Karoli already posted a good portion of Bernie Sanders' eight and a half hour speech on the Senate floor, but I thought I’d add this one to the mix as well. Sanders spoke out about what he thought was good that should be kept in the package that was negotiated by President Obama and Republican leadership and what he thought was wrong with it. He hit back hard at extending these Bush tax cuts and why it’s a really horrible idea.
I’m not going to fully transcribe this because I don’t have the time or energy for it but here are some notes I took on Senator Sanders statements for anyone that might not be able to watch the video.
Keep the tax cuts for the middle class.
Keep the earned income tax credit.
We’ve got to fight giving tax breaks to millionaires.
This will be resolved when millions of Americans let our politicians know that they are outraged and this provision provides tax breaks to those who don’t need it.
How much do the richest people in this country want?
When is enough enough? How much do they need?
Conservatives say we cannot raise the national debt.
What kind of honest conservative can vote to raise the national debt?
If you do, no more lectures on the floor.
Your hypocrisy will be known.
No more lectures.
Just say okay, rich people contributed to my campaign. That would be honest. No more lectures about the national debt.
If we do these for two years, the same arguments will be back and we’ll have the same argument again in two years.
Republicans will insist we can’t raise taxes and it will be more difficult because Obama will have no credibility.
The president doesn’t believe in raising these tax rates but if we cave in now, who’s going to believe him?
We are accepting the heart and soul of trickle down economics. These tax breaks have been existence since 2001 and through all of Bush’s tenure.
We lost 600,000 private sector jobs… the worst job creation record in recent history.
We’re giving money to those who are going to spend the money creates jobs.
Saying this is temporary is kidding ourselves.
The top 1% have seen a huge increase in their income.
Its absurd giving them tax cuts at this time.
And they’re saying they don’t need them.
We have the absurd policy where we’re forcing this policy on people that don’t even want them.
Republicans are driving up the national debt and the rationale is if you drive up the national debt and the deficit and you come back to the floor and say it’s unsustainable and the only way to deal with it now is by cutting, cutting, cutting.
The deficit commission with Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles just want to attack Social Security. Their ideas are going to be filtering around. Republicans are going to say when you have debt; you’re going to have to cut.
And of course what they want to cut are social services.
We’ll see if he’s right and they’re going to attack Social Security and veteran’s services.
The bill can be improved by the American people getting involved in the process. The American people are against this proposal. We can do a better job for the middle class and our kids than what’s in this proposal.
And he wrapped this portion up with talking about how the middle class is disappearing.
Now if we just had as much bravery, honesty and lack of corruption from the rest of our politicians in Washington. It makes me sad to think about how much better of a country we’d be living in if we had some more Bernie Sanders out there fighting for the working class in America instead of the broken system we’re dealing with now.
And one last note here since I brought up transcription. We had a C&L regular kind enough to transcribe Senator Sander's speeches for us that Karoli already posted and here's the final update on her post in case you missed it now that it's rolled off of the front page.
Final Final Update: A huge thank-you to C&L reader tequilamockingbird, who sent transcripts for the video clips in PDF format. Thank you, thank you, thank you! :)
Loan Sharks, Extortionists and Gangsters (PDF - 19.27 KB)
Childhood Poverty (PDF - 14.2 KB)
