A Few Words From Bernie

No senator in Washington talks straighter about the truth than Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He is a staunch defender of ordinary Americans, and strongly opposes the Republican effort to balance the budget on the backs of these people while giving huge tax breaks to the rich. The following statements from Senator Sanders are from an interview with Judy Woodruff, where he discusses the budget plans of President Obama and the Republican Party. As usual, he's right on target. He says:

"I have got a lot of problems with the president’s budget. I think it’s bad.


But I think the Republican budget is a lot worse. And my job, along with other progressive members of Congress, is to help create a budget which is fair and which protects the most vulnerable people in this country at a time when the poverty rate now is higher than at any time since 1948.



I think the answer is you have got to look at what’s happening economically in America. And what that’s about is that our middle class is collapsing. Our median family income has gone down. Poverty is going way, way up. And the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is going wider.


So, I think, before you look at budgets or how you deal with the deficit, you have got to take that into consideration. For example, the top 1 percent today earn more income than do the bottom 50 percent. They earn about 22 percent of every dollar earned in America. And that gap is growing wider.


Meanwhile, what this budget includes are massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. So, you have a situation. The rich are getting richer. Their tax rates have gone down for many, many years. Their effective tax rate right now — people like Warren Buffett talk about this — at 16 percent, is lower than at any time in recent history, and yet we’re giving them huge tax breaks, while poverty in America is increasing.


We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world for our children, and we’re cutting programs for those people. So, the first thing we have to deal with is revenue. And, as a nation, we have got to say, sorry, the rich are getting richer. They’re doing really well. Our friends on Wall Street, we shouldn’t have to worry about. They get huge amounts of compensation.


We cannot continue to give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, cut back on programs for the vulnerable. So, that’s the first issue I think we have to deal with.


The other issue that I think we have to talk about is, in the president’s budget, he talks about Social Security. And he makes me a little bit nervous, because I think, as many of our listeners know, the Social Security trust fund today has a $2.6 trillion surplus.


Social Security can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 27 years. Social Security, because it is funded by the payroll tax, hasn’t contributed one nickel to the deficit.


Of course the Republicans have long wanted to privatize Social Security and destroy it. But Social Security has been the most important and valuable social program in the history of the United States. For 75 years, it’s worked perfectly. It can pay out every nickel for the next 27 years, at which time it pays out 78 percent.


And, in my view, when you have 16 percent of our people who are unemployed or underemployed, that’s an issue that we have got to deal with, not worry so much about a program which can pay out every nickel for the next 27 years.


If the president is concerned — concerned about the long-term sustainability of our budget, then he should not have caved into the Republicans and provided huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.


What I get a little bit frustrated about is, we’re giving money away to people who don’t need it, and then we’re really tough on students who are trying to get by on Pell Grants. You got the Community Service Block Grant. You know what that is? That is the infrastructure by which we protect low-income people all over America. The president has proposed a 50 percent cut in that.


So, I think what the American people understand is that, when we have such an unequal distribution of income right now, you don’t give more to the people who don’t need it and cut back on people who are hurting.


The deficit primarily has been caused by two wars unfunded, huge tax breaks to people who don’t need it, an insurance-company-written Medicare Part D prescription drug program, and the bailout of Wall Street.


The cause of it is not hungry children in this country or people who are sleeping out on the street. So, we have got to deal with the deficit, but you do it in a fair and progressive way. For example, this year alone, we’re losing a hundred billion dollars in revenue because corporations, the wealthy, are stashing their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands.


This year, ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in the history of the world, is not paying a nickel in federal income taxes, despite having made $19 billion last year. In 2005, one-quarter of corporation — large corporations in America making a trillion in revenue didn’t pay a nickel in taxes. You have got a military budget which in many ways is still fighting the old Cold War.


So, I believe that we have to move toward significant deficit reduction, but you don’t do it on the backs of the middle class and working families who are already suffering as a result of this Wall Street-caused recession."