Today, the top 1 percent earns over 20 percent of all income in this country, which is more than the bottom 50 percent. One percent owns more income than the bottom 50 percent. Over the recent 25-year period, 80 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent. Even more dramatic, even more incredible, even more unfair in terms of distribution of wealth, which is accumulated income, as hard as it may be to comprehend, in America today the top 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Again, 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
Given those realities, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to suggest that when we move forward with deficit reduction, that deficit reduction must include shared sacrifice. The wealthy and large corporations also have to help this country deal with record-breaking deficit.
The reality is simple but unfortunate. That reality is that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class continues to disappear. That is what is going on in this country, and there is no hiding it. We have to acknowledge it. We have to go on from there.
Everyone knows that in our country today we are facing a major deficit crisis, and we have a national debt of over $14 trillion. What has not been widely discussed and what must be discussed is how we got into that deficit situation in the first place. If we are going to deal with the deficit, we have to know how we got into it. What is very clear is that this huge record-breaking deficit and a $14 trillion national debt did not just happen overnight, and it didn't happen by accident. It happened, in fact, as a result of a number of policy decisions made over the last decade and votes that were cast right here on the floor of the Senate and in the House of Representatives.
When we talk about the deficit and the national debt, let's never forget that in January of 2001 -- a little over 10 years ago -- when President Bill Clinton left office, this country had an annual Federal budget surplus of $236 billion with projected budget surpluses as far as the eye could see. That was when Clinton left office some 10 years ago. Now we have a $1.5 trillion deficit and a growing national debt.
It is totally appropriate as we talk about deficit reduction that we ask some simple questions: How did we get to where we are today in terms of the deficit? What happened in that ensuing 10 years? How did we go from huge projected surpluses into horrendous debt? The answer really is not complicated, and there is not a lot of disagreement. We know exactly what has happened. The Congressional Budget Office has documented it. There was an interesting article on the front page of the Washington Post on April 30 talking about it as well, and here is what happened. I don't think there is a lot of disagreement about this.
When our Nation spends $1 trillion on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and forgets to pay for those wars, we run up a deficit. When we provide over $700 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country and choose not to offset those tax breaks, we run up a deficit. When we pass a Medicare Part D prescription drug program written by the drug companies and the insurance companies that does not allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and ends up costing us far more than it should -- $400 billion over a 10-year period -- and we don't pay for that, we run up a deficit. When we double military spending since 1997, not including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we don't pay for that, we run up the deficit.
Now, I always find it amusing when some of my Republican colleagues come to the floor and lecture some of us about how serious the deficit is and how serious the national debt is. Yet, ironically, many of us voted against those proposals which, in fact, caused the deficit crisis we are in right now. I paid a lot of attention during the debate over the war in Iraq. I don't recall many of our friends on the Republican side or the Democrats who voted for that war saying: Gee, we can't go to war because it is going to cost this country a huge sum of money. I don't remember hearing that.
When we bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion, I don't recall many of my friends saying: Oh, my goodness, we can't afford to do that. When we gave $700 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, where was the concern then about deficit reduction? Further, and maybe even most significant, the deficit we are in right now was caused by the recession we are in, which was, of course, caused by the greed and illegal behavior on Wall Street, which caused the economic condition of the moment: massive unemployment and loss of a very substantial amount of revenue that otherwise would have come into our tax coffers.
The end result of all of these unpaid-for policies and actions year after year of the deficits I just described is a staggering amount of debt. When President Bush left office, President Obama inherited an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion with deficits as far as the eye could see, and the national debt more than doubled -- more than doubled -- under President Bush because of all of these policy decisions made by Republicans and some Democrats. The reality is, if we did not go to war in Iraq, if we did not pass huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we did not pass a prescription drug program with no cost control written by the drug and insurance companies, and if we did not deregulate Wall Street which allowed them to do the things they did, which ended up in Wall Street's collapse and the ensuing recession, we would not find ourselves in the mess we are in today. It really is that simple.
In other words, the only reason we have to increase our Nation's debt ceiling today is that we are forced to pay the bills the Republican leadership in Congress -- and some Democrats -- and President Bush racked up.
Given the decline in the middle class, given the increase in poverty, and given the fact that the wealthy and large corporations have never had it so good, Americans might find it strange that the Republicans in Washington would use this moment to make savage cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition assistance, and other life-and-death programs, while at the same time pushing for even more tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations. Unfortunately, while the average American may think this is pretty weird, inside the beltway that is exactly what happens, and this is very much part of the Republican ideology.
Republicans in Washington have never believed in Medicaid or in Medicare or in Federal assistance in education or providing any direct government assistance to those in need. They have always believed tax breaks for the wealthy and the powerful would somehow miraculously trickle down to every American despite all history and all evidence to the contrary. So in that sense it is not strange at all that they would use the deficit crisis we are now in as an opportunity for an ideological attack against some of the most vulnerable people in our country.
That is exactly what the Ryan Republican budget, passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year and supported by the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate just last month, is all about. It is a long budget, so let me give just a few examples of what the Ryan Republican budget would do.
The Republican budget passed by the House this year would end Medicare as we know it within 10 years. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the Ryan proposal, in 2022, a private health care plan for a 65-year-old equivalent to Medicare coverage would cost about $20,500. Yet the Republican budget would provide a voucher for only $8,000 of those premiums. Seniors would be on their own to pay the remaining $12,500, a full 61 percent of the total. Now, how many of the 20 million near elderly Americans who are now ages 50 to 54 will be able to afford that?
So let's review what we have. Let's say when a person becomes 65 in 10 years and they are earning or living on $15,000 in Social Security, they are going to be asked to pay $12,500 more for health care than is currently the case. How do they do that? What kind of health care plan are they going to buy when they are old and sick and are given an $8,000 voucher? How many days in the hospital will they be able to have? You can run up an $8,000 bill in 1 day, in 2 days. So this ending of Medicare as we know it, forcing seniors to somehow come up with all kinds of money that in many cases they don't have, will be a disaster for tens of millions of people.
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