Salmon challenges Sanders on filibuster

**Immediate Release** Contact: Tom Salmon
July 25, 2010 802-535-1555

SALMON FOR A STRONGER VERMONT
Issues the following statement :

“Auditor Tom Salmon CPA points Vermonters to the events surrounding Senator Sander’s 8 hour and 37 minute Speech last December when the “The Moment of Truth: Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” was being released by the Bowles/Simpson group. Salmon says the actions by Sanders could be memorialized as a case study in Class Warfare and Washington dysfunction. The Vermonters that are paying attention, and the media that commits to honesty are going to hold him accountable in 2012.”

Auditor Salmon urges Vermonters to ask their Senator Sanders, “How is that filibuster working for you and this country now?” Salmon who was returning from military duty on December 10, 2010, rode back on the DC to Burlington flight four seats away from the Senator after his famous filibuster-type speech, finds it disturbing that the famous speech of nearly 8 months ago did nothing to advance the cause of fiscal responsibility in this country. He asked the Senator on the plane, “Any filibusters today?” And the Senator muttered “Just one”.

Salmon believes this speech was in a reaction to a report commissioned by the president to resolve the debt and spending crisis. A draft of the report was released exactly one month before this famous speech, with the final version released only 10 days prior . “Sanders creatively made the public think it was all about tax cuts for the rich” said Salmon. ["If [Obama] caves in now, who’s going to believe that he’s not going to do the same thing in two years,” Sanders said, expressing his belief that a vote in the future would produce a further and perhaps permanent extension of the cuts.]Huffposthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/bernie-sanders-filibuster_n_795087.html

Salmon says “it was a classic case of Sanders playing with people’s emotions over a grass fire when the house is really burning down. Thirty days before, a draft comprehensive plan was put forth. It should have been the focus, the roadmap. Instead, we have this mess eight months later and no solutions. It was another case of Class Warfare Rhetoric by Sanders.”

Report for a nation’s solutions December 1, 2010 http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf

Senator Sanders Speech on Tax cuts and Unfairness- 10 days later, 30 days after draft report was released
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/12/10/131963655/happening-now-sen-sanders-filibuster-of-the-tax-deal

Print media – thank you for your consideration.

Sanders is a Senator of the United States

Senator Sanders is a Senator of the United States. He is not a lobbyist for the AARP, the Veterans of America or the many Unions that financially support him. He has not spent a day teaching in the public schools, nor a day on the battlefield. He is neither a nuclear scientist, a CPA or a healthcare professional. He is a United States Senator who is hopefully working to improve the performance of this country at this critical time. But yet, he has spent the last year raising $1.5 million for his re-election campaign and getting people whipped into a frenzy over “unfairness”. Nearly eight months after his famous filibuster, when leaders are truly needed, he is particularly quiet as solutions are being sought. You cannot forget that he gave his famous speech when “The Moment of Truth: Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” was being released by the Bowles/Simpson group. David Walker’s group was also posing good ideas for Congress to support, all of which our nation’s leaders ignored. They chickened out. Thier procrastination over a transparent problem, such as the spending obligations and debt ceiling, has become everyone’s emergency. I hope all will take a moment to reflect on what is happening because Senator Sanders is a very strong contributor to the way things are in Washington, DC right now. If you review the last two or twenty years of Bernie Buzz communication, he has created great division, distrust and resentment one seed at a time. He has earned a black belt in delivering half-truths (“Social insurance programs are not the problem”) and this makes him an absolute obstruction to progress. Let us urge Senator Sanders and the rest of his counterparts in dysfunctial Washington, DC to “Serve the United States of America which means all the people within the states, or to leave their post and become a lobbyist for their favorite organization.”

Thomas M. Salmon CPA
VT State Auditor
88 Clinton Ave
St Johnsbury, VT 05819