Thom Hartmann: "Brunch With Bernie”. Our, of course, our national town hall meeting, been going on for years and years and years, one of my favorite, my favorite hour of the entire week, and I know for many of you it is as well. Your opportunity to talk with not just a United States Senator, but in my opinion, our United States Senator. The guy who’s always there for the average American, for working people, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont. His website is sanders.senate.gov and he’s got a great newsletter there as well. Bernie, welcome to the show.

Bernie Sanders: Great to be with you, Thom.

Thom Hartmann: Bernie, it’s always wonderful to have you here.

So, we have this piece of healthcare legislation that Harry Reid has finally merged the two Senate Committee Bills, the Health Committee, and the Finance Committee, into a single piece of legislation. He’s brought it to the Senate, and I guess debate going to begin on it this weekend, God willing. It ain’t single-payer, my understanding it starts in 2013, 2014, something like that. It’s got a lot of holes in it. On the other hand, there’s many who are saying it’s better than nothing. I’m curious what your take is on it.

Bernie Sanders: Well, let’s take a deep breath. First of all, the bill is over two thousand pages. And you know, I’m not a great fan of complexity. I always think that the longer something is, the more complex it is, the more room there is in it for special interests to get their two cents in. So that I find a little bit troubling. But I think, Thom, you hit it on the head. It is not what many of us want, and what many of us believe is the only way to provide comprehensive, universal and cost-effective, underline cost-effective, health care for all of our people, and that's a Medicare for all single-payer. And the reason that single-payer does that, is it brings out hundreds of billions of dollars in waste that the private insurance companies develop through the administration and bureaucracy of thousands of separate plans, each designed to make a profit.

So this bill certainly does not do that, and the reason it doesn’t is that the private insurance companies and the drug companies are too powerful. You have a Republican party which has now excluded themselves from serious debate. They’re not involved at all. They are much more interested in representing the interests of the private insurance companies than engaging in this real crisis than impacts millions and millions of Americans. And the Democrats have some conservative people in their party as well.

So, where we are now is with kind of a very complicated bill, which does some very good things, but it has some significant weaknesses as well. So I’m not one of those people who are going to be on TV saying, “Oh, this is historic. This is fantastic. This is great.” No. This is a step forward in some ways. There are many problems in it, and in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to do my best to strengthen this legislation. And as you indicated, there’s going to be a vote actually tomorrow night, Saturday night [21st November 2009]. I’m going to be flying back from Burlington to cast the vote in order to keep the process going.

The vote on Saturday night is a motion to proceed. We expect the Republicans of course will be filibustering, which is what they do on virtually everything that’s important. Sixty votes are needed. I will cast a vote to go forward. But as I have said many, many times, my vote, in terms of final passage, is not at all guaranteed unless I see this bill strengthened. But I do think it’s important that we begin the process, we go forward with amendments and I will be having many, many amendments to strengthen the bill.

Thom Hartmann: Right. So just in summary, you’re not going to, unlike Joe Lieberman, the other Independent in the Senate, you’re not threatening to either block the discussion, or block the end of the discussion, but you may or may not vote for the actual piece of legislation. Which would wouldn’t make or break it, because if it’s only going to take fifty votes, and there’s sixty...

Bernie Sanders: No, no, no, no. That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not the case, Thom. This bill, we will see how this bill, certainly I’m going to vote and actually Lieberman, as I understand it, is going to vote to allow the process to go forward.

Thom Hartmann: OK. Right.

Bernie Sanders: But at the end of the day we have got to be careful about passing something that is not just a significant handout to the private insurance companies who will add thirty million more customers to their rolls, who will make billions and billions of dollars more in profits. Let me just touch on some of what I think the positive is in this legislation, some of what is the negative. This is just, you know, a small part of what’s in the two thousand-page bill.

Number one – we have forty-six million Americans who are uninsured. That includes a number of people who are non-legals in this country. This bill will provide insurance for thirty-one million Americans, which will bring us up to about ninety-eight percent of legal Americans, which is pretty good. That’s good news.

Number two – right now, many parents know, if your kid is in college for example, the day your kid leaves college, he or she loses health insurance. This bill keeps that child in the family plan until the age of twenty-six. That is very good.

This bill institutes some significant insurance reforms. Pre-existing conditions, not being able to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, is an abomination. This eliminates that.

It eliminates recision, if you were really sick last year, and you ran up a big health care bill, they can’t throw you off. That's good.

A lifetime cap is now gone. If you have a serious illness, they’re not going to be able to exclude payments because of that. That’s good stuff.

Now here’s some of the aspects of it that I think are not so good.

You know, Thom, you and I, and the American people have been hearing all about public options, right, and how important this is. Well, the Senate bill provides public options we think, there may be one or two percent of the American people and that is obviously pathetic. My hope is, and we will certainly be offering amendments to this, is to expand the number of people who can get into what we call the exchange, and so that they can have an opportunity, if they choose, not to have a private insurance company, but go with a Medicare type public option.

I want, you know, large numbers of people to have that option for two reasons. I think people should have the choice, every American should have that choice, but secondly, if we are serious about cost containment, you have to have some competition with the private insurance companies whose only goal in life is to make as much money as possible. So this is a real weakness. It’s a weakness in the House bill. It’s even weaker in the Senate bill because there is an opt-out provision, meaning that many of the conservative states will probably vote to opt-out, leaving their constituents without any public option at all. That’s a very weak aspect of the bill.

And that touches on another issue, which is also enormously important. As a nation today, we’re spending approximately two a half trillion dollars every year on health care. We spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other major country, and yet our outcomes are not necessarily as good as many other countries. What will this bill do to curb cost containment? And the answer is, not a heck of a lot.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah.

Bernie Sanders: So, everything being equal, if you’re an average person and have employer-based health care, can you expect health care costs to continue to go up under this programme? The answer is, sadly, you can.

So there are a number of other issues. For example, how do you pay for the bill? The bill is going to be, in the Senate it’s about eight hundred and forty nine billion. Some of the funding, for in the Senate, a good chunk of that comes from impacts on so-called Cadillac health care plans. The Teamsters recently came out in opposition on that. I think the Teamsters are right, because as the cost of health care goes up, a good, not a Cadillac, but a good health insurance programme becomes more expensive for working people. Middle class people are going to have to pay more.

Thom Hartmann: So that’s not indexed.

Bernie Sanders: It is indexed, but not indexed to the cost of increased health care costs. It’s indexed to the CPR. So that is a very serious problem. I much prefer what the House has done, which is a tax on wealthy people. That's an issue that we want to look at.

I want to make sure that the abortion issue is dealt with successfully as well. And by the way, the Senate bill does that. So, my point here is this is a step forward. There are a number of good things in it. There are a number of weak aspects to this. And we have got to make this bill stronger. And I intend to play an active role in that.

Thom Hartmann: And it’s a shame that it couldn’t be a one-sentence piece of legislation that says that the age of eligibility for Medicare is now zero.

Bernie Sanders: Something like that. That's right. I don;t know about one page, but it could have been a couple of pages.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, there you go. Senator Bernie Sanders is with us, sanders.senate.gov. Our 'Brunch with Bernie' hour. He'll be picking up your calls right after this.

...

Thom Hartmann: Senator Bernie Sanders with us. Our first hour Friday "Brunch With Bernie”, and Bernie, ready to pick up some phone calls?

Bernie Sanders: Let’s do it.

Thom Hartmann: OK, Chris, in Carson, California, you’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Chris: Yes. Good morning Thom, and good morning, Senator Sanders, and good morning America. In the name of volunteerism, Senator Sanders, from the union that brought you Harry Bridges and began to instigate in this country the forty-hour work week, we, due to donations from the International Longshore Warehouseman's Union at local 13 and 63 and 94 and affiliates, we’ll be having our twelfth annual Feed The Community day, this coming Tuesday, November 24th, in Wilmington, California. And each year we're giving a large wicker basket with seventy pounds of Thanksgiving meals, including a turkey, all the trimmings, and this basket will feed about ten people, to needy pre-qualifiers, needy people, and, you know, this is what we as a union and active volunteerism should do, to give back to the community. This is what we do at our union.

Bernie Sanders: Well, Chris, let me just congratulate you and the union, you’ve got a great union there, and I think all of us are appreciative of your efforts to make sure that people are not going hungry. As a nation, I think we should be a bit embarrassed that in this day and age we have millions of people who are struggling with food security, in many cases are not able to get the kind of food on the table that they should. And it is an excellent step forward and it talks about what unions are about that you guys are prepared to do that. So, thank you very much.

Thom Hartmann: Matt, in Charlevoix, Michigan, my mother’s home town, and the place where both my mom and dad are buried. Matt, welcome, you’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Matt: Yeah, thank you Thom, and unfortunately we’re represented by Bart Stupak.

Thom Hartmann: You’re kidding. Bart Stupak represents Charlevoix?

Caller Matt: Well I know that he represents Antrim county. I live right on the county line, and I believe Charlevoix is a part of it.

Thom Hartmann: Oh man.

Caller Matt: I know Petoskey is, so I don’t see how Charlevoix couldn’t be.

Thom Hartmann: Oh. You have my sympathies.

Caller Matt: I think a chunk of Traverse is, and, of course, most of the district is up in the U.P. [Upper Peninsula], but...

Thom Hartmann: Yep. I thought he was just the U.P. Anyway, your comment for Bernie. I’m sorry, Matt.

Caller Matt: Yes, that’s ok. Yeah, unfortunately, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in this President to stand up for the working class and so what I’d like to find out is, does the President have the authority to block the expiration of the Bush tax cuts next year? And I'll take my answer off the air, thank you.

Thom Hartmann: Thanks, Matt.

Bernie Sanders: Well, the Bush tax cuts are going to be allowed to expire, and the President has made it clear that he supports that. The question is whether we should move up that expiration date. I think there are many of us who believe that it is at a time when we have a twelve trillion dollar national debt, when we have the greatest differential between, in terms of gaps, between the very rich and everybody else. The idea of giving tax breaks to billionaires has not made a whole lot of sense. So many of us would move more aggressively but I think Obama has made it clear that he will allow the Bush tax breaks to expire.

Thom Hartmann: Sue, in Rockville, Maryland, you’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Sue: Hi, good afternoon. I want to wish you both a very happy Thanksgiving holiday, and I give thanks for people like you who help all Americans to have better lives, so I thank you for that. My question to you though is, what I don’t understand is, why don’t we just eliminate the FICA cap. I cannot, I called my own Senators. No one will explain to me. Most Americans pay one hundred percent of their income is FICA. They pay the six percent in FICA, and yet the richer you are, the more the more you make, the tinier the percentage.

Bernie Sanders: Correct.

Caller Sue: If we just eliminated the cap, then we would have such a continuing revenue, which would not negatively impact anybody. Working class Americans are already paying their fair share, and the richer people, the high-income earners, would not feel that different. And it would be an amazing way to increase revenue, and I just don’t understand. It seems to me a simple solution.

Bernie Sanders: Ok, well let me say this Sue. Let me give you a two-word answer to your question. You’re right. That’s about it. That’s the two words. What Sue is saying is that right now, if my memory is correct, if you are a billionaire, or if you make a billion dollars a year, you are paying into the social security system on the first hundred and six thousand, I think it is Thom, roughly speaking.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah.

Bernie Sanders: And you know, that means that after the first day of your job there, you’re not contributing anything. And what Sue is saying, if you lift that cap to the extent of everybody’s income, you’ll bring in a heck of a lot more money. And I believe that, and if you do that, what you would do is basically solve the so-called social security crisis. You would bring in enough money to make the system strong and solvent for fifty or seventy-five years. Now, interestingly enough, in the Senate health care bill, 'cause FICA deals with social security and Medicare, what Harry Reid has proposed is in fact an increase in the Medicare aspect of that. He hasn’t lifted the cap, but he has raised the amount that upper income people would pay, which I think is significant, and a progressive way to fund health care.

Thom Hartmann: Steven, in Gainesville, Florida, you’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Steven: Mr. Sanders, thank you for taking my call. First, before I get to my questions, I would like to say that I’m very disappointed in the bill because it doesn’t do what I believe is, fix the real problems, which is the price of health care in this country. Not the lack of coverage, but the price of health care in general. That leads me to my two questions about the bill. First off, one of the big things about this bill that we’ve been hearing over and over again, you know, Senators talking about, is that it's going to make it where insurance companies do not say, you know, no pre-existing conditions. Is there anything in the bill that will keep those insurance companies from charging an exorbitant amount of money for coverage because you have, let’s say, diabetes or a heart defect.

Bernie Sanders: Yes, I think that is covered. That is the point. The answer I believe, I’m quite certain, is yes to that, Steven.

Caller Steven: So then there is a provision in there to keep the insurance companies from raping the people who…

Bernie Sanders: Yeah, in other words, your point is, what good is language, if they charge some outrageous price for the policy, right? That’s Steven’s point, and I think that is understood. Yes, the answer to Steven’s question is yes. There is language in there.

Thom Hartmann: It's "Brunch With Bernie”, our weekly national townhall meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders, I think of him as America's senator. Check out his website, sanders.senate.gov. We'll be right back.

...

Thom Hartmann: So, it is our "Brunch With Bernie” hour, Senator Bernie Sanders with us, and Bernie, you're still here, right?

Bernie Sanders: I am right here.

Thom Hartmann: OK, great. Let's pick up...

Bernie Sanders: This TV camera you have here, it keeps a close watch on me...

Thom Hartmann: Oh that's right, I should have looked at the monitor.

Bernie Sanders: ... Can't leave the desk.

Thom Hartmann: I have to get, I try to get into the habit of not looking at the monitor because it looks weird when I look, but I could have just looked over there, there you are, and it's great having you on.

Mike, in Lorain, Ohio. You are on with Senator Sanders.

Caller Mike: Hi Thom, hi Bernie.

Bernie Sanders: Hi Mike.

Caller Mike: I have two questions. I understand that the health care bill is modelled after the state of Massachusetts, and I was wondering how much the fines were going to be for those folks who aren’t able to purchase health care, and also who’s going to enforce it.

Bernie Sanders: Ok, that is a very fair question, and I’m scrambling in my papers. I think, Michael, hold on, that the number is seven hundred and fifty dollars, and what will be the case, is that, yeah, there's seven hundred and fifty dollar penalty. And the, there will be no penalty if a premium exceeds twelve and a half percent of income. In other words, what clearly the legislation is not intended to do is to say to some low-income person who has no money, that you’re forced to buy health insurance. I should also mention, and again, I want everybody to know that I am ambivalent. There are positive aspects of this legislation there are negative.

But also, Mike, you should be aware that there is going to be a substantial increase in Medicaid. Fourteen million more Americans in the Senate plan would come in to Medicaid, which is free. But there will be a responsibility. What is called an individual responsibility for people who can afford to pay something, to kick in under the argument, which I think, has some validity, that if you get hit by a bus or end up in hospital, somebody else is going to have to pay for your bills; you should contribute something to the best of your ability. So that’s what the number is, the max is seven fifty.

Thom Hartmann: Michael in Los Angeles, listening on KTLK. You’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Michael: Yes, Senator, I’m curious. You say that you [unclear] thirty million people are going to be insured and more insured. Where are we going to come up with all these doctors?

Bernie Sanders: You know, Mike, that’s a very good question, and I’ll tell you. One of the provisions in there that I pushed which is in the bill right now. It is absolutely imperative to my mind that it stays in the bill, is we expand the number of community health centers in this country from about thirteen hundred to over five thousand. So we are going to radically change primary health care to make sure that every American has access to a doctor. And also, we are increasing by ten times, ten times, the amount of money for the national health service corps which forgives debts and provides scholarships to those physicians who get into primary health care in under-served areas. So there is, you ask a very important question. We do not have enough primary health care doctors right now, and this bill, in fact, takes us very significant way forward to creating more primary health care physicians.

Thom Hartmann: That's great. Bernice, in Dearborn, suburban Detroit, Michigan. Bernice, you’re on with Senator Sanders.

Caller Bernice: Thank you. Hi Senator Sanders, hi Thom. I understand that nine million Americans are not covered by this bill. What is to happen to them?

Bernie Sanders: That is, to the best of my knowledge ninety-eight percent of legal American citizens are covered, and you’re right. There is a gap of two percent, which is...

Thom Hartmann: It would be about six million people.

Bernie Sanders: Six or seven million people, and they are out of the system right now. What would happen to them, is that we build community health centers. They would have access to primary health care and affordable medicine, based on a sliding scale basis, and then they would, you know, those two million people would remain in the same position they are in today, which is a bad position.

Thom Hartmann: Steve, listening in KPOJ in Portland, in Eagle Creek, Oregon. You’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Steve: Hi Senator. I, like a whole lot of people, have been paying attention to what’s going on in the financial community now, and the basic rape of the entire financial system by a bunch of buccaneers. I understand that Obama got four out of five of his dollars came from Wall Street. But, he’s going to have to re-regulate at some point, because if he does not, if there is no re-regulation, we’re going right down the tubes. Because the whole world financial system will collapse. Is there any move at all to try and restructure the financial re-regulation, the Glass-Steagall and so forth?

Bernie Sanders: Sure.

Caller Steve: Thom had a guy named Max on a while back who he had some very interesting points.

Thom Hartmann: Max Keiser, yeah. By the way, the four out of five dollars from the financial services industry to the Obama campaign, it’s nothing even close to that. He got a lot of money from the financial services, but nothing like that much.

Bernie Sanders: Not 80%. He got a lot of money, but it was not by any means eighty percent.

Let me tell you, Steve. The answer is yes, obviously yes. You know, Congress moves very, very slowly. Right now, obviously we’re on health care, probably the next issue we’ll be dealing with are jobs. We have seventeen percent of the American people who are unemployed or under-employed. How do we create the millions of jobs that people desperately need? That’s probably next on the agenda and then after that, and in committee in the House certainly, right now, and in the Senate soon, will be financial reform.

Let me just tell you some good news, Steve, that’s out there. Just within the last couple of days, on the House Financial Services Committee, of which I used to be am member, two very significant pieces of legislation were passed, which begin to tell me that members of Congress are sick and tired of the power and the greed of Wall Street and are prepared perhaps to stand up to them. Two pieces of legislation.

Number One – My old friend Paul Kanjorski did something similar to what we are going to be doing in the Senate. He passed legislation which gives the administration the authority, the authority to begin to break up those financial institutions which are too big to fail. And that won with a pretty good majority of the House Financial Institutions Committee. And the reason you want to do that is it is absolutely insane to my mind that some of the largest financial institutions in this country, which caused the collapse of Wall Street and the bail-out, have now gotten actually bigger. Three out of the four largest financial institutions have gotten bigger, which means the next time they go under, the bail-out will even be larger. That is crazy.

Number Two – In terms of concentration of ownership and making competition very, very difficult in the financial industry, these four major financial institutions write half of the mortgages in America, and two-thirds of the credit cards, control forty percent of bank deposits. So in my view, if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We've got to start breaking them up. I’ve got legislation in the Senate to do that, and a little bit more conservative legislation but along that line just passed the Financial Services Committee in the House.

Furthermore, another piece of legislation introduced by Ron Paul, whose views on many issues are different than mine, but on this issue we are on the same page, calls for an audit of the Fed. 'What role, who has received trillions of dollars in zero interest loans, what financial institutions?' among other questions that have to be answered. And that language, that amendment also passed in the Financial Institutions Committee. So we have similar language in the Senate.

So, I think there is a growing sentiment in the Congress that you have a handful of large Wall Street institutions whose only concern in life is to make huge amounts of money for the CEO’s and the other major players in that industry, that could care less about the middle class working families of this country and it is high time that Congress begun, has begun to stand up to them.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, amen. Bernie, just very quickly, if I can take this moment to lobby you, when the jobs legislation comes forward. The third week of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, he looked out at the dust bowl, and said, and knew, you know, that this was in large part caused by the deforestation of the Mid-West and unsustainable agricultural practices, and said, “We need to plant millions of trees. We’re going to hire average Americans, put them to work on the government payroll to plant trees all across America” and he had the CCC in place a month after his Presidency began, and it was tremendously successful. I would submit to you that we have the same kind of crisis right now. What we need to be doing is like what Germany has already done, only perhaps we should do it the CCC way, which is put solar panels on the roofs of every American household, and that would be a hell of a jobs programme.

Bernie Sanders: Thom, that is exactly one of the things under consideration. In fact, as you may know, I introduced last year, and we will re-introduce, legislation calling for ten million solar rooftops in America. If we can produce those solar panels in the United States, and when we install them, we create a heck of a lot of jobs. We create a lot of electricity. We begin the process of breaking our dependency on foreign oil, spending three hundred and fifty billion dollars a year importing foreign oil. And we cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. So when we talk about a jobs programme, obviously focussing on energy, energy efficiency, and the creation of sustainable energy, to my mind is very high up there in the priority list.

Thom Hartmann: That's great, thank you, Senator Bernie Sanders with us taking your calls. It’s our "Brunch With Bernie” hour, sanders.senate.gov his website. He’s got a great newsletter over there. If you want to drop into our live free chat room or watch our live free video stream, thomhartmann.com, or our message boards

...

Thom Hartmann: It's our "Brunch with Bernie" hour, Senator Bernie Sanders with us ...

Mary, in Dallas, Fort Worth, you’re on the air with Senator Sanders.

Caller Mary: Hello, thanks for taking my call. The Senator had expressed a concern that he didn’t want this bill to just be a give-away to the insurance companies, of just throwing a bunch of more new business their way. But I’d like to make two points about people who are covered by employer plans. My understanding is this bill will not give people who currently have access to insurance through an employer to be able to get to the exchange and buy perhaps maybe a better, cheaper option through the exchange. I think that’s a big loophole that needs to be addressed. And secondly, it's more of a question but has to do with employer insurance with this bill. If someone has access to a health care plan, as a retiree, will that retiree have the ability to go to the exchange, or will that retiree have to be stuck with the retiree plan that's offered through the employer from which he or she retired from?

Bernie Sanders: Mary, that is two excellent questions. Before I try to answer them, let me say this. I am going to do my best to get up on my website, in English, a breakdown of this health insurance, this complicated health insurance programme.

Thom Hartmann: And that website is sanders.senate.gov

Bernie Sanders: Sanders.senate.gov. We’ve got some stuff up now, we’ll do better in the future, so if people want some information, in English, we’ll try to provide that.

Mary asked two questions. Let me do my best here. In terms of the first one, Mary raises an exactly right point, and she’s hit on clearly one of the weaknesses, and I mentioned this earlier on. Mary, right now if you are in, for example a Wal-Mart plan or a McDonalds plan, it really depends on the “affordability” of that plan, how strong the coverage is, what your own income is. Because a lot of what this is about is saying that people should not be asked to pay for premiums more than a certain percentage of their incomes. But Mary makes an important point that in general, if you are in a not particularly good employer-based health care plan, you may be stuck there. You will not have access to the exchange, and to a public option. And that is in fact is a weakness of this plan and something that we are trying to deal with. I mentioned earlier that the number of people who will take advantage of the public option is very, very small. And one of the amendments that I and other Senators will be fighting hard for is to substantially expand that. If I had my druthers, with few exceptions, I would open up the exchange to everybody in America and get that public option out there as well. People deserve the choice, and that’s an important point, for cost containment.

And I would say, Mary, the answer to your second question is also the same, that probably people would be stuck with what they have right now, depending on their income, and depending on the quality of the programme, there may be exceptions.

Thom Hartmann: Great. hank you.

Greg, in Los Angeles, you’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Greg: Hey everybody. What a mess we’ve got. You were talking about different issues just now. One issue that I’d like to discuss is Katrina and in terms of trying to break up, diversify all these monopolies that are too big to fail. How would you suggest we re-regulate or regulate and break up the reconstruction industry that may be tapped for all the Federal funds now that the Army Corps of Engineers is fingered for it for Katrina. How can you make sure that we don’t have a great big favoritism contractor boondoggle like we have in Iraq?

Bernie Sanders: Ok Greg, you’ve gone from Iraq to the Army Corps of Engineers to Katrina to the Fed. So we’ve covered a lot of territory over there. I think that what we are trying to do in terms of financial reform, is simply to say that when you have a taxpayer liability, that if a huge financial institution goes under and brings systemic damage to the entire country, we have got to prevent that. And the way you prevent that is breaking up any institution that is in fact too big to fail. And that concentration of ownership, that when you have a handful of these large companies issuing the bulk of credit cards and mortgages, they can dictate price, rather than a more competitive market with smaller players involved.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Indeed.

Let's see here, Marcie, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, you’re on the air with Senator Bernie Sanders.

Caller Marcie: Good morning. I have what I think is a good compromise if the stupid Stupak amendment is also added or something like that to the Senate bill. My compromise would apply to the fact that these people are supposedly so pro-life that if a woman who needs an abortion, comes for an abortion, and of course she’s denied, then she should be subsidized to have the child, and given about fifty thousand dollars perhaps to have a good start for the child, and you’re wondering how we pay for that. That would be very expensive, but it would be paid for by giving a surtax on all the churches in the nation. And any other children this woman has also should be subsidized, like the day care of their choice. So what do you think? Do you think this might fly?

Bernie Sanders: Oh I think it'll probably get unanimous support in the House. I think it will probably win in a flash. [ lots of laughing ]

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, it's a, you know, we can dream.

Bernie Sanders: But on that issue, on that issue, that important issue, the Senate bill is a lot better than the House bill and we hope that's what we'll eventually...

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. And hopefully something ultimately good will come out of reconciliation. Senator Bernie Sanders, sanders.senate.gov Bernie, thanks so much.

Bernie Sanders: Fine. Good to be with you, Thom.

Thom Hartmann: Always.

Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.