I know some of my Republican friends say: Oh, my goodness. If you do not give tax breaks to the very wealthy, it will have a negative impact on jobs. This is the trickle-down economic theory. You give tax breaks to the rich, large corporations, and we create all kinds of great jobs. That idea has been tested. That idea was tested. That was the idea of former President George W. Bush. But during his 8 years as President, when that idea was in effect, the private sector lost -- lost -- over 600,000 jobs, and we had one of the worst economic decades, in terms of job creation, ever seen in this country. We tried that theory. We did give tax breaks to the rich and large corporations, and we lost 600,000 jobs during that 10-year period.
Meanwhile, when Bill Clinton raised taxes on the top 2 percent, you know what. The world did not quite cave in. In fact, during Clinton's Presidency, we created over 22 million jobs, and he left office with a huge budget surplus. But that is just one argument. You heard polls say we should impose a surtax on millionaires. The vast majority of the American people believe that. If you did a 5.4-percent surtax on millionaires and billionaires, that would raise $383 billion over 10 years.
You want another idea? At a time when our manufacturing sector is collapsing, when 50,000 factories have shut down in the last 10 years, when millions of workers have lost good-paying jobs, the U.S. Government continues to reward companies that move U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas through loopholes in the Tax Code known as deferral and foreign source income.
That, clearly, from a financial point of view, in terms of revenue to our government, as well as policies which result in the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs, is not something we should sustain. If we ended that absurdity, that policy alone, the Joint Tax Committee has estimated we could raise more than $582 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. So what about that -- $582 billion of revenue and we stop the outsourcing of jobs so maybe we can rebuild our manufacturing sector. Sounds to me like a pretty sensible idea.
My Republican friends think it is a better idea to throw poor children off Medicaid or force elderly people to pay far more than they can afford for Medicare. But ending this absurd policy, which encourages companies to throw American workers out on the street, makes a lot more sense to me than what the Republicans are talking about.
Fourth, if we ended tax breaks and subsidies for big oil and gas companies, we can reduce the deficit by more than $40 billion over the next 10 years.
Fifth, if we prohibited abusive and illegal offshore tax shelters -- what I just talked about a moment ago -- we could bring in $1 trillion over 10 years. That says to the corporations and the wealthy: Sorry, you are no longer going to be able to stash your wealth in the Cayman Islands and avoid paying taxes.
Sixth, if we established a Wall Street speculation fee of less than 1 percent on the sale and purchase of credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures, we could reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade and also -- also -- tell Wall Street we are not going to tolerate their outrageous behavior which led us into this recession in the first place. We are going to try to get a handle on their speculation.
Seventh, if we tax capital gains and dividends the same way we tax work, ordinary work, we can raise more than $730 billion over the next decade. Why should somebody who clips dividend coupons pay a substantially lower tax rate than somebody who is out working on our streets or is a nurse or is a teacher? Warren Buffett has often said he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. Today, the effective tax rate of the wealthiest 400 Americans is just 18 percent, the lowest on record.
On and on. We have a number of ideas out there, not the least of which is taking a hard look at the military. There are debates as to how much we can cut, but certainly we should all be in agreement that it no longer makes sense to sustain weapons systems that were built in order to fight the Cold War against the Soviet Union. They are not our enemy right now.
I can tell you that I, my office, requested a GAO report that found that the Pentagon had $36.9 billion in spare parts it does not need and which are collecting dust in government warehouses. We can do better than that. Frankly, in my view -- I think I speak for the majority of the people in my State of Vermont, I suspect, in this country -- it is time to begin bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan at an accelerated rate. We have been in Afghanistan now for 10 years. It is time for the Afghan people and their military to take responsibility, in terms of defeating the Taliban. We should be supportive of those efforts. But we should bring our troops home a lot sooner than the President has suggested. When we do that, among other things, we are also going to save a substantial sum of money.
Further, I will not deny for one second that there is waste and fraud and bureaucracy in almost every government program out there. I think we have to take a hard look at them all. I believe that in addition to the Pentagon, we can save hundreds of billions of dollars a year by eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy.
The ideas I have enumerated, and some I have not but which will become part of the Record, if we did all or some of these things, we could easily reduce the deficit by well over $4 trillion over the next decade, if not, in fact, much more. It would be done in a way that is fair, and it would not unnecessarily and needlessly ruin the lives of some of the most desperate and fragile and hurting people in our country today, millions of people who are just struggling to make ends meet. Those people would be spared.
The extreme right-wing agenda of more tax breaks for the wealthy, paid by the dismantling of Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition, and the environment, may be popular in the country clubs and cocktail parties of the wealthy and the powerful, but it is way out of touch with what the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
As you know, late last week Congressman Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the House, and Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican whip, walked out of the budget negotiations being led by Vice President Biden. The reason they walked out was pretty clear. They were not willing to close one single loophole in the Tax Code that allows the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying taxes by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands and all the other loopholes that currently exist.
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