Well Said, Bernie Sanders!

[alleycat]

“The issue is this country does, in fact, have a serious deficit problem, but the reality is the deficit was caused by two wars—unpaid for; it was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country; it was caused by a recession that was the result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was joined by fellow Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). “And if those are the causes of the deficit and the national debt, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children and the poor.”

I must say that Sen Bernie Sanders is a real stand up guy. But that is how many people are that hail VT. Thank you Bernie for thinking of the average person.

[marianne202]

Allison, it sure is true, but the problem is the damage is done and the money is gone. The people up on the hill need to think about opening up their pockets to pay the fiddler and bail us out. Honestly, until they are treated like the rest of us, I don't think they will get the message!

[Jonathan Whatley]

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, president when the top tax bracket for the richest people in this country was 92 percent. President Eisenhower defended that tax bracket. He said we cannot afford to reduce taxes until, quote, "the factors of income and outgo will be balanced." Eisenhower insisting there must be a balanced budget and that taxes on the rich are the way to balance it. Dwight Eisenhower, you know, noted leftist.

The Republican Party platform of Eisenhower's 1956 called for expansion of Social Security, broadened unemployment insurance, better health protection for all of our people. It called for voting rights--full voting civil rights for D.C. It called for expanding the minimum wage to cover more workers. It called for improved job safety for workers, equal pay for workers regardless of sex.

This is the Republican Party circa 1956. The Republican Party.

The story of modern American politics writ large is the story of your father's and your grandfather's Republican Party now being way to the left of today's leftiest liberals. If Dwight Eisenhower were running for office today, he would have to run, I'm guessing as an independent, and not as some Joe Lieberman, in between the parties, independent. He'd be a Bernie Sanders independent.

Rachel Maddow: In America Today, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower Would Be Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Senate (Rachel Maddow, AlterNet, January 28, 2011, from her MSNBC show January 26, 2011)

[Lindagerr]

From AP; Citigroup Inc., one of the biggest recipients of government bailout money, gave employees $5.33 billion in bonuses for 2008.
Why don't these people help with the bailout?

Citigroup, which gave 738 of its employees bonuses of at least $1 million, is now one-third owned by government as a result of its bailout. It paid bonuses of at least $3 million to 124 of those employees,

[Jonathan Whatley]

Distance learning hook: His wife, Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders, is president of Burlington College, and has been leading an expansion. Burlington has had not inexpensive but very flexible and individualized low-residency distance learning bachelor's programs for many years, and they've added an Individualized Master of Arts.

[alleycat]

Distance learning hook: His wife, Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders, is president of Burlington College, and has been leading an expansion. Burlington has had not inexpensive but very flexible and individualized low-residency distance learning bachelor's programs for many years, and they've added an Individualized Master of Arts.

His wife Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders is extremely well respected. Love the O'Meara name. Anyway Vermont has many college that actually think outside the box with very low residency requirements.

[G-Man]

Please don't let facts get in the way of a good populist narrative. The two wars combined have barely added up to a trillion dollars since 2001, far less than ONE YEAR's deficit under the current president:
Q+A-Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan tops $1 trillion | Reuters

As far as being so concerned about tax breaks for the wealthy, many of these politicians have seen their wealth grow exponentially since getting elected to office... real 99 percenters. None of them have voluntarily paid more taxes (the IRS accepts donations) and their charitable contributions are often less than the national average. That's how they got elected though...they talk a good line about the evil rich and compassion for the poor and the elderly while they busily line their own pockets.

[Jonathan Whatley]

Please don't let facts get in the way of a good populist narrative. The two wars combined have barely added up to a trillion dollars since 2001, far less than ONE YEAR's deficit under the current president:
Q+A-Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan tops $1 trillion | Reuters

Add care and support for veterans, spent capital the military will have to rebuild. Also, simply, compare the shrinking deficit the Bush administration inherited in 2001 with the massively greater one left in 2009, (which, admittedly, there hasn't been much work on since).

As far as being so concerned about tax breaks for the wealthy, many of these politicians have seen their wealth grow exponentially since getting elected to office... real 99 percenters. None of them have voluntarily paid more taxes (the IRS accepts donations) and their charitable contributions are often less than the national average. That's how they got elected though...they talk a good line about the evil rich and compassion for the poor and the elderly while they busily line their own pockets.

Granted, though I wouldn't worry too much about this guy.

[martialartist]

The facts, you have to be kidding, the top corporation paid zero to less taxes than the average voter. the wars have cost more than a trillion dollars when you factor war time pay..etc....and has for the tax breaks, well, that's another issue. Think about it, there's a huge and growing disparity between the middle class and the wealthy a gap that is still growing, so the fact that we keep clamouring for more tax break for people that clearly don't need it is interesting. i DO ALSO BELIEVE THAT TAX CREDITS FOR HAVING BABIES SHOULD GO AWAY, NO CREDITS FOR OWNING A HOME, GET RID OF ALL THESE CREDITS. The rationale provided as to why we need to give tax breaks and lower taxes are deceptive. Companies will still flee the USA if the current trade policies remain intect, but that's not the only problem, wages vare much much lower overseas, the working condition guidelines are much more lenient, so there lies many underlying reasons why companies flee. A number of reasons contribute to companies offshoring and the least of these are taxes. It's time that we start focusing on the core issue and stop thinking thAt taxes will cure all ills. There;s a break even point bewteen the right level taxes and too much taxes. I am not oppose to paying the right level taxes, I am an investor, trade stocks on a high volume basis and and invest in other areas in the country, but even I recognize that roads won't build themselves, so paying taxes to me is patriotic, however, my only disgust is that these nit wits don't spend our money better.

Do I think that people should be taxed to death certainly not, I'm just a bit exhausted that the only solution that is always offered by the republicans has to do with taxes, I mean seriously, didn't they have 15% corp tax rate in Ireland, how did that work out? I've lived under a few tax heavy systems where I'm originally from, so I do understand this issue intimately, and asking for higher taxes or lower taxes often times is the cowardly way politician try and dodge the fundamental and structural defiencies that exist.

[G-Man]

Well there's no point in my trying to have an intelligent discussion with facts if I'm going to cite an official CBO calculated figure on the 2001-2011 war costs and you're just going to give me an unsubstantiated claim that "no, it was actually way higher than that." If you can show me something to back up your claim; i.e. maybe show where defense costs rose substantially more during that period than accounted for by the CBO figure, then be my guest. Otherwise, simply saying that I'm wrong doesn't make me wrong.

And martialartist, I'm not going to get into whether corporations should pay more taxes since that's an argument no one's ever going to change their mind on (nevermind that under Bush, when the corporate tax rates were lowest, the government happened to pull in record-breaking levels of revenue from corporate taxes).

The main point of my post was to point out that the great Bernie Sanders' attempt to post the deficit-blame on the "two unfunded wars" (and hence Bush) is dishonest and ignores the fact that both Republicans and Democrats floored the accelerator full-steam ahead for government spending.

FACT: the wars account for just a small fraction of the total deficit during the last ten years.
FACT: you could tax the "wealthy" at 100 percent and it still wouldn't come close to covering the deficit. Nevermind if you raised it a mere 10 or 20 percent--the government could burn through that in a matter of days.
FACT: the "recklessness and illegal behavior" of Wall Street was made possible and even facilitated by reckless, shortsighted legislation from Congress.

So Bernie Sanders, take your righteous indignation somewhere else. We have something called the Internet now where people can find the facts and judge whether you're jerking our heartstrings with hyperbole and populist rhetoric or if what you're saying is based on reality.