Bernard Sanders

“ If there is anything we can say about the American people, we work hard. We, in fact, work longer hours than do the people of any other country, industrialized country, on Earth. We are not a lazy people. We are a hard-working people. If the jobs are there, people will take them. If people have to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week, that is what they will do. But we have to rebuild this economy. We do not need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work. ”

“ According to the American Society of Civil Engineers infrastructure report card—and this is where we should be investing, not tax breaks for the rich— Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. Think about that, 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, at a cost of $78 billion a year. Think about all of the pollution, all of the greenhouse gas emissions, all of the frustration, all of the anxiety, all of the road rage. People are stuck on roads because our transportation system is totally inadequate, our roads, our public transportation. ”

“ I do not want to see our national debt explode. I do not want to see my kids and grandchildren paying higher taxes in order to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
The vast majority of the American people do not support that agreement in terms of giving tax breaks to the very rich. Our job is to rally those people. I would like very much to see the American people saying to our Republican colleagues and some Democratic colleagues: Excuse me. Don't force my kids to have a lower standard of living in order to give tax breaks to the richest people. ”

“ No single financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of American jobs or to our Nation’s economic well-being. No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world’s economy into crisis. We were there 2 years ago, and in many ways, despite the passage of the financial reform bill, we are even more there now. The big, huge financial institutions we bailed out are bigger, more huge today. ”

“ So this piece of legislation, as important as it is unto itself—and it is very important—is equally important in terms of what it says about where we are going into the future. Are we going to protect the middle class and working families of our country? Are we going to make sure every young person in America, regardless of income, has the ability to go to college, or are we going to allow college to become unaffordable for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bright, young people, or else force them to leave school deeply in debt? ”

“ You have some of the richest people in America—Bill Gates and all the good, charitable work he does, and Warren Buffet and many others—who are saying: I am doing just fine. I am a billionaire or a multimillionaire. I don’t need your tax breaks. I am worried about the fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty; invest in our children. I am worried that our infrastructure is crumbling; invest in our infrastructure. I am worried that 45,000 Americans are dying this year who don’t have access to health care; invest in health care. ”

“ So these cry babies, these multimillionaires and billionaires, these people who are making out like bandits, they are crying and crying and crying, but the effective tax rate for the top 400 income earners was cut almost in half from 1992 to 2007.
The point that needs to be made is, when is enough enough? That is the essence of what we are talking about. Greed, in my view, is like a sickness. It is like an addiction. We know people who are on heroin. They can't stop. They destroy their lives. They need more and more heroin. There are people who can't stop smoking. ”

“ Oh, my word, in order to deal with our deficit, we are going to have to cut back on Medicare and Medicaid and education. We cannot afford it. I guess we can afford to allow ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in the history of the world, to make huge sums of money and pay nothing in taxes. We can afford to do that, but we cannot afford to protect working families and the middle class.
In the year 2005, one out of every four large corporations in the United States paid no Federal income tax on revenue of $1.1 trillion. ”

“ I worry very much about the future because I have a feeling in my stomach that day is going to come around again, when these huge financial institutions are tottering, when they are going to go running to Washington, and they are going to say: Hey, you have to bail us out. In my view, if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. Let us break them up so we do not have to go through another bailout of Wall Street. ”

“ The point is, if you simply ignore a crumbling infrastructure—and I say this as a former mayor who dealt with this issue—if you simply ignore a crumbling infrastructure, do you know what, it does not get better all by itself.
I know many mayors and Governors would very much like to think they could turn their backs on the infrastructure because it is not a sexy investment. It is not a sexy investment. But the reality is, if you do not pay attention to it today, it only gets worse and it costs you more money. ”

“ So for my friends, my Republican colleagues, to tell us that we need more tax breaks for the very rich because that is going to create jobs—that is what trickle-down economics is all about—I would say to them: You had your chance. It failed. In case you don't know, losing 600,000 private sector jobs in 8 years is not good. That is very, very bad. That is an economic policy that has failed. We don't need to look at that movie again. We saw it. It stunk. It was a bad movie. Bad economic policy. More tax breaks for the rich is not what our economy needs. ”

“ Well, if you just would do away with Glass-Steagall, if you will just allow financial institutions, commercial banks, investor banks, insurance companies, if you allow them to merge, do away with these walls which Glass-Steagall, since the Great Depression, established, my God, it will be just terrific. It will be good for the economy, good for the American people, good for our international competitiveness. ”

“ If we accept this proposal of a 2-year extension for the richest people in America, I believe it will eventually become either a long-term extension or a permanent extension. If we accept the proposal that lowers the rates on the estate tax which benefits only the top three-tenths of 1 percent—99.7 percent of Americans get nothing—but if we give them what they want, I believe over a period of years it will lead to the complete abolishment and ending of the estate tax which will cost us over $1 trillion over a 10-year period. ”

“ I don't have to tell Americans, least of all the people in Vermont, about what happens when the weather gets cold and you are forced to pay very high prices for heating oil. The time is long overdue for us to make the investments we need to transform our energy system away from coal, away from oil. We are spending as a nation—and everybody in America has to appreciate this—$350 billion every single year—$1 billion a day, roughly—importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries, in order to make our economy go and in order to keep people warm. ”

“ High levels of income inequality may precipitate economic crises.
In other words, if the middle class cannot see light at the end of the tunnel and if the economy itself cannot grasp a way for the middle class to grow, I say to the Senator, this recession may never end no matter how much money you give to the very wealthy. This is the reality we are facing at this moment—how to end this recession. ”

“ Don't you know what is going on in our lives? Don't you know the worries we have for our kids, for our parents? Aren't you listening to us?
In many ways I am afraid the Senate is not listening to them, nor is the House, nor is our Government. What worries me so much about this growing concentration of wealth and income in this country is that when the rich get richer, they don't just simply put their money under the mattress. They don't simply go out and buy yachts and planes and 18 homes and all the things rich people do. ”

“ When we talk about tax breaks for corporations and companies, what we should be aware of is that corporate America today—today—is sitting on close to $2 trillion in cash. They have that cash on hand. The problem is not that they do not have the money, the problem is that working people do not have the money to buy the products these guys are producing. I believe, and not just me but I think a variety of economists from across the board, it makes a lot more sense if we are serious about creating jobs to invest in our infrastructure. ”

“ When we talk about working-class families all across the country seeing a decline in their income, it is not because people are lazy, it is not because people do not work hard, it is not because people are not trying to find jobs. What we have is an economy which is rotting in the middle, and we have to change the economy. ”

“ I have talked to the credit union people in Vermont and all over the country. Credit unions are doing just fine. They are not the ones that came begging the American taxpayer for a huge bailout. So for 30 years they have survived just fine on a 15-percent cap. But our friends on Wall Street who caused this recession, our friends on Wall Street who needed a welfare check from the American people in order to survive, who today are earning more money than they did before the bailout—we don't have any cap on the interest rates they can charge. ”

“ In the midst of a serious and major recession, at a time when millions of our fellow Americans are not only out of work through no fault of their own, but they have been out of work for a very long time, it would be, in my view, immoral and wrong to turn our backs on those workers. Their unemployment benefits are going to be running out soon. It is absolutely imperative that we extend those unemployment benefits for the 2 million workers who would lose them. ”

“ What she understands, quite correctly, is if working people, the vast majority of the people, don't have the income to spend money to buy products and goods and services, we can't create the jobs. If all of the money or a big chunk of the money ends up with a few people on top, there is a limit to how many limousines you can have and how many homes you can have and how many yachts you can have. So when we hit a situation where so few have so much, it is not only a moral issue, it is also an economic issue. ”

“ The real debate about Social Security is not one about finances.
There has been a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. I hear from some of my friends on the Republican side that Social Security is going bankrupt; it is not going to be there for our kids. That is absolutely not true. Social Security today has a $2.6 trillion surplus. Social Security can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American, if we do not start diverting funds, for the next 29 years, at which point it pays out about 78 percent of benefits. ”

“ I think most people understand that today our country is experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is important to say that because, again, it is hard enough when you do not have a job, when you do not have income, when your dignity and self-respect are declining, but I don't want people to be banging their own heads against the wall blaming themselves for all of the problems. ”

“ Furthermore, I believe when you have that kind of concentration of ownership—when you have four large financial institutions holding half the mortgages in this country, controlling two-thirds of the credit cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits— this is not good for a competitive economy.
We are supposed to be living in free market capitalism, real competition. This is not free market competition. This is a huge concentration of ownership, where a few people have enormous power over the economy, and with their wealth, the political life of this country. ”

“ Our incomes have soared, our tax rates have gone down, and we don't need it. In other words, we have this absurd situation that not only is this bad public policy, we are actually forcing tax breaks on people who don't need them and don't even want them. The richest people in this country—Bill Gates, Warren Buffett— we don't want it. ”

“ Now the people who are committing usury are not the gangsters on street corners all over America. Their place has been taken by the CEOs of Wall Street financial institutions who are lending out money to desperate Americans at 25 or 30 percent interest rates. That, my friends, is called usury, and according to every religion on Earth, that is immoral. What you are doing is going up to people who are desperate, people who are hurting, and you are saying: You desperately need money, we are going to give you money, but there is a string attached. ”