This country faces many serious problems in the financial market, in the stock market, in our economy. We must act, but we must act in a way that improves the situation.
This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets. This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand picked by the Bush administration. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective way that we should be. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.
This bill does not deal at all with how we got into this crisis in the first place and the need to undo the deregulatory fervor which created trillions of dollars in complicated and unregulated financial instruments such as credit default swaps and hedge funds. This bill does not address the issue that has taken us to where we are today, the concept of too big to fail. In fact, within the last several weeks we have sat idly by and watched gigantic financial institutions like the Bank of America swallow up other gigantic financial institutions like Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Well, who is going to bail out the Bank of America if it begins to fail? There is not one word about the issue of too big to fail in this legislation at a time when that problem is in fact becoming even more serious.
This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Now, maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks that's a little bit weird, but that is what I think.
This bill does not address the major economic crisis we face: growing unemployment, low wages, the need to create decent-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
There is one issue that is even more profound and more basic than everything else that I have mentioned, and that is if a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, whose money should it be? In other words, who should be paying for this bailout which has been caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street operatives who have made billions in recent years?
The American people are bitter. They are angry, and they are confused. Over the last seven and a half year, since George W. Bush has been President, 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and are in poverty, and today working families are lining up at emergency food shelves in order to get the food they need to feed their families. Since President Bush has been in office, median family income for working-age families has declined by over $2,000. More than seven million Americans have lost their health insurance. Over four million have lost their pensions. Consumer debt has more than doubled. And foreclosures are the highest on record. Meanwhile, the cost of energy, food, health care, college and other basic necessities has soared.
While the middle class has declined under President Bush's reckless economic policies, the people on top have never had it so good. For the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth, and at the end of 2007 owned over $1.5 trillion in wealth. That is just 400 families, a $670 billion increase in wealth since Bush has been in office.
In our country today, we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth, with the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country, when, among others, CEOs of Wall Street firms received unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses. We have seen the incredible greed of the financial services industry manifested in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists in order to deregulate their industry so that hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could flourish. We have seen them play with trillions and trillions dollars in esoteric financial instruments, in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand. We have seen the financial services industry charge 30 percent interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unsuspecting customers. We have seen them engaged in despicable predatory lending practices, taking advantage of the vulnerable and the uneducated. We have seen them send out billions of deceptive solicitations to almost every mailbox in America.
Most importantly, we have seen the financial services industry lure people into mortgages they could not afford to pay, which is one of the basic reasons why we are here tonight.
In the midst of all of this, we have a bailout package which says to the middle class that you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by this excessive Wall Street greed. In other words, the "Masters of the Universe," those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse. Now, as the American and world financial systems teeter on the edge of a meltdown, these multimillionaires are demanding that the middle class, which has already suffered under Bush's disastrous economic policies, pick up the pieces that they broke. That is wrong, and that is something that I will not support.
If we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation, those people are the people who should pick up the tab, and not ordinary working people. I introduced an amendment which gave the Senate a very clear choice. We can pay for this bailout of Wall Street by asking people all across this country, small businesses on Main Street, homeowners on Maple Street, elderly couples on Oak Street, college students on Campus Avenue, working families on Sunrise Lane, we can ask them to pay for this bailout. That is one way we can go. Or, we can ask the people who have gained the most from the spasm of greed, the people whose incomes have been soaring under president bush, to pick up the tab.
I proposed to raise the tax rate on any individual earning $500,000 a year or more or any family earning $1 million a year or more by 10 percent. That increase in the tax rate, from 35 percent to 45 percent, would raise more than $300 billion in the next five years, almost half the cost of the bailout. If what all the supporters of this legislation say is correct, that the government will get back some of its money when the market calms down and the government sells some of the assets it has purchased, then $300 billion should be sufficient to make sure that 99.7 percent of taxpayers do not have to pay one nickel for this bailout.
Most of my constituents did not earn a $38 million bonus in 2005 or make over $100 million in total compensation in three years, as did Henry Paulson, the current secretary of the Treasury, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Most of my constituents did not make $354 million in total compensation over the past five years as did Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers. Most of my constituents did not cash out $60 million in stock after a $29 billion bailout for Bear Stearns after that failing company was bought out by J.P. Morgan Chase. Most of my constituents did not get a $161 million severance package as E. Stanley O'Neill, former CEO Merrill Lynch did.
Last week I placed on my Web site, www.sanders.senate.gov, a letter to Secretary Paulson in support of my amendment. It said that it should be those people best able to pay for this bailout, those people who have made out like bandits in recent years, they should be asked to pay for this bailout. It should not be the middle class. To my amazement, some 48,000 people cosigned this petition, and the names keep coming in. The message is very simple: "We had nothing to do with causing this bailout. We are already under economic duress. Go to those people who have made out like bandits. Go to those people who have caused this crisis and ask them to pay for the bailout."
The time has come to assure our constituents in Vermont and all over this country that we are listening and understand their anger and their frustration. The time has come to say that we have the courage to stand up to all of the powerful financial institution lobbyists who are running amok all over the Capitol building, from the Chamber of Commerce to the American Bankers Association, to the Business Roundtable, all of these groups who make huge campaign contributions, spend all kinds of money on lobbyists, they're here loud and clear. They don't want to pay for this bailout, they want middle America to pay for it.
The bailout package is far better than the absurd proposal originally presented to us by the Bush administration, but is still short of where we should be. We can do better.
Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Twitter: www.twitter.com/senatorsanders
It's easy to see why today's wealthy are so intent on destroying the middle class - so far it has been successful. They have amassed great wealth while the middle class is declining into poverty. Some thing tells me that 299,000,000 angry poor people, armed with guns, will eventually decide to fight back. It won't be pretty.
Congress is going to pass this transfer of money and power to the Treasury Secretary.
So when we get Obama elected, act #1 will be to APPOINT HILLARY CLINTON AS TREASURY SECRETARY.
Paulson will committ every dollar of that $700 billion (and more!), before he leaves office.
Not only will the economy remain in shambles,
but the Federal government will be bankrupt with a mountain of debt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iqvYJ88xbo
In the short term we must help AMERICANS get back on their feet and that means the House must pass this awful bill!
Next year we must regain the funds taken from AMERICANS by Wall Street using ILLEGAL TOOLS!
Americans should believe we will "BACKWARDS AUDIT" the entire manipulation of the market and trace funds that can be recovered from those who did this.
We also need to punish "these 'ENRON' TYPE" people and make them pay for this!
SO IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!
i'm sick of hearing these so-called "conservative" "free-market" wankers rant for all these years about freeing up the economy, and de-regulating everything, and getting gummint "off the backs of business"...
and then when they suffer (OMFG) losses return to that gummint (and the people they raped and profited from all those years) and literally DEMAND a bailout...
why? well... because they're wealthy and its their just deserve! its their birthright...
that's not a free market - that's welfare for the wealthy, socialism for the rich, a rigged game where, for the rich elite its "heads i win, tails you lose"....
its bullshit...
don't let them privatise the profits but socialize the losses...
don't you dare let them do it...
Two choices left:
1. Recapitalize the banks and Nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank.
2. Let the children, grand children and great grand children be slaves to the debt.
So . . . let THEM pay for the bailout. I agree with his idea about taxation! let THEM pay for it!
This may come as a surprise to you but a lot of working people own stocks, bonds, IRA's, and many other types of investment instruments. The people who pay the bulk of your bloated salary and costs for your staff own these instruments and don't like their wealth cut in half or more because you "vote your conscience".
NO NO NO BAILOUT FORBANKS, PAY OFF THE CITIZENS MORTGAGES WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS SO THE VALUES OF HOMES CAN STABILIZE INSTEAD OF ALLOWING THE BANKS TO CONTINUE TO FORECLOSE ON TAXPAYERS, WHILE STRONG ARMING TAXPAYERS OUT OF 700 BILLION DOLLARS
The funny thing is, I saw the editor of The Nation on Larry King last night, and she and the conservative representative writer from the NYTimes actually were in complete agreement about this bailout and horror with the past 8 years of BUSH. Both stood together in unbelief about this.
I wish Mr. Sanders was running for President....
This Bailout is the last chance for the Bush Fed Banks to make the big haul before Bush leaves office that will place the American tax payers forever trying to pay off (now pay attention) the Interest on the $700 Billion Loan the Federal Reserve will LOAN us with interest (stay with me) to pay them BACK the same $700 Billion that they created out of thin air, green paper and ink and hutzpah for the bailout they orchestrated under Greenspan's Sub-Prime home loans IN 2005. And they will screw us without a kiss or a contra-septic.
Are we going to let them enslave us and our progeny forever paying accumulating compound interest on the absolutely transparent grand Bailout scam?
Fed Flim Flam Bailout Plan; check out this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3051024550497129264
CONQUERING THE SPIRIT OF DEBT
Please VOTE NO ON THE BAILOUT. THERE IS NOT FREE LUNCH. Why should we give our hard earned money to folks that possess more that half of ALL the money available in the USA? • Let the rich pay for their own bailout. Let the market sort it self out. • We need to CRIMINALLY INDICT anyone who knowingly contributed to the collapse. Bailout only primary residences. We get to own the banks and companies that we bailout. • IT IS A LOAN WITH INTEREST. If they default, we sell the assets. • REPEAL THE PHILL GRAMM DE-REGULATION BILL OF 1999 We must have oversight if we do not want to revisit this fiasco.• NO MORE MEGA CORPS!! Put language in place to inhibit mega-companies and banks. • Protect pensions with insurance similar to FDIC. GIT RID OF 'REVERSE MORTGAGES' these are predatory loans to prey upon the elderly. • SET UP A PEOPLES BANK. Now that we own Freddie and Fannie and AIG, we as country can do our own loans, health insurance, medicare, pensions. Give the power back to the people since we are now footing the bill. Please consider these ideas when you are fighting for the rights of the people. We are the ones that put you in office, SPEAK UP FOR THE PEOPLE
AMERICAN CITIZENS AND TAXPAYERS
and the Gramm Leach Bailey Act
Nov 12, 1999
Reqaled our anti trust legislation (Glass-Stegall Act of 1933) that forbid entities from gettign too big to Fail.
also made them watch their risk taking deals....
they repealed our depression era legislation that kept our markets safe, and robbed us blind
So this issue is the second blank check, okay Bernie.
Thanks for listening and reading this ..but you should make the Senate and congress throw into the hat first .
If Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer and Bush and Paulson they should all put their money into this fund first... I wouldn't be grudge them getting filthy rich from all the bailout paper.
It was a shame you gave Paulson 800 billion in the first place.