That is not a good position to be in in Vermont in the winter.
Fortunately, someone gave me an old wood stove. I had to hook it up to an old unused chimney we had in the kitchen. I couldn't even afford a chimney liner. The price of liners went up with the price of fuel. To stay warm at night, my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I would hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway, and we would sleep right there on the floor. By February, we ran out of wood, and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it into the tub. I would like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the Capitol building. We are certainly a country in distress.
Mr. President, what I will without doubt assure you is that those stories, in different forms—and I know it is different in big cities than in a rural State such as Vermont, and I know it is different in Hawaii, where the Chair comes from, than in Boston, MA. But I am absolutely sure that millions of people in one way or another are telling the same story. These are great Americans, people who want to work and do the best they can by their kids. They are simply not making it right now.
This is the United States of America, in 2010, and people are going cold. People don't have enough food. People are homeless. My friends here are talking about huge tax breaks for billionaires. My friends here are talking about lowering rates on the estate tax for the top three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people. What are we talking about? What kinds of priorities are those?
Here is another letter from Vermont. This is not a woman in desperation. Those folks I just read from are. This woman says:
As a couple with one child, earning about $55,000 a year [which is, in Vermont, fairly decent] we have been able to eat out a bit, buy groceries and health insurance, contribute to our retirement funds, and live a relatively comfortable life financially. We have never accumulated a lot of savings, but our bills were always paid on time, and we never had any interest on our credit card. Over the last year, even though we have tightened our belts, not eating out much, watching purchases at the grocery store, not buying extras like a new TV, and repairing the washer instead of buying a new one—doing all those things, we find ourselves with over $7,000 of credit card debt and are trying to figure out how to pay for braces for our son. I work 50 hours per week to help earn extra money to catch up. But that also takes a toll on the family life. Not spending those 10 hours at home with my husband and son makes a big difference for all of us. My husband hasn't had a raise in 3 years and his employer is looking to cut out any extra benefits they can to lower their expenses, which will increase ours.
How many millions of Americans do you think are saying exactly the same thing?
Let me read another story that comes from Vermont.
My 90-year-old father in Connecticut has recently become ill and asked me to visit him. I want to drop everything I am doing and go visit him. However, I am finding it hard to save enough money to add to the extra gas I will need to get there. I am self-employed with my own commercial cleaning service and money is tight, not only with gas prices but with everything. I make more than I did a year ago, and I don't have enough to pay my property taxes this quarter for the first time in many years. They are due tomorrow.
Here is another letter that I think deserves to be read. Mr. President, I think it would not hurt this body if every Member of the Senate—I know we all get letters like this—came down here and spent a couple of days talking about what is going on with working families in this country. Spouting statistics is good, and dealing with tax deals of $900 billion is fine, but I think we should reacquaint ourselves with the reality of life in America today.
This is what another constituent of mine writes:
My husband and I are retired and 65 years of age. We would have liked to work longer, but because of injuries caused at work and the closing of our factory to go to Canada, we chose to retire early. Now, with oil prices the way they are, we cannot afford to heat our home unless my husband cuts and splits wood, which is a real hardship as he has had his back fused and should not be working most of the day to keep up with the wood. Not only that, he has to get up two or three times each night to keep the fire going.
In other words, what she is talking about, is that in Vermont a lot of people heat with wood—increasingly with pellets, an important source of fuel in the State of Vermont. What she is talking about is her husband, who is 65, with a bad back, has to go out and cut wood, and in their case, his being old, he has to get up two or three times a night to stoke the furnace that is keeping the house warm. Again, I would remind people that in Vermont it occasionally gets 20 or 30 below zero.
She continues:
We also have a 2003 car that we only get to drive to get groceries or go to the doctor or to visit my mother in the nursing home three miles away. It now costs us $80 a month to go nowhere. We have 42,000 miles on a 5-year-old car.
They can't afford to even use the car. I don't know what the price of gas is in Hawaii, Mr. President, but in Vermont it is now over $3 a gallon. A lot of people in my State have to travel long distances to get to work. Their cars need repairs. Cars break down. Cars require, in Vermont, compulsory insurance. They have to spend a whole lot of money just getting to work. I think we forget about that here. We don't need tax breaks for billionaires, we need to pay attention to these people.
She continues and concludes:
I have Medicare, but I can't afford prescription coverage unless I take my money out of an annuity, which is supposed to cover the house payment when my husband's pension is gone. We only eat two meals a day to conserve.
This is not some Third World country. This is the United States of Vermont—the United States of America, my State of Vermont, and Vermont is better off today than a number of States around this country. You have these stories, and multiply them by 10 in every area of this country.
Here is another story:
Yesterday, I paid for our latest home heating fuel delivery—
Again, I am focusing now on the cost of fuel because in Vermont, where I come from, it is a big deal. So she writes:
Yesterday, I paid for our latest home fuel heating delivery—$1,100. I also paid my $2,000-plus credit card balance, much of which bought gas and groceries for the month.
The point here, and then I will continue her letter, is that a lot of people use their credit cards not just as a nice and convenient way of not having to use cash—when I go shopping, I am going to use my credit card and I will pay it off at the end of the month. What a nice thing. No, people are using their credit cards to buy food, to buy gas, and to buy the basic necessities of life. It is their only line of credit open. And then, as I mentioned earlier, they are charged 25 or 30 percent interest rates on what they owe.
She continues:
My husband and I are very nervous about what will happen to us when we are old. Although we have three jobs between us and participate in 403(b) retirement plans, we have not saved enough for a realistic post worklife if we survive to our life expectancy. As we approach the traditional retirement age, we are slowly paying off our daughter's college tuition loan and trying to keep our heads above water. We have always lived frugally. We buy used cars and store brand groceries, recycle everything, walk or car pool, when possible, and plastic our windows each fall.
What that means is that, in Vermont, if you don't have good storm windows, you put up plastic. It is a way to keep the wind out and keep the home warm. I know about that because I used to do that.
Even so, if and when our son decides to attend college, we will be in deep debt at age 65. Please—
And here she ends this.
P.S. Please don't use my name. I live in a small town, and this is so embarrassing.
So embarrassing. We should be embarrassed, not her. We should be embarrassed that we are for one second talking about a proposal which gives tax breaks to billionaires while we are ignoring the needs of working families, low-income people, and the middle class. We should be embarrassed that we are not investing in our infrastructure, that we are not breaking up these large financial institutions, that we are not putting a cap on interest rates, that we are the only country in the world that does not have health care for all of our people—of major countries. We should be embarrassed, not this wonderful woman who is trying to maintain her dignity.
Another letter from the State of Vermont.
