Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., spoke for eight and a half hours on Friday to block Senate debate on President Barack Obama’s tax cut deal struck with the GOP leadership. Sanders started talking nonstop at 10:25 a.m. and finished at 7 p.m. Here are his opening remarks: “I’m not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. 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.”
The last true filibuster was in 1992, according to the Associated Press.
Between Monday and Wednesday, Sanders received 2,000 calls and about 1,900 e-mails from constituents who are unhappy about the proposed tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, which are projected to cost $700 billion over the next two years, at a time when the nation faces a significant deficit. Will Wiquist, a staffer in Sanders’ D.C. office, described the outpouring as “massive.”
Here is a round up of stories about the filibuster in media outlets around the country.
Watch Sanders on C-SPAN: http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
LA Times “Sanders: It has been a very long day”
Huffington Post VIDEO: “Sanders reads ‘Third World America’ speech”
From Talking Points Memo: Sanders has been decrying the Obama tax cut plan for bailing out the wealthiest people in America. “How can I get by on one house?” Sanders railed, sarcastically. “I need five houses, ten houses. I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the power.”
TPM#2: “Through a filibuster darkly”
Politico overview of the politics behind the bill
Business Insider graphic: “Gap between richest 1 percent and everyone else hasn’t been this big since the Roaring Twenties”
Read a copy of the bill, HR 4853
Sanders’ Dec. 7 statement about the tax deal:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today on the agreement announced Monday between the White House and congressional Republicans:
“In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else that the Republicans would deny extended unemployment benefits to 2 million workers who are desperately struggling to pay their bills and maintain their dignity. It is also beyond comprehension that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire middle class of this country so that millionaires and billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my view, that is not what this country is about and it is not what the American people want to see. Our job is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower taxes for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and increase the national debt that our children and grandchildren would have to pay.
“The immediate political task in front of us is to rally the American people so that in the next several weeks we can find at least a few Republicans who will join us in saying no to increasing the deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and no to holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage.
“I believe that we have the American people on our side on this issue. My office, and I come from a small state, has received more than 600 calls today, 99 percent of them in opposition to this so-called compromise that the president negotiated with the Republicans.
“I will do everything in my power to stand up for the American middle class and defeat this agreement.”
