Will fuck your shit up, Mitch McConnell:
Sanders said, “The question that we have to debate as a nation is that deficit reduction is a very important point, but we have to understand that today at 15.7% our revenue as part of GDP is the lowest that’s it has been in sixty years. So when Sen. McConnell says revenue is not the issue, he is dead wrong. Revenue is very much the issue. The American people have been very clear. They do not want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They do want to ask the wealthy and corporations to pay more in taxes.”
Sen. Sanders explained why the government is spending so much money right now, “Do you know why we are spending a lot of money? Because we are in the midst of a terrible Wall Street caused recession. Where real unemployment is close to 15%, and if we do not expand the Food Stamp program children in America go hungry. And if you do not provide unemployment compensation, workers will be out on the street having lost everything. Historically what happens when you are in the midst of this terrible, terrible recession, and again real unemployment close to 15%, what the American society has got to do as a society, is take care of people in need. As the economy improves, as fewer people are on unemployment, those spending programs should go down. But you can’t leave fellow Americans out there on the street.”
Sen. Sanders is correct. The government has historically spent money to keep people from starving and losing everything during economic downturns. When the economy gets better, and there are fewer people in need, the government spends less on these programs. Republicans have no evidence to support their position that cutting spending on economic assistance will grow the economy, and history has proven that what Republicans are advocating will only make things worse.
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Unemployment is the real problem. But if the Republicans admit to that fact they would have to explain 1) why the 112th Congress did not pass a jobs bill. 2) Why corporations are sitting on $5 trillion dollars in uninvested cash. 3) How the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% (the job creators) never created a single job. 4) How deregulation under Bush collapsed the banking system. 5) Why Republicans are systematiclly destroying the unions in order to lower the wages of workers and strip them of their benefits. 6) Explain to the American people that Capitalism is failing and must be replaced. The Republicans are horrible people who are doing whatever they think is necessary to save their wealth and maintain their power. And the people be damned.
It was good that Sanders provided historical reference in explaining how we should act when encountering a situation like this:
“…Historically what happens when you are in the midst of this terrible, terrible recession, and again real unemployment close to 15%, what the American society has got to do as a society, is take care of people in need…”
But it would have been even better had Sanders gone on to explain what happens to societies that ignore helping large numbers of people who are down and out.
You get populist movements that get ever more militant. And to counter those popular uprisings, you get conditions that are just right for the coming of dictators, fascism, etc.
Spell it out, Bernie. It’s not just a case of making nice. It is wise policy to provide a pressure relief valve on a very big boiler.