Sanders Blasts Boehner, Reid Proposals

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont lashed out today in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, at not only Republicans for wanting to protect the interests of the wealthy and large multinational corporations, but Democrats as well.

“If Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be place on the elderly, the sick, children and working families,” Sanders states. “In the midst of a horrendous recession that is already causing severe pain for average Americans, this approach is morally grotesque.  It’s also bad economic policy.”

Sanders pointed out that currently the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country. And yet, he said, Democrats are looking at a debt ceiling plan which entails no new revenues from those who could afford to pay a little more.   He added that President Obama and the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing extremist proposals.

Noting that last December, President Obama had extended the George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and lowered the estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, Sanders said, in April earlier this year, so as to avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, some $38.5 billion in cuts on vitally important programs for the working-class and middle-class had been agreed to.

“Now, with the U.S. facing the possibility of the first default in our nation’s history, the American people find themselves forced to choose between two congressional deficit-reductions plans,” Sanders said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year-period and includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by the poor and vulnerable.

“The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker John Boehner is much worse,” Sanders said. “His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it requires a congressional committee to come up with another $1.8 trillion in cuts within six months of passage.”

Sanders pointed out too that, the Boehner plan would lead to drastic cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and that the debt ceiling debate would again be re-opened in just six months for now.

Despite poll after poll showing that the American people (72 percent) are in favor of the wealthy and large corporations paying their fair share of taxes and the protection of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, Congress in on a path to do exactly what the people do not want, Sanders said.

“Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful,” Sanders wrote.