Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. President, as ranking member of the Budget Committee, this afternoon I would like to discuss an issue of very serious concern to tens of millions of Americans; that is, the Republican effort to cut Social Security disability insurance benefits and perhaps benefits for Social Security retirees. In my view and in the view of seniors throughout the State of Vermont, this is a very bad idea.

As you know, on the very first day of the new Congress, House Republicans passed a rule--later adopted by the full House--which would prevent the common practice of rebalancing funds from the Social Security retirement program to the Social Security disability program. This rule adopted by the Republicans in the House would lay the groundwork for a 19-percent cut in disability benefits next year.

President Obama, in his budget, did exactly what has been done on 11 separate occasions in the past, always--and here is the point I want to make time and time again and why this is a manufactured crisis--this has been done 11 times in the past, always in a noncontroversial way, and that is to rebalance the funds between the two programs. This is not a big deal. The Republicans are manufacturing a crisis where none exists. Time and time again, Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents, with absolutely no controversy, have done what President Obama has proposed. This was done in 1968 under President Johnson; in 1970 under President Nixon; in 1978, 1979, and 1980 under President Carter; in 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1987 under President Ronald Reagan; in 1994, 1996, 1997, 2000, and beyond under President Bill Clinton. In other words, this is a totally noncontroversial process that has been done time and time again under Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents.

What the President is suggesting today is that we reallocate funds from the senior retirement fund to the disability fund. But interestingly enough, of the 11 times the funds were reallocated, it turns out that on five occasions it was money going from the disability fund to temporarily help out the retirement fund.

There are some people who sadly are trying to divide the senior population from the disability population. What they are saying in a way that is untruthful and unfair is that by reallocating money into the disability fund, we are taking funding away from seniors and the retirement fund. This is absolutely untrue because, as I have indicated, on 11 occasions we have seen this reallocation, and sometimes, in fact, it comes from the disability fund to help the retirement fund.

I am very happy to tell you that virtually every senior organization in America--organizations representing tens of millions of senior citizens--has made it clear that we must reallocate funds, we must prevent a cut in disability benefits, and we must do what has been done time and time again.

Let me briefly read a letter from the AARP. The AARP is the largest senior organization in America. This letter was written on July 22, 2014. It went to chairman Ron Wyden and ranking member Orrin Hatch of the Finance Committee. What the letter says:

As the largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization

representing the interests of Americans age 50 and older and

their families, we write in advance of the Committee's

legislative hearing on the Social Security Disability

Insurance program (SSDI) to express our support for Social

Security, including its disability insurance functions, and

our support of rebalancing payroll taxes to ensure the earned

benefits of 11 million disabled Americans and their families

are not reduced or put at risk.

Once again, AARP: We ``support the rebalancing of payroll taxes to ensure the earned benefits of 11 million disabled Americans and their families are not reduced or put at risk.''

I ask unanimous consent that letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, it is not just the AARP that holds that view. It is dozens and dozens of senior organizations all across the country. Let me read very briefly from a letter written by the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, dated October 9, 2014. It is a letter that goes to the President--to President Obama. What it says is:

We urge you to include a non-controversial, commonsense

legislative adjustment in your 2016 budget for Congress to

temporarily reallocate the Social Security payroll

contributions to address the anticipated shortfall in the

Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program. We also

strongly urge you to reject proposals to cut Social Security

benefits, coverage, or eligibility.

That is the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations.

I ask unanimous consent that letter also be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, let me be very clear and say that this fight--what some of us see on our TV screens and what we hear from some politicians--the simple truth is that Social Security is not going broke. Social Security is not going broke. Today, Social Security has a $2.8 trillion surplus in its trust fund and can pay out all benefits to all beneficiaries, the elderly and the disabled, for the next 18 years.

This is not the opinion of Senator Bernie Sanders. This is the opinion of the Social Security Administration in their latest report. There is and can be no debate about these simple facts. If we rebalance funds, as President Obama and many others have proposed, all benefits-- retiree benefits for our older Americans and disabled benefits for disabled Americans--would be paid out for the next 18 years--the next 18 years.

So people who come before you and say Social Security is going broke, they are simply not telling the truth. While this 18-year period makes it clear that we do not have an imminent crisis with regard to Social Security, I do agree with those who want to make sure Social Security is solvent for a lot longer than 18 years, for our kids and for our grandchildren.

Frankly, when we talk about the long-term solvency of Social Security, and that of course includes disability insurance as well, there are two basic approaches we can take for those who want to extend Social Security for many decades. One approach is what many of my Republican colleagues are talking about. What they are saying, in essence, is that in order to save Social Security we have to cut Social Security. Some are talking about a so-called chained CPI, which would mean a cut in cost-of-living adjustments, some are talking about raising the retirement age, at which point seniors will be able to get benefits, and some in fact are talking about privatizing Social Security and giving that program over to Wall Street. That is one approach. That is one way we could deal with Social Security and the future of the program. Needless to say that is an approach I very strongly disagree with.

The other approach, an approach which is widely supported in poll after poll by the American people, extends Social Security and protects Social Security in a very different way than many Republicans are proposing; that is, it addresses the issue that right now, as most Americans know, there is a cap on the income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax.

That cap is now at $118,500; in other words, one individual makes $11.8 million a year but only pays 6.2 percent on the first $118,500 he earns. The second individual makes $118,500 and pays Social Security taxes on all of that income. That, I think most Americans believe, is patently unfair.

I have introduced legislation in the past, and I am now working with other Senators who have introduced similar types of legislation which eliminates the cap on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. My own view is we should apply the Social Security payroll tax to income above $250,000.

If we do that, if we go down that very simple and fair route of asking very wealthy individuals--the top 1 percent, the top 1\1/2\ percent--to contribute more into the Social Security trust fund, the fact is we could extend Social Security for decades, disability benefits for decades, and in fact we would have enough money to expand benefits, not cut them.

On March 19, 2013, in response to a letter I wrote to the Social Security Chief Actuary, he wrote back and he told us that taking the approach my legislation lays out, raising the cap on taxable income starting at $250,000, would extend the life of Social Security past the year 2060.

So for anybody to come on this floor and say in order to save Social Security we have to cut benefits, at a time when millions of senior citizens in this country are struggling to pay for the medicine they need, to keep warm in the winter, to buy the food they need, people out there living on $13,000, $14,000 a year--and there are some who say we have to cut Social Security--let me go on record and say I strongly disagree.

The far better and far fairer approach is to lift the cap on taxable income and start at $250,000. So if we are serious about extending the life of Social Security, if we are serious about not cutting disability benefits, there is a path forward. Yes, it does ask the people on top to contribute a little bit more. I know that with all of the lobbyists and all the campaign contributions coming in here that sometimes becomes tough, but it is the right thing to do.

Let's stand with the millions of seniors who are struggling to stay alive economically in these tough times, rather than wealthy campaign contributors.

I ask unanimous consent that the March 19, 2013, letter from the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration be printed in the Record.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. President, the good news is the country has made substantial economical progress in the last 6 years since President Bush left office. Instead of losing 800,000 jobs a month as we were during the final months of the Bush administration, we are now creating some 250,000 jobs a month and have seen steady job growth over the last 58 months.

Instead of having a record-breaking $1.4 trillion deficit as we did when President Bush left office in January 2009, the Federal deficit has been cut by more than two-thirds. Today the 10-year deficit projection is now $5.5 trillion lower than what the projections were back in 2010.

Six years ago the world's financial system, as we all remember, was on the verge of collapse. Today that is not the case. In fact, some might suggest that Wall Street is doing too well.

While we can take some satisfaction as to what has been accomplished in the last 6 years, one would be very naive not to appreciate there is also a lot of very bad news in our economy, especially for working families.

Most significantly, the simple truth of the matter is the 40-year decline of the American middle class continues. Real unemployment is not 5.6 percent--including those people who have given up looking for work or people who are working part time when they want to work full time--it is over 11 percent. Youth unemployment--something we almost never talk about in this country--is a horrendous 17 percent, and African-American youth unemployment is over 30 percent. It is totally unacceptable.

Real median family income has declined by nearly $5,000 since 1999. All over this country--in Vermont and in every other State in this country--we have people working longer hours for lower wages. We have husbands and wives working 50, 60 hours a week just to pay the bills. Incredibly, despite huge increases in productivity, in technology, and all of the global economy we hear so much about, the median male worker now earns $783 less than he did 42 years ago. Let me repeat that. That American male worker right in the middle of the economy now earns, after inflation adjusted for wages, $783 less than he did 42 years ago. The female worker right in the middle of the economy now makes $1,300 less than she made in 2007.

When you ask why people are angry, why people are stressed, why people are frustrated, that is exactly why. Further, this country continues to have, shamefully, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth, and 40 million Americans still have zero health insurance.

In the midst of this tragic decline of the American middle class, there is, however, another reality. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. The result: The United States today has more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the Great Depression. Today the top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Let me repeat that because that truly is a startling fact. Today the top one-tenth of 1 percent--which is what this chart talks about--owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Today 1 family--the Walton family, owners of Walmart--owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people, some 120 million Americans.

I don't believe most of our people think this is what the American economy should be about. In fact, this is not an economy for a democracy. This is what oligarchy is all about. One-tenth of 1 percent owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, 1 family owning the equivalent of what 131 million Americans own, that is wealth. In terms of income--which is what we make every year--what we have seen in the last number of years since the Wall Street crash is virtually all new income is going to the top 1 percent.

Last year--just as one example--the top 25 hedge fund managers earned more income than 425,000 public school teachers. Does anybody believe that makes sense? Twenty-five hedge fund managers making more income than 425,000 public school teachers. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider and wider and wider.

The fact is that over the past 40 years, we have witnessed an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent. In other words, what we are seeing in our economy is the Robin Hood principle in reverse. We are taking from the poor and the working families and transferring that income and wealth to the very wealthy.

From 1985 to 2013 the share of the Nation's wealth going to the middle class has gone down from 36 percent to less than 23 percent. If the middle class had simply maintained the same share of our Nation's wealth as it did 30 years ago, it would have $10.27 trillion more in cumulative wealth than it does today. Almost $11 trillion would have stayed with the middle class but has disappeared since 1985.

But while the middle class continues to shrink, while millions of Americans are working longer hours for low wages, while young people cannot afford to go to college or leave school deeply in debt, while too many kids in this country go hungry, we have seen, since 2009, that the top 1 percent has experienced an $11.5 trillion increase in its wealth. So the top 1 percent in recent years sees an $11.5 trillion increase in wealth, while in roughly the same period the middle class sees a $10.7 trillion decrease in wealth.

This $11.5 trillion transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent over a 5-year period is one of the largest such transfers of wealth in our country's history. Here is my point. This is not just a moral issue, although it is a profound moral issue--and Pope Francis, by the way, deserves a lot of credit for talking about this issue all over the world. Are we satisfied as a nation when so few have so much and so many have so little? Are we satisfied with the proliferation of millionaires and billionaires, at the same time as we have millions of children living in poverty? Is that what America is supposed to be about? That is the moral component of this debate.

But this is not just a moral issue. It is also a fundamental economic issue. As we know, 70 percent of our economy is based on consumer spending. When working people do not have enough income, enough disposable income, they are unable to go out and buy goods and services that they would like or that they need. The so-called job creators that my Republican friends often refer to are not the CEOs of the large corporations.

The CEOs of large corporations cannot sell their products or services unless people have the income to buy them. Someone can come up with the greatest product in the world, but if people do not have the money, they are not going to sell that product, they are not going to hire workers to produce that product.

The truth is that the real job creators in this country are those millions of people who every single day go out and purchase goods and services, but if they do not have adequate income, the entire economy suffers. There was a very interesting article, I believe it was yesterday or today, in the Wall Street Journal, written by Nick Timiraos and Kris Hudson, talking about how a two-tier economy is reshaping the U.S. marketplace.

What they talk about is:

It is a tale of two economies.

Said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, a real estate brokerage in Seattle.

There is a high-end market that is absolutely booming. And

then there's everyone in the middle class. They don't have

much hope of wage growth.

The article continues.

Indeed, such midtier retailers as J.C. Penney, Sears and

Target have slumped.

``The consumer has not bounced back with the confidence we

were looking for,'' Macy's chief executive Terry Lundgren

told investors last fall.

I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.

So what we are hearing--basically what this article tells us--is if people's income is going down, they are not going to Macy's, they are not going to Target. Those stores are not hiring workers or are getting rid of workers because the middle class does not have the income it needs.

Here is a very important point. Within President Obama's recent budget--by the way, I think the President's budget is beginning to move us in the right direction--there was a very interesting projection that unfortunately got very little attention. Here is the point: Over the last 50 years GDP growth in the United States of America averaged about 3.2 percent. What the President's budget is suggesting is that more or less over the next 10 years we are going to see 3-percent growth, 3- percent--2.7, 2.5, 2.3. For the rest of the decade, 2.3 percent.

The bottom line is, if we continue along the same type of economic growth we have had over the previous 50 years, unemployment would be substantially lower, people would be paying more taxes, Social Security, among other programs, would be in much stronger shape.

The debate we are going to be having in the Budget Committee--I am the ranking member of the Budget Committee--are two very different philosophies. Our Republican friends believe in more austerity for the middle class and working families. Their goal, over a period of months and years, is to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid, cut nutrition programs for hungry children, not invest in infrastructure, and then give huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

In other words, more austerity for the middle class, tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations. I believe that philosophy is wrong for many reasons, the most important being that if we want to grow the overall economy, if we want to create jobs, we have to put money into the hands of working people. We do not do that by cutting, cutting, cutting, and imposing more austerity on people who already desperately are hurting.

A far more sensible approach is to create the millions of jobs that our country desperately needs by, among other things, investing heavily in our crumbling infrastructure. Last week I introduced legislation that would invest $1 trillion over a 5-year period into rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, rail, airports, water systems, wastewater plants.

If we do that, we make our country more productive, safer, and create up to 13 million jobs, putting money into the hands of working people. It not only will improve their lives, but they will then go out and spend their money in their communities, creating further economic growth. That is the direction we should be going.

We also have to raise wages. People cannot survive on the starvation minimum wage imposed at the Federal level of $7.25 an hour. If we raise the minimum wage over a period of years to $15 an hour, we are going to have billions of dollars go into the hands of people who need it the most, improve their lives, allow them to go out and invest in our economy, spend money and create jobs.

We need pay equity for women workers. It is not acceptable that women are making 78 cents to the dollar for men who are doing the same work. We need to address the scandal of overtime right now, where we have so- called supervisors at McDonald's who work 50, 60 hours a week, but because they are so-called supervisors do not get time and a half.

We need to make college affordable for all of our workers. In a global economy we need the best educated workforce in the world, not the one where people cannot afford a higher education. We need trade policies that benefit working people and not just large multinational corporations, which is why we should defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

So there is a lot of work that needs to be done. But the bottom line is, if we are serious about dealing with the deficit and debt reduction, if we are serious about growing the middle class, we need an agenda which creates jobs, raises wages, makes college affordable, demands that corporate America start investing in this country and not in China.

We need a proworker agenda, not an austerity agenda which will strangle the middle class of this country even more than it is hurting today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have spoken repeatedly on this floor about the cost of war. In doing so, I have tried to remind the American people and my colleagues that the cost of war does not end when the last shots are fired and the last missiles launched. The cost of war is very, very expensive not just in dollars and cents but in terms of human life and human suffering.

The cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is almost 7,000 dead. Nearly 52,000 servicemembers have returned with physical wounds; however, more than 200,000 service men and women are seeking treatment for post- traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury.

The cost of war is nearly 1,600 servicemembers who face amputations, to include a number of with multiple amputations.

The cost of war is veterans returning home unable to find jobs and get their feet back on the ground financially.

The cost of war is high divorce rates and the impact that family stress has on children.

The cost of war is mothers losing their children to suicide.

Late last session the Veterans' Affairs Committee heard from two mothers--Valerie Pallotta from Vermont and Susan Selke from Texas-- whose lives have been forever changed because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The experience these two mothers shared with the committee goes well beyond anything I can put into words. They shared powerful stories about their own cost of war--the tragic suicides of their sons following their return from combat. They talked about their sons' struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and efforts to seek help from the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is with the stories shared by these mothers in mind that I come to the floor today.

As chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, I worked hard to listen to and address concerns brought to my attention by veterans, their family members and advocates within the military and veterans' community.

The ideas in the bill under consideration--which will be voted on shortly--are the result of the work of the families and friends of those who have committed suicide, advocates, and countless others who continue to search and fight for solutions to address the staggering rate of suicide among veterans.

This bill is a good start. Everyone needs to be thanked for their efforts, especially the mothers who came before our committee and shared their thoughts on mental health and suicide.

But, we can never do too much in the area of veterans' mental health and suicide. That is why I intend to pursue additional enhancements at another time. I do not want to slow down the bill we will be voting on today--but I want my colleagues to recognize that much, much more needs to be done to assist veterans and families struggling with either their own mental health conditions or a loved ones' mental health condition. We can never do enough.

Briefly, let me tell you what additional provisions I will be pursing at a later time.

Currently, returning veterans have 5 years from their date of discharge to enroll in the VA health care system and receive free health care for their medical conditions resulting from their service.

The bill we are voting on today would provide an additional 1-year window during which VA can provide health care for veterans whose eligibility for the initial 5-year period has lapsed.

Now, is that exactly what I wanted? No. I think the period of eligibility for health care at VA following separation from service should be 10 years.

We hear time and time again that for many veterans, problems do not necessarily manifest until years after they have returned from war. Then it might take some time before they actually seek assistance at VA. However, recognizing the importance of getting this legislation to the President's desk as soon as possible, I intend to pursue that provision at another time.

During her testimony before this committee last session, Valerie Pallotta, the mother of a veteran who succumbed to suicide, talked about her desire to see complementary and alternative medicine opportunities expanded at VA.

While VA has made significant strides in providing complementary and alternative medicine at VA medical centers, access to such services is not standardized across VA. I commend VA's current efforts, but more must be done.

I will pursue expanding access to complementary and alternative medicine at another time, so that we can increase the likelihood that veterans will get the care that not only meets their needs, but their personal preferences, as well.

We have also heard that families, who are caring for loved ones with mental health conditions, are highly stressed and looking for resources to help their loved ones. At the moment, VA has only limited capacity to offer support and education to family members and caregivers of veterans with mental health conditions. This is an issue I will pursue in the near-future.

We could never do too much to help veterans and their family members after these veterans return from war. As I said earlier, this bill is a good start--but we have much more to do.

Reserving the right to object, I need more than 10 minutes. Is that all right? That was the expectation. That is fine.

Madam President, I am delighted to have heard the speech from my good friend Senator Cornyn. As the ranking member of the Budget Committee, I think we are going to have some very serious discussions about the assertion Senator Cornyn and many other Republicans made.

Let me begin by saying I am delighted that some of my Republican friends have expressed great concern about our deficit and our national debt. I ask them where they were several years ago when we went to war in Iraq and forgot to pay for that war. I happen to think the war in Iraq is not a war we should have ever gotten into, but be that as it may, I find it interesting that some of the leading deficit hawks went to war--a war which will end up costing us some $3 to $6 trillion. For the first time in the modern history of our country, they went to war and yet they chose not to pay for it. Then on top of that, in the midst of the war, during that period, they gave substantial tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country. In addition to that, they passed a Medicare Part D prescription drug program--much more expensive than it should be--written by the insurance companies, also not paid for. But now these same Republicans who came to the floor having voted to spend trillions of dollars on a war we should not have gotten into, having voted to give huge tax breaks to billionaires, having voted for a Medicare Part D prescription drug program that was not paid for--lo and behold, they have discovered we have a deficit problem and a national debt problem. This country would be in a lot better shape if they had expressed those concerns 7 or 8 years ago.

In my view, there is a war going on in this country. And I am not talking about the war in Afghanistan or Iraq or the instability in the Middle East; I am talking about the war being waged in America today against the American middle class, against the American standard of living, and against the American dream.

Today in the United States of America we have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on Earth.

Today in America we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth.

Today in America we are the only major nation not to guarantee health care to all of our people as a right of citizenship.

The United States of America once led the world 40 years ago in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated from college. In short, we were the best educated people in the world. Today we are in 12th place, and millions of our young people are graduating from college deeply in debt, while others are looking at the cost of college and saying: I am not going to college. I am not going to get a higher education. I can't afford it. I don't want to leave school in debt. Our competing nations--whether it is Germany, Scandinavia, whether it is many of the European countries--are saying their kids are going to go to college regardless of the income of their families.

In terms of our infrastructure, we were once the envy of the world. Today, according to the World Economic Forum, we are in 12th place.

Today in America real unemployment is not the official unemployment rate of 5.8 percent; it is over 11 percent if we count those people who have given up looking for work and are working part time.

Youth unemployment--an issue we do not talk about--is 18 percent. We have over 5 million young people in this country who either dropped out of high school or graduated from high school. Do you know what they are doing? They are doing nothing. They are hanging out on street corners in Vermont, Louisiana, and all over this country. There are no jobs for them. In terms of African-American youth unemployment, that number, if you can believe it, is close to 30 percent.

What the war against the middle-class and working families is about is that millions of our people are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker today is earning some $700 less than that worker made 40 years ago. The median woman worker--that woman right in the middle of the economy--made $1,300 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen their income go down by about $4,000.

The great recession, which was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, cost our country millions of good- paying jobs. It cost millions of Americans their homes and their life savings. It destroyed marriages and left people so destitute that they took their own lives. But the fact is, when people are in economic despair and economic recession, suicide rates go up. While the worst is clearly behind us, millions are still trying to claw their way back to where they were before the greed and financial abuses of Wall Street ripped the middle class apart.

The good news is that in the past 6 years our economy has made significant progress. We have created millions of jobs, and that is a good thing. Our unemployment rate is down, and we have seen a whole lot of people return to work. But when we talk about the economy, we also have to understand that the recovery we are seeing is extremely uneven. Some people--the people on top--have done remarkably, unbelievably well. A tiny slice of the population has gobbled up all of the economic gains since 2009.

Let me repeat that because it is almost impossible to believe, but it is true. All of the new income gains after 2009--not 50 percent, not 80 percent, not 90 percent--100 percent of all of the income gains after 2009 have landed in the pockets of the top 1 percent.

Today the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Today the Walton family--six people--owns more wealth than the bottom 41 percent. Here is the Walton family, six people who are worth $144.7 billion, and here is the bottom 41.5 percent of our population--131 million people who are worth about $123.4 billion. I ask the American people, is this what our country is supposed to be about--one family owning more wealth than the bottom 41 percent, the bottom 131 million Americans? Our economy and our distribution of wealth and income is completely out of balance, and this imbalance is not only fundamentally immoral, it is wrong that so few have so much and so many have so little. But it is also detrimental to economic growth, it is dangerous for our financial stability, and in fact it threatens our democracy. Our task is to rebalance this economy; to create an economy that works well for all of our people and not just wealthy campaign contributors--not just the Koch brothers but the working class of this country.

There was a time after the Great Depression when we built an economy that allowed workers to share in our Nation's prosperity. There was a time when the economy grew to help all people--the rich got richer, the middle

class expanded, and poverty went down. That economy brought unparalleled prosperity and financial stability to our country and is affectionately remembered as the golden age of American capitalism. For decades wages increased alongside rising productivity, and each generation could reasonably expect to do better than the last.

My parents worked very hard so their sons could do better than they did. That was the American dream--a dream, by the way, which no longer exists.

After rising to more than $56,000 at the start of the 21st century, real median household incomes today have fallen back to where they were in 1996, a decline in living standards of more than $4,000 a year. Something is not right in our economy.

The good news is the economy is growing. It is much better than it was 6 years ago, and we should be delighted by that. GDP is up. We just had a very strong quarter--5-percent growth. Productivity is up, employment is up, home prices are up, and the stock market is way up.

On the other hand, average hourly earnings have barely budged, leading economists to resurrect a Depression-era term--a Depression-era term--called secular stagnation. For the first time since the Great Depression, our economy is growing in a way that is leaving most of our citizens no better off. In other words, the economy is doing well, but the people are not doing well.

In fact the distribution of wealth today is worse than at any time since 1917--1917. The share of wealth owned by the top one-tenth of 1 percent is almost the same as the bottom 90 percent.

When we talk about the budget--and I will talk about the budget as the ranking member of the Budget Committee--the budget has to be placed in a broader context of what is happening in America. What is happening in America is the people at the top are doing phenomenally well, the stock market is going off the wall, corporate profits are at an alltime high, while the middle class shrinks and we have almost more people living in poverty than at any time in our history. That is the context in which in my view the Budget Committee has to accept its challenge.

Today half of all Americans are making less than $20 an hour, half the kids in our public schools are living in poverty, and 62 percent of Americans do not have the money to cover an unexpected emergency room visit or a $500 car repair. In other words, all over this country people are stressed. They are worried about what would happen if their car were to break down. They are worried what would happen if they were to get sick because they have no money in the bank. They have nothing to rely upon. They are working longer hours and in many cases they have nothing in the bank.

As the recent elections in Greece demonstrate, ordinary people will not stand by and watch as their economies unravel and as their democracies unravel. Left unchecked, widening disparities in wealth and opportunity here at home can give rise to dangerous levels of social unrest. We must rebalance the economy so prosperity is enjoyed by the many--by the middle class, by working families--and not just a handful of people on top.

We must ensure that our economy continues to grow and that the benefits of a growing economy are widely enjoyed. It is not growth versus fairness but growth and fairness. In other words, we can have all the growth we want and it doesn't mean anything to the middle class. In fact, the converse is true: We can have all the fairness we want, but if there is not growth, people are not going to gain prosperity. In fact, no society has ever flourished without a large, prosperous middle class, and that is what we must fight to bring about.

My Republican friends believe the economy will grow if we just give more tax breaks to millionaires, to billionaires, and to the largest corporations in America. They refer to this top 1 percent as the job makers or the job creators. They insist if we rub their bellies just right--deregulating markets and slashing taxes and all of these nice things for the wealthy and the powerful--we can coax them into building an economy that will work for everyone. That is called trickle-down economics: bend over backward for the rich and the powerful, and when we give them their tax breaks, we deregulate and let them destroy the environment, my God, they are going to create all these jobs for working families.

That is what the first George Bush referred to as ``voodoo economics.'' He was right then and that expression is right today.

I am sure the Presiding Officer has seen the Kevin Costner movie ``Field of Dreams.'' These supply-side arguments, these trickle-down theories are the economic equivalent of the field of dreams. The Republicans tell us all we have to do is to build a friendly tax and regulatory environment and the ``job creators'' will come. They tell us we just have to get the ``incentives'' right and the wealthy will create all the good jobs we need. They tell us that if we build the rich a better playing field, the jobs will come.

That is the mantra of supply-side economics, of the trickle-down theory: If you build it, they will come. The only problem with that theory is it has been tried and the evidence is overwhelming that it has failed.

Since 1980 we have seen the marginal income tax rate--the top marginal income tax rate--plunge from 70 to 35 percent. The wealthiest people wanted a reduction in their marginal tax rate, and they got it. The corporate income tax rate dropped from 46 to 35 percent--although, by the way, very few corporations pay 35 percent, but they did get a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Taxes on capital gains fell from 28 to 15 percent. We have deregulated the airlines, deregulated telecommunications, deregulated energy, and maybe, most significantly and most disastrously, we deregulated Wall Street.

We did all of the things the wealthy and the powerful wanted us to do, but instead of unleashing the job creators and ushering in a new golden age that benefits all people, these supply-side gimmicks brought us widening inequality and greater financial instability. In other words, these experiments failed. They failed. Our economy has become more unstable. The distribution of wealth and income has become more unequal, and it takes the system longer and longer to call back the jobs that are lost each time we suffer a recession.

I am encouraged by some of the comments I have recently heard from my Republican colleagues who recognize that income and wealth inequality in America is real. This is a step forward. However, the policies they are advocating to address income and wealth inequality will in fact make a bad situation even worse.

As the ranking member of the Budget Committee, let me tell you what the Republicans have in mind. They don't say this straightforward, so I will help them and say it straightforward. What they intend to do is to cut Social Security, and they are going to tell us all the reasons we have to cut Social Security. That is what they are going to do. That is what they are going to try to do. We are going to stop them, but that is what they are going to try to do. They are going to try to end Medicare as we know it and convert it into a voucher program. That is what the House Republicans voted to do last year. The result will be that there will be more and more out-of-pocket medical expenses for older Americans. They are going to make devastating cuts in Medicaid and throw some of the most vulnerable people in this country off of health insurance and onto the rolls of the uninsured. They are going to try to cut taxes for millionaires, billionaires and large corporations and they are going to try to increase military spending.

That is what they are going to do. They are going to give long speeches. They are not going to say these things directly, but if you listened closely to the speech my friend and colleague Senator Cornyn gave, that is truly what they intend to do.

Einstein said it was the height of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. It is time to accept the facts. The facts are that trickle-down economics does not work. It has failed. It is time to get back to doing what does work-- what works for the middle class and working families. That is what we have to get back to.

So what does work? What is a program we should be advocating that makes sense and that will work for ordinary Americans? The plan is actually pretty simple. It is the way economics was taught and practiced during the golden age of capitalism, and it flips trickle- down thinking on its head. To put it as simply as possible, our economy runs on sales, not a very difficult concept to understand. Sales create jobs.

Businesses don't hire and invest because they want to. They hire workers and invest in new machinery because they have to. They do it to keep up with consumer demand, which is 70 percent of our economy, not very complicated. When people have disposable income in their pockets, they buy products, they buy services, and when they buy those services and products, companies hire workers to make those products and deliver those services.

We hear a lot of talk about how we need to reduce spending to grow the economy, but that doesn't quite make sense. Spending isn't just the right way to grow the economy. In fact, it is the only way to grow the economy. After all, what is the economy? It is our economic pie, our GDP. What is that? It is a measure of how much we are spending as a nation to buy the goods and services we are producing. If we spend less, we don't grow our economy, we shrink it.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, the government is not the big spender in the economy, households are. Their spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of our total GDP. That means consumers play a critical role in creating the demand that drives our economy.

It also means that when the middle class is in trouble--when people have less disposable income--the American economy is in trouble. Whether we continue to grow and create jobs depends critically on the economic well-being of the vast middle class. If the middle class is weighed down with debt and struggling to get by, the long-term health of the United States economy is in serious trouble.

Hardworking Americans with money to spend are the real job creators. They are the customers who supply the demand of the vast majority of what our businesses are trying to sell.

This is not just Bernie Sanders speaking. Talk to many of the large companies out there and they say they are seeing a drying up of their customers because the economy is so bad. That is what the folks in many industries will tell us today. Our economy does well when people have income to spend. This is not a complicated theory. If people can't buy products, companies are not making products. Companies are not producing services.

Since the Wall Street crash, many of the jobs that have been added to the economy have been low-wage and part-time jobs. In fact, the jobs created during the recovery in the last few years pay 23 percent less on average than those that were lost in the recession. In his State of the Union Address, the President talked about ``middle class economics,'' and that is an excellent way to put it. It is a powerful reminder of what drives growth and prosperity. When we understand this, we understand why our economy cannot function when those at the very top are pocketing 100 percent of the income gains.

Let me repeat that. The top 1 percent is not getting 50 percent of all new income, not getting 80 percent of all new income--they are getting 100 percent of all new income. Our most important job creator, the vast middle class, is disappearing. Squeezed by decades of rising costs and stagnant incomes, they just can't do it. When those at the very top take more and more of the gains, our job creators--i.e., the middle class--get squeezed. Debt becomes a substitute for income, and the economy becomes even more fragile.

Let me show an incredibly revelatory chart. This chart talks about distribution of average income growth during expansions and what the bottom 90 percent received versus what the top 10 percent of families receive.

We go back from the period of 1949 to 1953, 1954 to 1957, 1958 to 1960, 1961 to 1969, 1970 to 1973, 1975 to 1979, 1982 to 1990, 1991 to 2000, 2001 to 2007, 2009 to 2012. That is the last we have.

What this chart shows is that in the first three decades after World War II the vast majority of Americans did well when the economy did well.

This is the percentage of new income that went to the bottom 90 percent, and this is what the top 10 percent got. They did OK. The top 10 percent did pretty well. They got 20 percent of all new income. But the bottom 90 percent got 80 percent of the income. Then 1954 to 1957 went down a little bit, but the bottom 90 percent did pretty well. Again, the bottom 90 percent did pretty well, and here the bottom 90 percent did pretty well. Then the bottom 90 percent begins to do less well, and again less well, but they are still getting a majority of the new income.

Whoa--what happens in 1982? Well, Ronald Reagan is President--and the good news is we are into trickle-down economics. Here it is. This chart tells it all. This is what the top 10 percent got, and this is what the bottom 90 percent got.

Here we are in the last number here, where we are today, and, lo and behold, the top 10 percent gets it all. And, frankly, this is a metaphor. This is an example of exactly what trickle-down economics is all about.

So early on, in economics, when we have a recovery, most of the new income goes to working families and to the broad middle class. Since the 1982 period, almost all of the new income goes to the top 1 percent. Today, as I mentioned--rather unbelievably--all of the new income is going to the top 1 percent.

Clearly, this is unacceptable. This trend of the rich getting richer and everybody else getting poorer is not what America is about, and it has got to be changed. We have to rethink the fundamentals of supply- side, trick-down economic theory.

The difficulty we have, to be frank, is that, especially since Citizens United and especially since the millionaires and billionaires can pour huge amounts of money into the political process, for them this is great news. This chart is fantastic news. They have won. They contribute to candidates, and candidates go out and tell us we need more tax breaks for the rich, we need more deregulation. And these are the results. So not only do we need to change our economic policies. Clearly, we need to change campaign finance so the work being done by Congress reflects the needs of working families and not just the billionaire class.

Now, let me say what I think we should do. I do not believe we should give more tax breaks to the rich because they are getting richer and their tax rates have gone down. I do not believe we should give more tax breaks to large corporations, because there are huge loopholes in our corporate tax system and we are losing about $100 billion every single year because corporations and millionaires are stashing their money in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.

We have a situation right now in this country in terms of our individual tax breaks where hedge fund managers who make millions of dollars a year pay an effective tax rate lower than a truckdriver or a nurse. That makes no sense to me nor do I believe it makes sense to the American people.

So I will very briefly say what I think makes sense and an agenda that will put Americans back to work at decent wages.

No. 1, if we want to create jobs in America, we don't pass the Keystone Pipeline bill. That creates 35 permanent jobs. That creates several thousand construction jobs. And, by the way, that allows the Canadian firm to produce and transport some of the dirtiest fuel in the world, which will only exacerbate the problems of climate change--doing exactly the opposite of what the scientific community tells us we should do.

So if we want to create more than 35 permanent jobs, maybe we should be serious about rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure; that is, our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater plants, our dams, our levees, our rail system, our airports. Think of what America would look like when, instead of having a sub-par infrastructure--an infrastructure now ranked 12th in the world--we lead the world with cutting edge technology. A $1 trillion investment could put 13 million Americans back to work at good wages. In my view, that is exactly what we should be doing.

Right now in this country we have a significant number of people working

at the starvation wage--the Federal minimum wage--of $7.25 an hour. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage. When we do that, we provide a pay raise for some 25 million Americans who today are struggling economically. And when we do that, we not only help them, but we also help the economy because, as I mentioned earlier, when these folks have money they can then spend some money.

We have to provide pay equity for women workers. It is not acceptable that women today earn 78 percent of what male workers earn who do the same job.

We have to deal with the scandal of overtime right now, where we have workers in McDonald's who make $25,000, $28,000 a year and who are ``supervisors'' and therefore are exempt from overtime regulations. So they may be working 50 or 60 hours a week making very little money, yet because they are ``supervisors,'' they don't get time and a half. Ending that and raising that $23,000 threshold to something like $56,000 would provide a huge pay increase for millions and millions of workers.

We live in a very, very competitive global economy, and it makes no sense to me that in that economy we have large numbers of young people who are giving up on the dream of getting a good education and going to college or graduate school. Others are leaving school deeply in debt. We should learn from many of our competitors who say to their young people: You want to go to college? You can go to college, regardless of your income because tuition is free.

A few months ago, one of the States in Germany was the last State in Germany to do away with tuition. What one of their political leaders said was: Look. We believe all of our people have the right to go to college, and income should not be an impediment. I agree with that.

We need finally to do what I know is very, very difficult for many of the Members of this body, and that is take on Wall Street. We have a handful of huge financial institutions that have assets equivalent to 60 percent of the GDP of the United States of America. They issue half of the mortgages in this country and two-thirds of the credit cards in this country. I believe that is just too big. I fear very much about another too-big-to-fail scenario where we have to bail them out.

As we know, Republicans recently have pushed through language to take away some of the protections that taxpayers had in Dodd-Frank and once again leave them exposed to bailing out Wall Street when they engage in dangerous derivative speculation.

Lastly--and this is not just an economic issue, although it is; it is a moral issue--we have millions of senior citizens and people with disabilities in this country who are struggling with incredible courage every single day to buy the food they need and to buy the medicine they need, and, in cold States such as mine in Vermont, to heat their homes. This is not just rhetoric. This is reality. There are--God knows how many--seniors who say: Well, I can't buy my medicine if I am going to heat the house. I can't heat the house if I am going to buy my nutrition. We know that all over the country the Meals On Wheels programs have waiting lines because it is a place for low-income seniors to get nutrition. Yet we have an effort right now on the part of Republicans to say that, well, yeah, we have millions of seniors trying to get by on $12,000, $13,000 a year, but we are going to cut their benefits. Well, they may make that effort, but I will do everything I can to stop it.

There are very simple remedies for the problems facing Social Security, and we should make a couple of things very clear. Despite a lot of the rhetoric that we hear, Social Security is paid for by the payroll tax and does not add to the deficit. So take that issue away.

The second issue is that Social Security is going broke. Well, the simple truth is Social Security is not going broke. Social Security has about $2.6 trillion in its trust fund and can pay out about all the benefits owed to all eligible Americans for the next 19 years. If we want to make Social Security solvent--not for 19 years, because I think we have to extend that--if we want to make it solvent for 30 years or 40 years and if we want, as I believe we should, not to cut benefits but to expand benefits, and if we want to do the right thing for our parents and our grandchildren, then I think we defeat every effort out there to cut Social Security. I think we lift the cap on taxable income so that millionaires contribute more into the Social Security trust fund. I think we have that moral obligation to our parents and our grandparents.

Let me conclude by saying this. I think the evidence is overwhelming that trickledown economics is a fraud. It works for the very wealthy; it does not work for working families. The job of this Congress is to protect the middle class and working class, and not just billionaire campaign contributors.

With that, I thank the Presiding Officer for your indulgence, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the scientific community tells us very clearly that if we are going to reverse climate change and the great dangers it poses for our country and the planet, we must move aggressively to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

This amendment would provide a 15-percent rebate to homeowners so that we could install 10 million new solar rooftops across the country within 10 years. This would result in enough new electrical generation to retire nearly 20 percent of our dirty coal-fired plants and create a significant number of new jobs.

So if we are interested in reversing the dangers of climate change and creating jobs, I would urge Senators to support this amendment.

I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up my amendment, amendment No. 23, the Ten Million Solar Roofs Act, and it be made pending.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, it goes without saying I disagree with my good friend from Alabama in terms of his assessment of the climate situation. To my mind, the scientific community, the overwhelming majority of scientists have made it clear that climate change is real, caused by human activity, is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world, that we have a limited opportunity to try to transform our energy system so a bad situation does not become much worse. One of the ways we transform our energy system is by moving to such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geothermal, and others.

What this amendment does is propose to create over the next 10 years 10 million solar rooftops in this country--a massive effort to expand solar energy in this country by giving a rebate on new solar systems. As we all know, the solar industry is booming. We are seeing significant increases in the number of people who are using solar. Today there are more than 13,000 megawatts of operating solar capacity, nearly half a million photovoltaic systems.

We have made real progress in recent years. But we have a long way to go, and that is what this legislation would do. I wanted to say a word about an article that appeared in many of the papers today which I think is pretty scary stuff.

It talks about the Koch brothers being prepared to spend almost $1 billion in 2016 in order to bring forward their very rightwing agenda. When we hear these numbers about one family--the second wealthiest family in America, extreme rightwing family--prepared to spend almost $1 billion in the coming elections, I think the American people have to ask whether the foundations of American democracy have been uprooted and whether in fact we are moving to an oligarchic form of society. As many people know, what oligarchy is about is when you have very wealthy and powerful people controlling what goes on.

What the history of America presumably has been about is ordinary people determining what happens in our country. Ordinary people elect Members of the House and elect Members of the Senate. Now what we have is one family worth some $85 billion prepared to spend in the next election almost as much as Obama spent and almost as much as Romney spent in the last Presidential election.

My guess is in the coming years what we are going to see is the major and most effective and most powerful political party in America is not the Republican Party. It is not the Democratic Party. It is the Koch brothers party. They already have assembled, as I understand it, a political database which has more information than the Republican Party database.

We have to take a very hard look at what is going on and determine whether this is what we believe our democracy should be--a billionaire family with more power than either the Democratic or Republican Parties.

In the last election the Republican candidate for President, Mitt Romney, spent about $446 million from his campaign committee--about half of what the Koch network plans to spend next year. President Obama spent $715 million in 2012 from his campaign committee. The difference is that Obama and Romney raised significant sums of money from people all over the country, people who may have contributed 50 bucks or 100 bucks, and now we have one family preparing to spend almost as much money as either Obama or Romney spent, and that is a frightening situation. It tells me loudly and clearly that we must overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision called Citizens United.

Rebuild America Act

Madam President, today I have introduced legislation that calls for a $1 trillion investment to rebuild our collapsing infrastructure; that is, our

roads, bridges, wastewater plants, water systems, dams, levees, rail, airports.

Everybody in the Senate and I hope everybody in America understands that our infrastructure is collapsing. We can't avoid dealing with this issue. We can't turn our backs on this issue. I am a former mayor, and what I can say is that infrastructure does not get better when we ignore it. It gets worse, and it becomes more expensive to fix.

For most of our history the United States proudly led the world in building innovative infrastructure, from inland canals to the transcontinental railroad. We implemented huge flood-control projects and embarked on an ambitious rural electrification program. We built modern airports and the Interstate Highway System. In terms of infrastructure, we were the envy of the world. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

Today the United States spends just 2.4 percent of GDP on infrastructure--less than at any point in the past 20 years. Europe spends twice that amount, and China spends close to four times our rate. We are falling further and further behind, and that is not where the United States of America should be.

Today we are 12th in the world in terms of the quality of our infrastructure when we used to be No. 1. One out of every nine bridges in our country is structurally deficient and nearly one-quarter are functionally obsolete. Almost one-third of our roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and more than 42 percent of urban highways are congested. Urban and suburban transit systems are struggling to address deferred maintenance even as ridership steadily increases.

No one argues about the need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. When we do that, we get an additional bonus because if we invest $1 trillion over a 5-year period, we can create 13 million decent-paying jobs, and that is exactly what we should be doing. Real unemployment today is not 5.6 percent, it is 11 percent. Youth unemployment is 18 percent. African-American youth unemployment is 30 percent. We need to create millions of decent-paying jobs, and the best way we can do that is by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Washington for their work on this legislation.

I rise today to say a few words about my amendment to the proposed Keystone Pipeline bill, an amendment that will be coming up for a vote in a few minutes. I wish to thank Senators Bennet, Carper, Leahy, Menendez, Murphy, Warren, and Whitehouse for cosponsoring this amendment.

This amendment is extremely simple. It is about 1 page and I will read it in a moment. It raises a very profound question as to how we implement public policy, not just on issues related to climate but on issues in general. The question is: As we go forward, tackling the very difficult problems facing our country and the world, to whom do we listen? Whose advice do we take as we proceed?

I would argue that historically and appropriately, what we do as a nation is we listen to the experts. That is what we do. I think in this debate, when we deal with the Keystone Pipeline and when we deal with the issue of climate change, it is absolutely appropriate that we listen to what the overwhelming percentage of scientists are telling us.

I hear some of my colleagues say, This is complicated and I am not a scientist; I don't know. Let me be very frank. I am not a scientist and I did not do terribly well in biology and in physics in college, but I can read. And I can listen and understand what the scientific community is saying on this issue.

As the Senate moves forward, when we deal with complicated medical issues and search for solutions in terms of cancer or heart disease or diabetes, to whom do we go? Who do we listen to for advice as to how we should proceed and allocate public funding? We listen to the doctors and the scientists and the researchers who know a lot more than virtually all of us do in terms of cancer or heart disease.

We spend a lot of money in this country on infrastructure, on roads and bridges and wastewater plants and water systems. That is complicated stuff. To whom do we look for advice? Who do we have at our hearings on these issues? We look to the engineers and the scientists who tell us the best way to proceed in terms of how we build roads and bridges in a cost-effective way.

We are dealing right now with the issue of cyber security--a huge issue--a threat to the Nation. To whom do we look for advice? We look to those experts in technology who can tell us the best way to prevent cyber security attacks against the United States. On and on it goes. Whether it is education or whatever it is, good public policy is dependent upon listening to the scientific community, listening to the people who know the best about this issue.

In terms of the issue of climate change, the fact is that the scientific community is virtually unanimous in telling us that climate change is real. It is caused by human activity. It has already caused devastating problems in the United States and around the world. The scientific community tells us there is just a brief window of opportunity before the United States and the entire planet suffer irreparable harm. They tell us it is imperative that the United States transform its energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible.

That is not the opinion of Bernie Sanders; that is the opinion of the scientific community.

So to those of my colleagues who say, This is complicated stuff, I am not a scientist, I don't know, let me tell my colleagues who does know. Thirty-seven major American scientific organizations--people who study this issue--do know. And what they say is that climate change is real. It is caused by human activities. It is already causing devastating problems in the United States and around the world, and we need to transform our energy system.

That is what the Sanders amendment says. That is all it says. It is a modest amendment. It is a conservative amendment. It simply tells us what the scientific community has told us year after year after year.

For those of us who are not scientists, let me tell my colleagues the scientific organizations that hold that point of view. They are, among others, the American Anthropological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Society, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Meteorlogical Society, the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences--37 separate scientific organizations, including those I mentioned.

That is not all. There are 135 international scientific organizations that say the same thing.

I refer my colleagues to the list of 135 international scientific organizations, 37 American scientific organizations, and 21 medical associations that all agree with the basic premises that are in the Sanders amendment that is printed with my remarks in yesterday's Record, Wednesday, January 21.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the leading international scientific body that deals with climate change. Let me quote to my colleagues what they said last fall:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now

evident from observations of increases in global average air

and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice,

and rising global average sea level.

More than 97 percent of the scientific community in the United States and across the globe agrees with these findings.

I am going to conclude my remarks by simply reading my amendment to make sure every Member of the Senate understands how simple and straightforward and noncontroversial this amendment is. This is what it says:

It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement

with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific

community that

(1) climate change is real;

(2) climate change is caused by human activities;

(3) climate change has already caused devastating problems

in the United States and around the world;

(4) a brief window of opportunity exists before the United

States and the entire planet suffer irreparable harm; and

(5) it is imperative that the United States transform its

energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy

efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible.

That is it. That is the entire amendment. And every provision in this amendment is supported by virtually the entire scientific community, the people who best understand this issue.

Clearly we are a nation divided politically and clearly we are a Congress divided politically. We have different views on almost every issue. But I hope very much the U.S. Senate does not reject science, because in doing so, it would not only lead to bad public policy but it would be an embarrassment before the entire world, that the U.S. Senate is rejecting what the overwhelming majority of scientists are telling us about what they consider to be one of the great crises facing our planet.

So I hope very much for strong bipartisan support for this amendment in the Senate and will say, as a Senate, that we are going to listen to what the

scientific community tells us and that we are going to develop public policy based on their knowledge and that information.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Manchin amendment is a side-by-side to my amendment, which will follow.

The first three provisions are exactly the same: Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating problems.

We agree on that. But what my amendment says, importantly, is that according to the scientific community, it is imperative the United States transform its energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy as quickly as possible.

Mr. President, we are walking down a very dangerous road as a nation when we reject the findings of the vast majority of scientists on one of the most important issues facing humanity, which is climate change.

A vote to table this amendment is a vote to reject science, and that is a very bad idea for the Senate.

This is a vote that our kids and grandchildren who will have to live with the consequences of climate change will remember.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I have a pending amendment. Does the Senator object to my bringing that up? I would like to bring that up; can I do that?

Would it be OK if I brought mine up and the Senator could catch up to it later? I am sure there will be another one.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I rise today to speak on behalf of my amendment to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline bill. I thank Senators Bennet, Carper, Leahy, Menendez, Warren, and Whitehouse for cosponsoring this amendment.

My amendment is extremely simple. It is about 1\1/2\ pages, and I think it is easily understood by anyone who reads it. It says:

It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement

with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific

community that--

(1) climate change is real;

(2) climate change is caused by human activities;

(3) climate change has already caused devastating problems

in the United States and around the world;

(4) a brief window of opportunity exists before the United

States and the entire planet suffer irreparable harm; and

(5) it is imperative that the United States transform its

energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy

efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible.

That is it. That is the entire amendment.

What this amendment does is simply ask the Members of the Senate whether they agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists who have told us over and over and over again that climate change is real, that climate change is caused by human activity, including the emission of carbon, that climate change is already causing devastating problems in the United States and around the world, and that if we are going to leave our children and our grandchildren a planet that is habitable, we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels.

Progressives, conservatives, and people in between have many disagreements on issues--and that is called democracy. There is nothing to be ashamed about that; that is the democratic process. We all have differences of opinion. But what is not a good thing is when we make public policy in contradiction to what the scientific community tells us. That is not a good thing.

When we look at medical issues such as cancer or heart disease, what we do is look at the scientific communities and medical doctors for their opinions as to how we should proceed.

When we look at infrastructure issues, the issues of roads and bridges, we look at engineers for their opinion as to how we should proceed.

When we look at education and try to understand how best kids can best learn, we look at educators and those people who know most about education for advice as to how we should proceed.

In terms of the issue of climate change, the process should not be any different. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, is the leading scientific body that deals with the issue of climate change. I will very briefly quote what the IPCC said last fall:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal as is now

evident from observations of increases in global average air

and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice

and rising global average sea level.

More than 97 percent of the scientific community in the United States and across the globe agrees with these findings, including the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union, to name just a few.

In fact, at least 37 American scientific organizations, 135 international scientific organizations and national academies of science, and 21 medical associations, all agree that climate change is real and is significantly caused by human activities.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the names of 37 American scientific organizations, 135 international scientific organizations and national academies, and 21 medical associations which all have gone on record as stating that climate change is real and is significantly caused by human activity.

I know that recently a number of my colleagues have made the point that they are not scientists and they cannot formulate an opinion on this subject. Well, let me be clear: I am not a scientist. I had a lot of problems with physics when I was in college. I am not a scientist.

But these are scientists. These are 37 American scientific organizations and 135 international scientific organizations. These are scientists who tell us that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and that it is imperative we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel.

I will read an excerpt from a letter sent to the Senate in 2009 signed by virtually every major scientific organization in this country:

Observations throughout the world make it clear that

climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research

demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human

activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are

based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary

assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of

the vast body of peer reviewed science. Moreover, there is

strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad

impacts on society, including the global economy and on the

environment. For the United States, climate change impacts

include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of

extreme weather events, and increase risk of regional water

scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and a

disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The

severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase

substantially in the coming decades.

Once again, I am not a scientist, but that is what the scientific community overwhelmingly in the United States and around the world is saying. It is imperative the Senate goes on record in saying we agree with science.

Climate change is one of the great threats facing our country and the entire planet. It has the capability of causing severe harm to our economy, to our food supply, to access to water, and to national security.

According to NASA and NOAA, 2014 was the warmest year ever recorded. The most recent decade was the Nation's warmest on record. Across the globe, the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997. We know that the Earth's climate is warming and doing so quickly.

According to NOAA, October, August, June, and May were the hottest October, August, June, and May months ever recorded.

The consequences of this rapid and dramatic rise in global temperatures will have a profound impact on billions of people throughout the world. What we can expect are more severe weather disturbances, more flooding, more heat waves, more droughts, more forest fires, and saltwater inundation of water supplies and agricultural land.

As the New York Times reported in August, droughts in the Western and Southwestern United States appear to be intensifying as a result of climate change:

Over the past decade, droughts in some regions have rivaled

the epic dry spells of the 1930s and 1950s . . . The country

is in the midst of one of its most sustained periods of

increasing drought on record.

China's heat wave 1\1/2\ years ago was the worst in at least 140 years. As ClimateWire reported in November, the Sao Paulo region in Brazil is suffering from its worst drought in 80 years. In the United States, fire suppression costs have increased from roughly $1 billion annually in the mid-1990s to an average of more than $3 billion in the past 5 years.

Our oceans are not only getting warmer, they are also becoming more acidic, threatening fish, coral reefs, and other sea life. As a study published in the journal Science reported, carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere are driving a rate of change in ocean acidity that is already thought to be faster than any time in the past 50 million years. The authors warned that we may be ``entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.''

Extreme storms, weather disturbances, are also becoming more common and more intense with extraordinary impacts. When Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines over 1 year ago, it displaced more than 4.1 million people, killed thousands, and cost that country at least $15 million in damages.

The situation clearly is bad today in the United States and around the world, but--according to the scientific community--if we do not get our act together, if we do not cut carbon emissions, it will only get worse in years to come.

The IPCC estimates--and I hope people listen to this--that without any additional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions--in other words, if we continue to go along our merry old way of dependency on fossil fuels--``warming is more likely than not'' to exceed 4 degrees Celsius, which is 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century.

Let me repeat that extraordinary observation. If we continue along our present course, ``warming is more likely than not'' to exceed 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

Similarly, just last year the White House released the National Climate Assessment warning that global warming could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States by the end of this century. Take a deep breath and imagine what it will mean to this country--the huge impact on every aspect of our life, on our economy, on agriculture, on health--if the temperature of the United States rises, as some are predicting, by 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. It is almost unthinkable. Yet that is what the scientific community is telling us.

The World Bank is by no means a radical institution. It is a very conservative institution. It tells us that temperature increases by even just 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit would bring about unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems, and associated services.

The IPCC reports that sea levels are likely to rise by another 10 to 32 inches by the end of this century. As the New York Times reported, a sea level rise of less than 4 feet--less than 4 feet--would inundate land on which some 3.7 million Americans live today. We are talking about Miami, New Orleans, New York City, and Boston all being highly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Similarly, of course, this problem will impact people all over the world.

According to the IPCC:

Many small island nations are only a few meters above

present sea level. These states may face serious threat of

permanent inundation from sea-level rise. Among the most

vulnerable of these island states are the Marshall Islands,

Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tonga, the Federated States of Micronesia,

and the Cook Islands.

The Army Corps of Engineers has predicted that the entire village of Newtok, AK, could be underwater by 2017 and that more than 180 additional Native Alaskan villages are at risk. Parts of Alaska--one of our great and beautiful States--are already vanishing as a result of climate change.

The evidence is overwhelming, and it is no longer good enough for people to say: I am not a scientist; I don't know. We may not be scientists, but we can read and we can listen to what the overwhelming majority of scientists are telling us. That is our job--to listen to the experts who know something about this issue.

As we debate the Keystone Pipeline, what disturbs me very much is that in the face of this overwhelming evidence from the scientific community, in the face of deep concerns about climate change all over the world, what is the Senate going to be doing in the next week or two as part of the Keystone Pipeline? Are we going to be voting to impose a tax on carbon so we can break our dependence on fossil fuel? Is that what we are going to be voting on? No, I don't think so. Are we going to be voting to pass legislation that moves us aggressively toward energy efficiency and weatherization and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, and geothermal? Is that what we are going to be voting on as we listen to the scientific community? No, I don't think so. Are we going to be passing a bill investing in research and development so that we can make our transportation system more energy efficient? Is that what we are going to be voting on? No, we are not. In fact, what we are going to be voting on is a bill that will allow for an increase in the production and transportation of some of the dirtiest oil on this planet. That is what we are going to be voting on. What we are voting on is a proposal that moves us in exactly the opposite direction from what the scientific community wants us to do.

Let me conclude by saying this: Honest people can and do have disagreements on many issues, but it is not a good thing for the United States to reject what the scientists and the experts are telling us. That is not a good thing. So I hope very much that on the amendment I have brought forth--which says nothing more than to listen to the scientists on this important issue; do not reject science--that we can get widespread bipartisan support for the amendment.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell for working on a sensible process.

I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the current amendment and call up my amendment No. 24.

Mr. President, I will be very brief. I especially wish to applaud Republican Senators. I believe, for the very first time, a number of them stood up and said: Climate change is real and climate change is

caused by human activities. This is a significant step forward, and I think that in the months and years to come more and more Republicans will accept that position because that is the position of the scientific community.

What my amendment does is in fact repeat what we heard today and what we voted on; that climate change is real and that it is caused by human activities, but it also has three other provisions in it. It says climate change has already caused devastating problems in the United States and around the world.

I think it is hard to argue against that. Whether it is drought or flooding--in the United States or around the world--increased forest fires in the Southwestern United States, rising sea levels or extreme weather conditions and the damage that does, it is very hard to argue that climate change has not caused severe and devastating problems in the United States already.

This amendment also says that a brief window of opportunity exists before the United States and the entire planet suffers irreparable harm. Again, that is what the scientific community is telling us. They are saying that damage is being done today, now, and it will only get worse in years to come. We have a brief window of opportunity to prevent very serious problems. I hope my colleagues will support that provision.

Lastly, and what logically follows from the previous four positions, is the following: It is imperative that the United States transforms its energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible. That doesn't mean you close down every coal-burning plant in America tomorrow, but it does mean we move away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible.

I think in terms of this bill we have already made some good progress. I will look for bipartisan support tomorrow so the Senate goes on record supporting the overwhelming percentage of scientists who are in agreement with what this amendment says.

With that, I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 80 to Amendment No. 2

(Purpose: To provide for the distribution of revenues from

certain areas of the outer Continental Shelf)

Mr. President, I ask to have printed in the Record finalist essays written by Vermont High School students as part of the Fifth Annual ``What is the State of the Union'' Essay contest conducted by my office. These 20 finalists were selected from over 400 entries.

The essays follow.

Liam Gibbons, Milton High School (Finalist)

We learn in school and from our parents that America is the

land of opportunity. Yet that is not the case. When the

wealth gap is steadily increasing, as women earn 70 cents for

each dollar a man makes, as the U.S. government spends more

on defense than on its disenfranchised, the land of

opportunity seems no longer under boot, but instead a distant

reality. Equal protection under the laws for every citizen,

promoting the general welfare, rights to life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness. All of these things are printed on

our country's most sacred documents, these things which need

to be an attainable reality for every American.

Perhaps one of the most egregiously neglected groups in the

U.S. is women. Wage inequality combined with the control of

their own bodies in the hands of the government all add to

the fact that women are among the most disparaged people

within the U.S. Throughout America, women are denied the

right to a safe and constitutional abortion. Some of the

biggest contenders for the presidency have voiced their

belief that women shouldn't have this constitutional right

even in the context of rape or incest. Because of Roe v.

Wade, because of its constitutionality, a safe abortion

should be as accessible to the women in Texas as much as the

women in Vermont.

A law needs to standardize how abortion clinics are made

and run, and if there is an issue regarding states' rights

and federalism, then an amendment must be made. Because not

only are women not currently in control of their own bodies,

they also lack the ability to earn equal wages as men. In

1977, the Equal rights amendment lost by the votes of three

states. Who in their right minds would vote against equal

rights in 2015. In order to ensure true equality and civil

rights bring back the ERA, and this time ratify it.

Another group of people who lack this promised opportunity

is the poor. Most Americans are employed, but many of them

aren't earning livable wages. An American shouldn't have to

work three jobs to support their family. An American

shouldn't have to ride a bus three hours a day in order to

work for privatized welfare. An American should be able to

work for 40 hours a week, and be able to live comfortably.

And this is possible if we raise the minimum wage so that it

equates to a livable wage. However, no American should not

have to strive for the minimum, each citizen should have a

chance at exceeding, each American should be able to go to

college.

In Germany, in Sweden, in Norway college is free. In Syria,

a week of bombing by the U.S. costs the same as the tuition

of 40,000 American students. If we were to take a fraction of

our defense budget and give it to the impoverished for higher

education, if we were to reallocate the budget, we would be

seeing a lot more opportunity.

Eli Hulse, Vermont Commons School (Finalist)

As the United States moves into 2015, we have achieved many

things that have furthered the nation, and improved the

security of the people economically, socially, and

militarily. Some of these advancements include electing Janet

Yellen as the first female Chair of the Federal Reserve,

reducing the unemployment rate from 6.7 percent to 5.8

percent; the lowest it has been since 2008, and helping

foreign forces fight against the militant group ISIS.

However, there are many problems that the United States faces

and needs to address over the next year.

The single most important issue that the United States

needs to recognize and correct is the disparity of income.

Although it is true that the gap in income causes problems

with equality between the social classes, there are concerns

that the percentage of income that the upper class has is

causing instability in the United States economy as a whole.

People who have more money do not spend as much of percentage

of it as poorer people, which means that that money sits in

savings accounts, and is not paid to businesses in return for

products. As the income gap widens, less money will be

introduced into the economy, and it will leave the economy in

a precarious position.

Another serious issue that the United States needs to

address is the spread of Ebola in Africa. Although domestic

cases of Ebola have been isolated and treated, an unstable

Africa would allow Ebola to potentially spread to the United

States and other countries, and could be catastrophic. It is

important that the United States government continues its

support of Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other countries

that are struggling to create the infrastructure to treat

this deadly disease.

Finally, it is key that the United States continues its

resistance to terror threats both domestically and

internationally. Although currently not a direct threat to

the United States or to the general populous, ISIS has the

potential to cause great damage to the European Union and

eventually to the United States. A military force this size

has not been seen in a long time, and the influence that it

has in the countries it overtakes is alarming and needs to be

kept in check. The United States needs to keep this in mind

when making international policy decisions, and needs to

continue supporting countries that are actively fighting

Madam President, I ask to have printed in the Record finalist essays written by Vermont High School students as part of the Fifth Annual ``What is the State of the Union'' Essay contest conducted by my office. These 20 finalists were selected from over 400 entries.

The essays follow:

Sam Anglum, Burr And Burton Academy (Finalist)

We marched along for roughly 5 miles, part of which was

right through Times Square. While holding up our signs and

chanting what we wanted to see change in our government's

priorities, I looked to my left and gazed at the skyline full

of skyscrapers atop the canopy of Central Park.

My class and I were marching alongside 400,000 New Yorkers,

Americans, and globally aware citizens at the 2014 NYC

Climate March. Climate change is a very serious issue that

not many people are sensitive enough about. My hopes going

into the march were to be a part of bringing global awareness

to the massive shift in attitude I feel is going to save the

Earth from its imminent doom.

After participating in such a momentous event, I want my

voice to echo further than the streets of Manhattan. I want

the United States government to consider helping by promoting

climate education in schools across the nation so that this

kind of action becomes a part of the everyday agenda. As a

high school student in Vermont, I urge my very own state

senators including Governor Shumlin to consider spreading

this type of education across the State of Vermont. I imagine

the future generations as the key components to setting goals

and battling for solutions to the problems that people are

fighting against today.

Not everyone will be an activist, or even care nearly as

much as they should, but as long as more of the youth is

aware of these pressing global issues, the amount of people

that will create change will no doubt be multiplied. Our

world's economic foundation is based on the over-extraction

of fossil fuels, and because of this one in four carbon

emissions comes from humans. I am aware that Vermont has a

goal of making restrictions on fossil fuels and ultimately

becoming 90 percent renewable by 2050. Every student in

Vermont should be aware of this goal. I strongly urge the

United States government to contribute to that further by

promoting this kind of discussion within classrooms.

New York City Councilman Donovan Richards, a man on the

panel for 350.org, spoke to us the night before the march,

and his words stuck with me. ``Rulership does not coincide

with leadership.'' The streets of Manhattan were full of

leaders on Sunday, September 21, and our desire was to

influence our rulers. However, if our voice is transmitted to

our ``rulers'' such as yourself, our governments can ``lead''

us into a more sustainable and renewable world.

Caroline Arthaud, Champlain Valley Union High School (Finalist)

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, and

fellow Americans:

Theodore Roosevelt once said, ``This country will not be a

good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good

place for all of us to live in.'' At this time, it is my duty

to lead this country towards such a place. I stand here today

to address our successes, but also our deficits. Although

Americans have many reasons to be proud of our

accomplishments, it is unrealistic and inaccurate to declare

ourselves flawless. We must muster the courage to confront

the issues that hold us back.

Although the unemployment rate has decreased from 9.7

percent in 2010 to 5.8 percent in November of 2014, there are

still 9 million

Americans without jobs. This is not acceptable.

Beyond this, our precious environment is deteriorating.

What many seem to struggle to understand is that the gradual

warming of the earth is not an issue affecting only polar

bears and penguins, but a growing danger to humans, as well.

To begin to address issues of unemployment and environment,

it is important that we, the American people, do our part to

raise awareness and call for action. America needs to

initiate large-scale production of renewable energy sources.

This will help us in two ways: it will expand employment and

create new jobs, and it will also transition this country

from dependence on pollution-causing energy sources to

cleaner solutions. We can sleep easier knowing that we have

stopped engaging in a process sure to leave our children and

grandchildren with a world too far gone to rehabilitate.

Yet, another issue has escalated severely in recent years.

It is one that has resulted in the violent deaths of 20

innocent six-year-olds in 2012, and that continues to take

the lives of an average of 289 Americans daily. Many of us

don't want to look at the problem of gun violence, but it has

become something we can no longer ignore. We must formulate

legislation that demands the renewal of gun permits on a

regular basis, and work to improve the quality of mental

health treatment. We must insist upon implementing stricter

background checks on anyone wishing to bear weapons.

Change is difficult. It's difficult on an individual basis,

and vastly more difficult on a national one. However, I

believe that the ability to change is a big part of what has

made this nation so great. Americans are resilient and

creative, and I believe that if we set our minds to it, we

can improve the state of our union. I call upon you, all of

you, to help continue the legacy of this remarkable country

by working with me to better the lives of all Americans.

Unemployment, environmental degradation, and gun violence are

a lot to take on; however, we live in a country capable of

anything.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States

of America.

HAR WA BI, Winooski High School (Finalist)

``There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot

control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent

droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we

know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then

we can help,'' says Jan Schakowsky, the U.S. Representative

from Illinois. We can't help what nature creates, but being

homeless is not nature. It is produced by humans and only

humans can erase it. It is our nation's fault for letting

people become homeless and live in poverty. We need to help

the homeless and not let the poor become homeless.

According to studentsagainsthunger.org in United States,

each year more than 3.5 million people become homeless. They

are forced to sleep in parks, under bridges, in shelters or

cars. In fact, 35 percent of the homeless population are

families with children, which is the fastest growing segment

of the homeless population. And, 25 percent of the homeless

population suffer from some form of mental illness. According

to the feedingamerica.org, 45.3 percent of the people lived

in poverty in 2013. This included 26.4 million people ages 18

to 64, 4.7 million children under the age of 18, and 4.2

million seniors 65 and older.

I believe poverty happens in the United States because

housing and hospital bills are too expensive. Lower-income

workers cannot afford food and shelter. After we pay for

housing, nothing is left for us. We don't have a higher

income, we have food stamps which are low because the

government cut it off, including for my family. And, my mom

is the only one who works. According to homeaid.org, some

part of the homelessness is caused by the loss of loved ones,

job loss, domestic violence, divorce and family disputes.

Other impairments such as depression, untreated mental

illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and physical

disabilities are also responsible for a large portion of the

homeless. I want government to help those people who need and

try to stop it from happening, and to make our nation become

better.

I believe only government can decrease homelessness and

help to increase the income, which all poor people need. We

need to decrease the cost of hospitals or anything that costs

a lot. Please help us poor and homeless because the

government is our only hope. We will be waiting for the

results of our government's actions.

Peter Camardo, South Burlington High School (Finalist)

A democracy is a government ruled by the people. In a

democracy, the citizens hold the responsibility of making

decisions. This is why United States of America has been

successful throughout history. A democracy is the most

productive way to run society when its citizens are engaged,

but it loses its superiority when the population is plagued

by ignorance.

In my lifetime, Americans have been fortunate to live on

our homeland without major threat to our national security.

We have grown accustomed to lives of guaranteed safety.

Unfortunately with this privilege, we have begun to feel

entitled and to neglect our responsibility as American

citizens. Issues of great concern are being ignored by the

American population as if they mean nothing. Americans are

sitting back and waiting for others to take action while

grave matters are left undebated by the American public. I

think back to President Kennedy's inaugural speech, and when

he said the famous words, ``Ask not what your country can do

for you--ask what you can do for your country.'' It is

important that we American citizens remind ourselves of these

words in everything we do, and to remember that our

government is built upon the strong, independent voices that

make up a democracy.

I don't believe there is one significant issue concerning

the United States that is more urgent than the rest. Each

issue we face is vital for our nation to address

appropriately. Regardless of which issue we undertake at

which time, the first step to solving it is to become

educated, and to stop ignoring problems just because they are

not affecting us directly. All the members of a democracy

must understand a conflict before it can be solved. In an age

where people have infinite information at their fingertips,

it can be easy to lose sight of important information. We

must be educated before we can solve our issues of today.

The responsibility to educate the public lies with the

elected members of our government. It is important for our

government to be straightforward and honest. It is important

that when there are protests and movements the voices of the

American people are heard and represented. Most importantly,

the United States Congress should set an example for

leadership and communication, and should inspire the people

of the United States through proactive legislation and

positive inter-party communication.

We are the greatest nation on earth. We are far too

experienced and wise to get caught up in a bipartisan

conflict. When we get caught up in a battle with ourselves,

it dejects us. The reason why the citizens of America have

lost a sense of American pride is because our leaders seem to

have lost a sense of purpose. The objective of our government

is to, ``Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,

provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,

and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our

posterity,'' and the government should put aside their

personal beliefs in an effort to make that happen.

Taylor Devaney, Missisquoi Valley Union High School (Finalist)

President Obama once said that, ``The nation cannot prosper

long when it favors only the prosperous'', and as a young

Vermonter, I agree with this statement. I am concerned with

the state of our union due to the ever-growing, unequal

wealth distribution. As the rich get richer, the poor get

poorer, and in many situations wealth distribution gets

ignored. The middle class population used to be the backbone

of the nation, but every year it gets harder to make ends

meet, as they slide lower down the economic class scale.

America leads the world in the widest gap between the have

and have nots, making the idea of America being the land of

opportunity seem more of an unlikely dream.

The most recent studies from the Federal Reserve show that

a mere 3 percent of American families own 54 percent of the

wealth in the United States. The unbalanced wealth

distribution is dangerous for the nation as a whole.

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman state that in

their research that the wealth distribution has grown to the

same levels as in the 1920's. The top 1 percent owns upwards

of 40 percent of the wealth in the United States. As a

nation, we have experienced the disastrous effects of an

economic crash during the Great Depression, due to unbalanced

wealth. We as a nation have failed to learn from our mistakes

and are continuing down a dangerous path. The middle class is

still at risk for being hurt the most, as they are left to

clean up the mess of the high rollers. An unfair task when

their wages remain stagnant, as the profits and wages soar

for those at the top of the corrupted corporate ladder. The

hard working American people do not deserve to struggle and

something must be done.

The mega-rich are not paying appropriate amount of taxes

for their wealth, making the middle and lower class make up

for the difference. Many of the people who control the tax

rates are also the ones who make the most. Members of

Congress are creating laws to benefit themselves. Big money

and government fit together well, for politicians look for

the wealthy to support them financially.

We can no longer only provide for wealthy men and women who

indirectly control our government. Creating a scaled taxation

system will help balance the wealth in the nation. Making

sure the wealthy are paying their fair share is key to

balancing out our nation's prosperity. The U.S. can take note

from the most famous, and down to Earth business from

Vermont, Ben & Jerry's. This company had a system of a pay

ratio between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid

employee of 5 to 1 in its early years. These numbers are

relatively small, but scaling them could make an impact on

businesses today. Unequal wealth distribution benefits only a

small portion of the country and will be the cause of a

failed economy.

Connor Drown, Winooski High School (Finalist)

America. Home of the brave and land of the free. It is at

its heart known as a free country, with opportunity just

waiting for someone to snatch it up for themselves. It is a

land where one desires the ``American

Dream.'' Unfortunately, this is not remotely possible, and

many citizens of the United States have difficulties living

in this country. The United States of America is a great

country to live in, if not the best, but is also far from

perfect.

Everything in America could be improved in one way or the

other. Education and health care are huge government issues

that need improvement in order to make the United States of

America a more suitable place to live.

Firstly, education in America is one of if not the most

important factors to a successful career and life for US

citizens. Getting a high school diploma is still very

important, but it is now becoming more and more of a

necessity to attend college and get a degree. According to

usnews.com, the value of a college degree is greater than it

has been in nearly half a century, at least when compared to

the prospect of not getting a degree. Among millennials ages

25 to 32, median annual earnings for fulltime working college

degree holders are $17,500 greater than for those with high

school diplomas only. The only problem is that college has

increasingly become less and less affordable.

According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition

and fees for the 2013-2014 academic year was $30,094 at

private colleges, $8,893 for state residents at public

colleges, and $22,203 for out-of-state residents attending

public universities. Most Americans don't even consider

public schools, which are most often referred to as the least

expensive, affordable. According to the Huffington Post, 62

percent said they believe most people are not able to afford

the cost of a public college education. If the majority of

America could afford college to achieve their career goals,

America will be a better and more successful country. If

something such as raising taxes benefits colleges in that it

will be more affordable, America will have more opportunity

to strive for success.

Health care is another issue that I feel should be

mentioned. It is said that President Obama and the United

States in general wants to make healthcare more affordable to

everyone. Government run health care systems, such as

Obamacare, are free and low-cost government run programs that

result in higher costs and everyone receiving the same poor

quality health care. Health care should remain privatized so

that the people who may need better health care and can also

afford it without a huge deductible may receive it.

In conclusion, ensuring that health care remains the same

and reducing the cost of education will undeniably improve

America.

Spencer Eckert, Woodstock Union High School (Finalist)

Remember when you got your first job? I'm sure it was an

exciting and proud moment. It could be that you weren't even

concerned about your hourly pay, but as time went by, I'm

certain that changed and you realized that you work hard and

want to be compensated for that. In today's society, it can

be hard to earn a good living wage from a ``decent'' job. But

for many people, they don't get good pay even when they

should. The low minimum wage today makes it difficult for

people to survive and make a living.

There are a number of compelling reasons to increase the

minimum wage. Let's begin with the economy. It's simple;

raising the minimum wage would have a positive effect on the

economy by giving workers more money to spend. It would be

good to raise the minimum wage to $15 because there would be

more money being pumped into the economy. If workers get paid

more, then they are happier and with a better mood they will

want to spend more. It gives people the confidence to spend

more and when they spend more they are fueling the economy.

``A raise for minimum wage earners will put more money in

more families' pockets, which will be spent on goods and

services, stimulating economic growth locally and

nationally,'' according to the ``Minimum Wage Mythbusters.''

Increasing minimum wage has a positive impact on the

working family. It helps them to make ends meet, and at the

same time enables them to spend some money. When they spend

money, they are fueling the economy.

Raising the minimum wage would not cause any job loss or

unemployment, and most work places would not go out of

business if they were to raise the minimum wage. In fact

there would probably be less turnover. Therefore, companies

would reduce the amount of money they spend on training. If

companies compensate their employees with better wages than

those employees are happier and more committed to that

company. So raising the minimum wage can have a positive

effect on companies. ``Raising the minimum wage would be good

for our economy. A higher minimum wage not only increases

workers' incomes--which is sorely needed to boost demand and

get the economy going--but it also reduces turnover, cuts the

costs that low-paid employers impose on taxpayers, and pushes

businesses toward a high-road, high-human-capital model.''

(Said T. William Lester, David Madland, and Jackie Odum, in

their article Raising the Minimum Wage Would Help, Not Hurt,

Our Economy)

One reason why the minimum wage should be increased to $15

is because it would help a lot of people get out of the

poverty level. Too many people in the country who work at

minimum wage jobs currently depend on the government for

other help. People subscribe to government programs such as

food stamps and school breakfast and lunch programs, just to

name a few. ``According to a Michigan survey shows that

families who work at fast food businesses are much more

likely to enroll in safety net programs than the workforce as

a whole, such as food stamps.''

Another reason why the minimum wage should be increased to

$15 is because of the positive psychological benefits. It

would raise people's self-esteem and self-worth and would

also allow children in these poverty-level homes to have

better opportunities in the future. If these children are

able to improve their performance in school, then they are

likely to continue education which would allow them to pursue

better paying jobs in the future. If they have better paying

jobs, they are no longer on government programs and they have

the opportunity and confidence to spend money which fuel the

economy. It is a positive cycle. ``A raise in the minimum

wage would not only help many families escape or avoid

poverty, but could also significantly boost their children's

academic performance and future adult earnings,'' said Yannet

M. Lathrop, a Policy Analyst who has conducted studies on

raising the minimum wage.

There really is no downside to raising the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 would be good for employers,

workers, families, and the economy. Raising the minimum wage

would lead to these dramatic outcomes: getting families out

of poverty, giving children a better education and future,

giving employers committed workers, putting more money into

the economy, giving people the confidence to spend more and

making people happy.

Jacob Gallow, Missisquoi Valley Union High School (Finalist)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated, ``A man is born free, but

everywhere we are in chains.'' Freedom is something everyone

seeks, but most will never experience it. Given more power,

the government becomes a wolf among sheep. People flock to

the sight of freedom, only to see that even something so

great has its limits. Governments tend to give more things to

the people, things to give them a sense of security, a place

to sleep, somewhere to work, to do as they wish. Those things

come at a price, the price of freedom. The more the people

receive, especially on the topic of security, the more

liberties are contracted.

Are we truly free? America sits in the shadow of threats

every day, for there will always be some person who despises

the place we call home. Security is something we, as

Americans, take for granted. While we sit in the shadows, not

even aware of it, brave men and women risk their lives and

die every day for the security of their homeland, wishing for

a safe place for their friends and family to live. Yet, here

we sit in the symbolic country of freedom, with someone

always looking over our shoulder. That security we take for

granted tends to take away the liberties and freedoms we were

given many years ago. The more of a grip the government has

on its people, the more the people are caged.

Our troops are out fighting for our government, and our

government's wishes, but have we ever stopped to think of

what our own troops went through? According to Veteran's

Inc., around 529,000 and 840,000 veterans are homeless each

year, one in ten veterans are disabled related to war

injuries. According to CNN, 22 veterans take their own lives

each and every day, some resulting from PTSD, a disorder

soldiers get after experiencing the horrors of war. Veteran

unemployment rate is another issue among all of these. What

can we, as Americans, do to help our Veterans. We surely are

not doing enough, and those numbers keep climbing. What about

those families of soldiers, what do they have to go through

each and every day with a spouse, parent, or sibling off at

war, fighting people because our governments wants to be

``involved.''

We don't need to be caught in everyone else's business,

unless it becomes our business, and if we do get involved, we

need to back up our soldiers first. Our country had to solve

our own problems in 1861-1865, let others do the same.

Freedom isn't really free. Here in America, we are promised

freedom, but the securities we receive and the democracy we

spread binds us in chains, not allowing us to roam free. Sure

there needs to be laws enforced, yes there needs to be

security, but we need freedom too. Our government needs to

focus on our country. Will we as Americans allow the

anaconda, known as the government, to strangle us, the

people, as mice?

Mr. President, since 2010 I have sponsored a State of the Union essay contest for Vermont students. The contest, now in its fifth year, is an opportunity for Vermont students to articulate what issues they would prioritize if they were President of the United States. A panel of Vermont teachers reviewed all of the essays submitted and selected the top twenty. I am proud to say that more than 400 students wrote essays for this year's State of the Union contest.

I would like to congratulate each and every finalist, and to specifically acknowledge Leo Lehrer-Small as this year's winner of the contest. I would also like to recognize Ryan Taggard for placing second and Craig Pelsor and Hadley Menk for placing third. I ask to have printed in the Record the winning essays.

The essays follow.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to speak about an amendment that I will be offering as part of the Keystone Pipeline legislation. It is an extremely simple, straightforward amendment. It is a brief amendment, but it basically raises a very fundamental issue, and that issue is whether the Senate will abide by scientific evidence, will come down on the side of science as we debate this enormously important issue of climate change.

The amendment is very brief, and I wish to read it and then explain why I believe it is such an important amendment. This is what it says:

It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement

with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific

community that, No. 1, climate change is real; No. 2, climate

change is caused by human activities; No. 3, climate change

has already caused devastating problems in the United States

and around the world; No. 4, a brief window of opportunity

exists before the United States and the entire planet suffer

irreparable harm; and No. 5, it is imperative that the United

States transform its energy system away from fossil fuels and

toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as

possible.

That is it. That is the entire amendment. I would say that for the scientific community around the world, there is nothing in that statement that smacks of controversy. These are simple statements of fact, agreed to by the overwhelming majority of scientists who have written and studied climate change.

Climate change is, in fact, one of the great threats facing our country and the entire planet. It has the capability of causing severe harm to our economy, to the food supply, to access to water, and to national security.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the leading international scientific body on this issue--reported yet again this past fall that ``warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.''

More than 97 percent of the scientific community in the United States and across the globe agrees with these findings, including, among many other organizations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union, to name just a few. In fact, at least 37 American scientific organizations, 118 international scientific organizations and national academies, and 21 medical associations all agree that climate change is real and is being caused by human activities.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of 37 American scientific organizations, 135 international scientific organizations, 21 medical associations, and some religious and teacher organizations that understand that climate change is real and that it is caused by human activity.

Mr. President, let me read from an excerpt of a letter signed by virtually every major scientific organization in this country that was sent to the U.S. Senate way back in 2009. This is what the letter states:

Observations throughout the world make it clear that

climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research

demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human

activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are

based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary

assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of

the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is

strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad

impact on society, including the global economy and on the

environment. For the United States, climate change impacts

include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of

extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water

scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and a

disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The

severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase

substantially in the coming decades.

Let me repeat that one sentence:

The severity of climate change impacts is expected to

increase substantially in the coming decades.

We know that the Earth's climate is warming and warming quickly as a result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The 2014 National Climate Assessment reported:

The most recent decade was the nation's warmest on record.

U.S. temperatures are expected to continue to rise.

According to NOAA, October, August, June, and May were the hottest months ever recorded. And 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States and saw at least 69,000 local heat records set.

The consequence of this rapid and dramatic rise in global temperatures--what does that mean? What is going to happen? The answer is, it is going to mean more severe storms, more flooding and destructive storm surges, heat waves, drought, forest fires, and the inundation of water supplies and agricultural land with saltwater.

As the New York Times reported in August, droughts in the West and Southwestern United States appear to be intensifying as a result of climate change.

Over the past decade, droughts in some regions have rivaled

the epic dry spells of the 1930s and 1950s. . . . The country

is in the midst of one of the most sustained periods of

increasing drought on record.

China's heat wave a year and a half ago was the worst in at least 140 years. Fire-suppression costs in the United States have increased from roughly $1 billion annually in the mid-1990s to an average of more than $3 billion in the last 5 years, adjusted for inflation, reports the National Climate Assessment.

Our oceans are not just warming, they are becoming more acidic, threatening fish, coral reefs, and other sea life.

A study published in the Journal of Science reported:

Carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere are driving a

rate of change in ocean acidity, which is already thought to

be faster than at any time in the past 50 million years.

The authors warn that we may be entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.

Extreme storms are also becoming more common and more intense, with extraordinary impacts. For example, when Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines a year ago, it displaced over 4 million people, killed thousands, and cost the country at least $15 billion in damages.

What will happen if we fail to cut back dramatically on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change continues to accelerate? What will that reality mean for our country and for the globe? The IPCC estimates that without additional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ``warming is more likely than not'' to exceed 4 degrees Celsius--7.2 degrees Fahrenheit--by the end of the century.

Let me repeat that. If we do not begin the process to dramatically reverse carbon emissions and slow down the warming of this planet by the end of the century, warming is more likely than not to exceed 4 degrees Celsius, which is 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in a planet that is over 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Similarly, just last year the White House released the National Climate Assessment, emphasizing that global warming is already happening and warning that global warming could exceed 10 degrees in the United States by the end of the century--10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The World Bank, which is a pretty conservative organization, talked about a world in which temperatures increase by just 4 degrees Celsius, that that would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on many systems, ecosystems, and associated services. This is the warning we hear from the World Bank, which is a fairly conservative international organization.

The IPCC reports that sea levels are likely to rise another 10 to 32 inches by the end of the century. Some studies have reported projected increases of more than 6 feet during that time period.

As the New York Times reported, a rise of less than 4 feet would inundate land on which some 3.7 million Americans live. Miami, New Orleans, New York, and Boston are highly vulnerable.

Similarly, according to the IPCC, ``many small island nations are only a few meters above present sea level. These states may face serious threat of permanent inundation from sea-level rise.''

Reuters has reported that experts estimate that if the sea level rises by 1 meter over the next 50 years, 20 million additional people will be displaced from their land.

The Army Corps of Engineers has predicted that the entire village of Newtok, AK, could be underwater by 2017 and more than 180 additional Native Alaskan villages are at risk. Parts of Alaska are literally vanishing.

As reported in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, U.S. Forest Service researchers reported that wildfires are expected to increase 50 percent across the United States under a changing climate and over 100 percent in areas of the West by 2050. So huge increases in forest fires are expected.

The World Health Organization reported in August that the number of weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1960s, and more than 60,000 people now die each year in weather-related natural disasters. By 2020 food production is estimated to drop by 50 percent in some African countries, and by 2090, the World Health Organization anticipates, climate change will double the frequency of drought and the duration will be six times longer.

In 2003 a heat wave in Europe killed an estimated 70,000 people. As a study published in Nature Climate Change projects, however, Europe will likely experience severe heat waves once every 5 years now, which is 10 times more frequent than just a decade ago.

The need to act quickly is profound and pronounced. In its fifth assessment, the IPCC found that ``without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally.''

In order to prevent ``irreversible and severe impacts,'' we must quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and to do that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

In the face of this overwhelming evidence, in the face of deep concerns all over this planet, what is the Senate going to do over the next few weeks? Well, I hope very much that we do not go forward with the Keystone Pipeline, which moves us exactly in the wrong direction by expanding the production and transportation of some of the dirtiest fossil fuel on this Earth. I think that would be a terrible mistake. But maybe more importantly, I hope the Senate goes on record in strongly supporting the overwhelming scientific evidence which tells us loudly and clearly that climate change is real, that climate change is caused by human activity and the emission of carbon, and that climate change is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world.

We have a short window of opportunity in order to move dramatically to reverse climate change and cut carbon, and we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

I intend to offer an amendment which basically urges the entire U.S. Senate to go on record in making it clear that they understand what scientists are talking about. They are going to listen to the scientific community, and they are going to take actions for which our kids and our grandchildren will be proud of them so that we do not leave them with a nation and a planet substantially less habitable than the planet on which we were born.

With that, I want to thank Senator Bennet and Senator Carper for cosponsoring this amendment. I hope we can have more cosponsors and I look forward to seeing the adoption of this important amendment.

I yield the floor.