does not believe in extending these tax breaks for the wealthy. I know that. Everybody knows that. But if he caves in now, who is going to believe he is not going to do the same thing 2 years from now? That is the damage.
Then I think what is even more troublesome is that once we move down the path of more tax breaks for the very wealthy, we are accepting the heart and soul of trickle-down economics, which has been, to my mind, a proven disaster, a failure. I remind the listeners and my colleagues that these tax breaks have been in existence since 2001. They were in existence throughout almost all of President Bush's tenure. The end result was that we lost 600,000 private sector jobs—lost 600,000 private sector jobs, the worst job performance record maybe in the history of this country. Trickle-down economics does not work.
Giving tax breaks to billionaires does not stimulate the economy. Helping working families and the middle class get decent jobs and tax breaks for people who need the money and are going to spend the money is what creates jobs, not giving tax breaks to billionaires who do not need it and who are not going to spend it.
Again, the point I want to make here is that if people think, oh, this is just temporary, this is just 2 years, I believe they are kidding themselves. I believe that 2 years from now, the debate will be about extending them or perhaps even making them permanent.
At a time, as I mentioned earlier, where the top 1 percent has seen a huge increase in the percentage of income they earn in this country—going from 8 percent in the 1970s to 23.5 percent now—and where the top 1 percent now earns more income than the bottom 50 percent, it is totally absurd to be giving tax breaks to people who do not need them, and it is not good economics, as well.
Here is the other irony, as I also mentioned earlier—I guess by this time, I am going to be doing a little repetition here. But as I mentioned earlier, you have a number of millionaires and some of the richest people in this country who will benefit from these tax breaks. Do you know what they are saying? Do you know what Warren Buffett is saying? Do you know what Bill Gates is saying? Do you know what Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry's is saying? Do you know what many other wealthy people are saying? Hey, thanks very much; I don't need it. It is more important that you invest in our children. It is more important that we protect working families. We are doing just fine, thanks. Our incomes have soared, our tax rates have gone down, and we don't need it. In other words, we have this absurd situation that not only is this bad public policy, we are actually forcing tax breaks on people who don't need them and don't even want them. The richest people in this country—Bill Gates, Warren Buffett— we don't want it.
Here is something else. Here is something else that needs to be understood. What the Republicans are doing in this agreement is driving up the national debt. You may think that is not what the Republicans really believe in. They are supposed to be conservatives. They don't want a high national debt. Why would they be giving tax breaks to the rich and driving up the national debt? There is a rationale. These guys are not dumb, and I think they know what they are doing. Here is what the argument is. If you drive up the national debt and the deficit, you then come back to the floor of the Senate and you say: You know what, this national debt and deficit is unsustainable. The only way we can deal with it now is by cutting, cutting, cutting. We are already beginning to hear how some of those thoughts are going to develop.
There was, as you know, a deficit reduction commission appointed by the President. When I heard who was going to be chairing that commission and cochairing it—Alan Simpson, a very nice gentleman but a very conservative gentleman who has attacked Social Security for a very long period of time, and Erskine Bowles, a conservative Democrat—I had serious doubts about what was going to come out of that commission. The good news is, they needed 14 votes to pass their recommendations and they didn't get the 14. But a lot of the ideas that Senator Simpson and Mr. Bowles developed are going to be filtering around this institution.
What the Republicans will say is that when you have a huge debt—which they helped create—we are going to have to cut. What are we going to have to do? As you recall, that deficit reduction commission recommended a savage cut—over 20 percent—in Social Security benefits for young workers— major cuts. There was talk about raising the Social Security age up to, I think, 69. They are talking about cuts in Medicare, cuts in Medicaid, cuts in education.
