Sanders Filibuster Begins...

Saying he was prepared to speak "as long as possible" against a tax deal between the White House and congressional Republicans, Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor to make the case against deepening the deficit and widening the income gap in America by extending Bush-era tax breaks for the very wealthy. "I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides," Sanders began.

After eight and a half hours of speaking without leaving the Senate floor, Sanders brought his day-long stand to a close Friday night. He concluded, "If the American people stand up and say, we can do better than this, that we don't need to drive up the national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, that if the American people are prepared to stand -- and we're prepared to follow them -- I think we can defeat this proposal. I think we can come up with a better proposal which better reflects the needs of the middle class and working families of our country and, to me, most importantly, the children of our country. And with that, Madam President, I would yield the floor."

• Category

  News & Politics

[BigMikeMcBastard]

You can't get blood from a stone. Taxing everyone a flat 10% wouldn't even come close to generating enough revenue to sustain the society as it exists now. That's where the US is now. Not enough revenue. So, the options are to either tax the middle class until they're poor, cut services like education, police/fire services, etc, or you tax the top earners and deny them another new yacht or summer home that year.

Those are the options. Destroy mid-class, destroy society, or anger Repubs

[Brody Dixon]

I think you should learn how the Federal Reserve works....

[BigMikeMcBastard]

And if the rich don't get to hoard that money via excessive tax breaks/loopholes it also doesn't disappear. The options aren't to either make the rich richer or see money vanish from the economy. The alternative to what we have now is for the money to not go into the pockets of millionaires/billionaires for them to maybe spend, maybe hoard. It's for the money to go back to the people, either through tax breaks to break even, or through more money available for infrastructure/etc.

[Timothy Wehrfritz]

You know what happens when top earners don't buy yachts, summer homes, or other luxurys? The thousands of people that are employed to make those things lose their jobs... That's why the luxury tax of 1990 failed and was quickly revoked. When the rich spend money it goes somewhere you know. I doesn't just vanquish. And most of the time it comes to the middle class that build those luxuries they buy.

[ttowntvcom]

Bernie Sanders is the man!

[Robbert P]

Tax everyone 25% then :D

[archipelago93]

Yes they are when you look at combined taxes from federal, state, local, Social Security, sales, etc.! Look at Phil Mickelson. You're looking at the average income rate due to capital gains being lower (and if you don't know why CG is lower--or why it's 0% in MANY countries--read a book).

And guess what? The top 1% already pays 38% of all federal taxes. And top 10? over 70%! So 90% of people only pay 30% of all taxes. Rich pay more than their "fair" share & haven't gotten a tax break for years

[BigMikeMcBastard]

I don't believe that essentials like welfare and so on need to be cut, no. There are other areas of spending to be had, and new sources of revenue to be exploited, and so on. Cutting the things that help people to survive shouldn't be on the table.

[Victor Pavao]

Or we cut defense spending/politician salaries/cabinet departments/welfare? It's pathetic that you make it sound like we would have to drastically cut essentials but to be honest we're spending way too much on the other things...

[lucasB823]

First of all, billionaires aren't being taxed anywhere near 60%. The top 1% in general is taxed around 23%, which is double the national average. However, the top 1% of americans have 34.6% of the wealth, while the following 4% of americans 27.3%. More taxes for the top percent of earners would never fix anything by itself (and nobody has ever said it would make up for the trillions in debt); there is no silver bullet. But giving the superrich tax breaks in this economy is absurd.

[BigMikeMcBastard]

The point isn't to instantly solve the problem by taxing anyone at 100%. The point is to tax the rich/corporations more, as both are sitting on huge profits that they're essentially hoarding anyway, and to reduce spending in frivolous areas. Then, with deficit being reduced, the debt begins to recede.

Acting as if raising the taxes of people who make many millions annually isn't going to help the problem is what is sad, though. Of course it won't be an instant fix, but it's part of the solution.

[archipelago93]

So uneducated it's sad. Even if you taxed the rich at 100% (which is theoretically impossible--take ANY economics class for once in your life), it would run the government for about 10 whole days. I love how liberals attack "all the billionaires," and without any math to back it up, say that all we need to do for our problems is tax them beyond the 60%+ they're already being taxed. Know how many there are in the US? 425. Yeah. Sorry, not going to make up for years of trillion dollar deficits