don't. I can't understand it. I can't understand asking our kids and grandchildren to pay more in taxes, and the national debt goes up in order to provide tax breaks for the richest people in this country.
So while there are some good provisions in this bill—certainly extending the tax breaks for 98 percent of our people, for the very broad middle class; I think if the American people demand it, in our democracy we can do better. I don't know if the Presiding Officer or I alone will be able to convince some of our Republican friends or maybe some of our Democratic friends to make this into the kind of proposal we need for the working families of this country, and for our children, for our next generation. I don't know if we can do it inside this beltway.
As I said earlier, I think the way we win this battle, the way we defeat this proposal and come back with a much better proposal is when millions of Americans start writing and e-mailing and calling their Senators, their Congress people, and say: Wait a second. Are you nuts? Do you really think millionaires and billionaires need a huge tax break at a time when this country has a $13.7 trillion national debt? What are you smoking? How could you for one second think that makes any sense whatsoever?
I will tell the Presiding Officer something. I don't know what my phones are doing today in my office right now. But in the last 3 days we have gotten, I am guessing, 5,000 phone calls and emails, and about 99 percent of them are in disagreement with this proposal.
I am looking at a chart. We have gotten 2,100 calls that just came in today. I don't know what kind of calls other Members of the Senate are getting, but certainly those are the calls I am getting.
This point cannot be made strongly enough: What our Republican friends want to do—and they have been pretty honest and up front about it, especially some of the extreme, rightwing people who have been running for office and, in some cases, have won—they have been honest enough to say they want to bring this country back to where we were in the 1920s. Their ultimate aim is the basic repeal of almost all of the provisions that have been passed in the last 70 years to protect working people, the elderly, and children. They believe in a Darwinian-style society in which you have the survival of the fittest; that we are not a society which comes together to take care of all of us. You take care of me in need and I take care of you and your family; that we are one people. Their strategy is pretty clear. They want to ultimately destroy Social Security.
What we are beginning to hear more and more of is why don't we raise the retirement age to 68 or 69. That deficit reduction commission, which I thought was—the people on that commission were bad appointees by the President. We could have put together some good economists to say how do we in a fair way—in a fair way—address the deficit and national debt crisis. That wasn't what that commission did. So these folks are talking about major cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
At a time when it is so hard for young people to afford to go to college, they want to raise the costs by asking our young people while they are in college to be accruing the interest on their loans.
So I think if the President believes that if this agreement is passed, the Republicans are going to come to the table and we are all going to live happily in the future, we are all going to work together in a nonpartisan way, I think he is not understanding the reality. These people are going to come back and they are going to come back very aggressively for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, education, childcare, Pell grants, you name it, because their belief is—I don't quite understand it—that it is somehow good public policy to give tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country who, in many ways, have never had it so good, while you cut programs that the middle class and working families of this country desperately depend upon.
So I would suggest that this big debate we are having right now on whether we should accept the proposal agreed to by the President and the Republicans is just the beginning of what is coming down the pike. If we surrender now on this issue, we can expect next month and the following month another governmental crisis, another threat of a shutdown, unless they get their way. So I think rather than asking the working families of this country to have to compromise, instead of asking our kids to pay more in taxes to bail out billionaires, maybe—I know this is a radical idea—but maybe we should ask a handful of our Republican friends to join us. Maybe a handful of honest conservatives over there who have been telling us for years their great concerns about deficit spending and a huge national debt, maybe they should be prepared to vote against the proposal which raises the national debt and our deficit by giving tax breaks to some of the richest people in the world.
Quite frankly, I don't think I am going to be able to convince them. I don't know that the Presiding Officer is going to be able to convince them. But I think their constituents can convince them. I think the American people can convince them. I think, as I said earlier, if the American people stand up, we can defeat this proposal and we can create a much better proposal.
Clearly, we must extend tax breaks for the middle class. Clearly, we must make sure unemployed workers continue to get the benefits they desperately need. But equally, clearly, we must make sure we are not raising the national debt which, as sure as I am standing here, will result in cuts in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and education and other programs if this proposal is passed.
So this is not only an important proposal unto itself: $900 billion plus even in Washington is nothing to sneeze at. But it is an important proposal in terms of the direction in which our country goes into the future. If we accept this proposal of a 2-year extension for the richest people in America, I believe it will eventually become either a long-term extension or a permanent extension. If we accept the proposal that lowers the rates on the estate tax which benefits only the top three-tenths of 1 percent—99.7 percent of Americans get nothing—but if we give them what they want, I believe over a period of years it will lead to the complete abolishment and ending of the estate tax which will cost us over $1 trillion over a 10-year period.
So I hope this issue is not one just progressives or moderates feel strongly about. I hope honest conservatives, who in their heart of hearts believe this country is seriously in danger when we have unsustainable deficits and a huge national debt, will tell their elected officials here in Washington not to pass a piece of legislation which increases the national debt significantly and, in fact, will allow for the permanent—over years, in my view— extension of these tax breaks.
So that is what this debate is about. It is about fundamentally whether we continue the process by which the richest people in this country become richer, at a time when we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth.
As I have said earlier, this is not an issue that is discussed—I don't know— well, I do know why. It is just not an issue that people feel comfortable talking about because they don't want to give affront to their wealthy campaign contributors or take on the lobbyists who are out there. But that is the reality. Throughout the entire world, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income. The top 1 percent is earning 23.5 percent of all income. That is more than the bottom 50 percent. That is not just immoral, it is bad economics because if the middle class gets crushed entirely, who is going to be buying the goods and services produced in this economy?
So this piece of legislation, as important as it is unto itself—and it is very important—is equally important in terms of what it says about where we are going into the future. Are we going to protect the middle class and working families of our country? Are we going to make sure every young person in America, regardless of income, has the ability to go to college, or are we going to allow college to become unaffordable for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bright, young people, or else force them to leave school deeply in debt?
Are we going to create a health care system which guarantees health care
