00:00Madam President. The senator from Colorado. Thank you madam president and the hour is late. I want to thank the presiding officer for being here. I'm glad to be here with my colleagues from New Hampshire and my neighbor from New Mexico. I want to thank the floor staff that's here tonight and I would like to suggest this is not the purpose of my speech but the next time that senators make the suggestion that the floor staff should spend the entire night reading
00:30a bill here that the senators actually read that bill instead of imposing that on the staff that's here. I think that would be a just thing for us to do and the appropriate and proper thing for us to do. Madam President the last time that we were headed down this road when Republicans were passing President Trump's 2017 deficit exploding tax cut it didn't take a
00:59mathematical genius to figure out what was about to happen. I told the Senate at that time as our debt grows we will spend billions more not on schools roads and innovation but on interest costs. Worse we're about to blow another hole in the debt without really helping the middle class. Eight years ago I said on top of that we know that when deficits swell as they surely will
01:29cuts to Medicaid and Medicare are sure to follow. Further further burdening working families struggling to make ends meet. Well here we are. That's exactly the story of this bill. Utterly predictable. This bill which massively increases our deficit when our children can least afford it.
01:59The Republican senators passing this bill tonight or tomorrow morning if they do know they're doing it when we have already hit a new milestone for the first time in American history. Our interest payments Madam President exceed the amount that we spend on our national defense. For the first time the American people because of the irresponsibility in this chamber
02:06are going to pay a trillion dollars in interest. That is a massive number.
02:13That is essentially the same as what we spend on Medicare.
02:14Madam President, exceed the amount that we spend on our national defense.
02:21For the first time, the American people, because of the irresponsibility in this chamber, are
02:30going to pay a trillion dollars in interest.
02:34That is a massive number.
02:37That is essentially the same as what we spend on Medicare.
02:43What we spend on children and higher education together.
02:47What we spend on housing, bridges, broadband, ports, and highways combined.
02:56I want to be very clear tonight that over the years, Democrats and Republicans have pursued
03:02policies that have led to that $1 trillion in interest payments.
03:07There is no doubt about it.
03:10And it's worth thinking about what we could do if we hadn't made such fiscally irresponsible
03:16choices.
03:18Expand the child tax credit, as my colleague from Georgia said, and cut childhood poverty
03:23in half and hunger by a quarter.
03:27Build a modern energy grid.
03:31To meet our expanding energy demands so Americans in cities and rural communities can enjoy affordable,
03:39reliable energy at home.
03:42Establish a health care system that the American people deserve.
03:46A modern system that people in other rich industrialized countries take for granted.
03:55A system that does not cost twice as much with worse outcomes.
04:01Like in the United States of America, the richest country in the world.
04:06That forces parents to choose between their children's prescriptions and school supplies.
04:12That exhausts the American people who day after day after day have to fight endless negotiations
04:21with their insurance companies just to keep their children covered.
04:26That constantly threatens rural hospitals and clinics with closure in this country.
04:33No other rich country in the world puts up with that craziness.
04:44And we're spending twice as much as any other country in the world to get worse health care,
04:53worse outcomes, more scarcity.
05:00Every senator on this floor might make a different choice about the policies that they would enact.
05:09Their preferred policies.
05:10But I doubt, Madam President, there is anybody here who is willing to go home and defend the
05:18virtues of wasting a trillion dollars of the American people's money on interest payments.
05:28The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and outside groups like the Penn Warden Budget Lab
05:34tell us that by the end of the next 10 years, we will have the highest debt ratio ever eclipsing
05:43the debt our nation had in the 1940s.
05:47What was happening in the 1940s?
05:49That's when the greatest generation had borrowed money to defeat economic misery at home through
05:55the New Deal and European fascism by becoming the arsenal of democracy.
06:02Those were their receipts.
06:08Those were the receipts of a generation that understood its commitment to the next generation.
06:15To us.
06:19When we contemplate from this broken Senate the patriotic accomplishments of the greatest
06:25generation, what has always seemed particularly egregious to me have been the tax policy Republicans
06:33have passed four times since Ronald Reagan passed it in 1981.
06:40Every single time they made the same promises.
06:45Every time, look it up, they made the same promises that their trickle-down tax policy would
06:51drive economic growth, cut our deficit, pay for themselves.
06:58Every time, including the recent Trump tax cut in 2017, these promises have been false.
07:06They've been false.
07:07That was eight years ago.
07:10That wasn't a century ago.
07:12We know what the math is.
07:14Everybody in this room knows the deficit is far worse today than it was when Donald Trump
07:19passed those tax cuts.
07:24President Trump has had a very rare thing happen, which is he got to take four years off and come
07:29back and be president.
07:34The effect of the tax cuts he passed the last time that he said were going to pay for themselves
07:40clearly have not.
07:42There's nobody in this chamber who can deny that.
07:48I always find it amazing when I hear these promises why people make them if they know they're
07:56so false over and over and over again.
08:02And I think the reason is, Madam President, that it is a way that politicians in Washington
08:08can avoid the objections that you could never get away with at home.
08:20Imagine for a minute if there were a mayor in America, any mayor, in any town.
08:30In Santa Fe, New Mexico.
08:33Or in Lyman, Colorado.
08:37Or in Los Angeles, California.
08:39It doesn't matter, a Republican town or a Democratic town.
08:43Imagine if a mayor came to you, Madam President, and said, this town is going to borrow more
08:49money than we have ever borrowed before.
08:53That would worry you.
08:54That would worry me.
08:56And I think our first question would be to that mayor, okay, that worries me.
09:01What are you going to spend the money on that you're borrowing?
09:09Are you going to spend it on schools?
09:11No.
09:13Are you going to spend it on parks?
09:15Are you going to spend it on the water infrastructure that so many communities in New Mexico require?
09:24Are you going to spend it on the mental health crisis that our teenagers are facing because
09:31of our failure to address it?
09:35Are you going to spend it on infrastructure?
09:43And the answer to all those questions would be no.
09:48What are you going to spend the money on, Mr. Mayor?
09:51Well, the answer is, I am going to give tax cuts to the two richest neighborhoods in town
09:58and hope that those trickle down to everybody else.
10:02That is the Republican tax policy.
10:06There's a reason why no mayor in America has ever done that.
10:12There is no mayor in America who has ever pursued trickle down economics because you would get
10:19run out on a rail.
10:23You would get run out on a rail if you went and said, we are going to borrow the most money
10:29that has ever been borrowed from our children to finance tax cuts for the richest neighborhoods
10:35in town.
10:38It makes no sense.
10:40It is preposterous.
10:43And yet that has been the argument since Ronald Reagan first said, these tax cuts will be
10:50paid for.
10:51The economy will grow.
10:54There won't be a deficit.
10:59There's a reason we're paying more than a trillion dollars in interest rates in interest today,
11:06and that's because our deficits are enormous.
11:16Fortunately, and this is really important for the American people to understand, we still
11:22live in the strongest country in the world.
11:25We are in the world's richest economy.
11:28We have the most lethal military.
11:31Apart from our president, we have a national commitment to an independent judiciary, the rule
11:37of law, and low levels of corruption in our economy and in our society.
11:43We have unparalleled capital markets, cutting-edge innovation, and world-leading universities.
11:52We have all those things going for us partly because the folks that came before us invested
12:00in those things and built those things and tended those things.
12:06But what we struggle with in our time is a sense among most Americans that they can't
12:12get ahead, that the American dream is farther and farther out of reach for themselves and
12:19for their families.
12:21In my view, that is the biggest challenge our country faces.
12:26In the face of this bill's ill-considered tax cuts to our health care system, which is
12:39going to throw millions of people off their health care and make health care more expensive
12:44for everybody else.
12:45By the way, what's the logic of that?
12:48The logic of that is that when you throw people off their health care, they end up going to
12:54the emergency room to take care of themselves and take care of their families, just as anybody
13:00would.
13:01We have the most expensive care that anybody could have.
13:05That expense is then put into our insurance policies, and all of us are going to pay more.
13:12You can't wish away people just because you throw them off health insurance.
13:18Even other countries in the world, other wealthy, rich countries in the world, have a system of
13:27insurance that basically guarantees health care and mental health care to their citizens.
13:36It's worth asking why we would throw our people off the not-so-great health insurance that they
13:44have.
13:46That's a good question.
13:48But it's particularly crazy when it just drives up the cost for everybody else.
13:59We need to deeply think about the challenges that our country is facing today.
14:06It's more unequal.
14:08The top 1% owns 30% of our nation's wealth, Madam President, and the bottom 50% owns 2.5%.
14:19The top 1% of Americans own 50% of the value of the stock market.
14:25The top 1% of Americans own 50% of the value of the stock market, while the bottom 50% owns
14:34just 1% of its value.
14:40Something that's really affecting my state is the nation's median home price is now five
14:45times higher than median family income.
14:50And as a result, the average first-time homebuyer is now 38 years old.
14:58Even had a president 38 years old versus 29 just a generation ago.
15:08Reading scores in our nation have hit a 20-year low.
15:12And perhaps most damning and perhaps most upsetting is that our lifespan has declined since the 1980s.
15:26They are now, on average, likely to die six years shorter than other people that live in wealthy
15:35countries around the world.
15:36If you're African American, your chance of dying is on average 12 years, 12 years sooner than
15:47people living in the industrialized world.
15:51If we don't shift course soon, Madam President, we will be the first generation of Americans
15:56whose kids and grandkids will be worse off than we are.
16:01That has never happened before.
16:04We are on track for that to happen to our children.
16:09Many young people today can't afford to live on their own, and they may never be able to afford
16:14a house.
16:15They can't afford health care or child care.
16:18They can't count on a quality education for their children in too many parts of America.
16:25Some are really worried about whether they're going to be able to afford a child at all.
16:32If you haven't heard a family say that to you in your town halls or in your meetings,
16:41you haven't been paying attention.
16:47But instead of addressing any of these challenges, we are debating a bill tonight that will make
16:55the wealthiest Americans even wealthier and the poorest Americans even poorer, half a million
17:03of whom live in Colorado, while adding millions more to the debt which working Americans are
17:11going to have to pay back.
17:14That's what this Republican trickle-down economics comes down to.
17:19No matter how you dress it up, that's what it comes down to.
17:27Our generation has made some very bad choices when it comes to our children's future.
17:33This bill only makes matters worse for them.
17:38And all this debt will constrain the choices that they are going to be able to make for themselves.
17:45And that's a shame, Madam President.
17:50Because unlike us, perhaps they will aspire to following in the footsteps of the greatest
17:56generation to build a country where lifespans are growing, not falling.
18:03Where economic mobility is rising.
18:06Where poverty and economic anxiety are falling.
18:10Where energy exports are increasing and emissions are decreasing.
18:15Where quality health care and child care, education and affordable housing are abundant, not scarce.
18:26It seems obvious to me, Madam President, that our child's ambition should be ours as well.
18:37Unfortunately, tomorrow, the Republican majority may pass a bill that takes us further in the
18:44wrong direction.
18:47In its wake and in its wreckage, Americans who do feel an obligation to the next generation
18:56are going to have to fight even harder to fulfill our duty.
