On the recordNovember 15, 2023
Madam President, I rise in strong opposition to S. Res. 43 that we will be voting on today. The reason for that is that we have to be very clear as to what is happening in America right now. Today, while the very wealthiest people in our country are becoming much wealthier, over 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and many are working for starvation wages and under really bad working conditions. In America today, while CEOs are making nearly 350 times as much as their average workers, tens of millions of our people in every State in this country are struggling to pay the rent, to pay for the childcare they need, to pay for healthcare, to pay for prescription drugs, and to put food on the table. That is the reality of America today. And while that is true for people of all ages, it is especially true for our younger people, who, by the way, if we don't change the nature of our economy soon, will have, for the first time in the modern history of America, a lower standard of living than their parents. If we lived in a nation with a rational set of priorities, we would not be giving more tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, as many of my Republican colleagues want--not at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had; we would not be spending, in my view, $900 billion on the military while the military-industrial complex makes huge profits and has cost overruns and while the Pentagon is not even audited.…
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