Thom Hartmann: And greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way, Thom Hartmann here with you. It is Friday, it is brunch with Bernie. Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders.Senate.Gov his website, with lots of links to cool things, his Facebook page, regular news feeds and the Bernie Buzz that you can subscribe to. His twitter: @SenatorSanders and Bernie, welcome, welcome back to the program.
Bernie Sanders: Good to be with you Thom.
Thom Hartmann: And I should add, Bernie will be taking your calls in just a few minutes for the rest of the hour. 866-987-THOM. And Bernie, it was great to see you in Madison last week. The census figures just came out and I’m guessing you already know this. But the median household income in 2010 dropped 10%. In Wisconsin, where you and I were speaking last weekend, it dropped 14.5%. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman points out in an op ed yesterday that in the period of 1979 to 2005, he’s looking at those stats, the income of the top 1/100th of 1% of Americans, the wealthiest Americans, went up 480% increase. And he asked the question rhetorically, “So do the wealthy look like the victims of class warfare?" Are they?
Bernie Sanders: Well look. I think that you and I have talked about, for many months now and in fact for years, the reality of the American economy today is extremely dismal. What we’re looking at, and certainly this is not just rhetorical, it’s fact, is a disappearing middle class. When you talk about people seeing substantial declines in their income. When you’re talking about, in real terms, 16% of our people be unemployed, when you’re talking about a substantial increase in poverty, I think you mentioned earlier that close to 25% of our children are living in poverty. And that is not only a disaster for ourselves today, it foretells very bad things for the future of this countries if these young people don’t get the nutrition, the healthcare, the education they need to become productive tax paying citizens in years to come.
And meanwhile, while poverty increases, while unemployment soars, while real income goes down for the middle class, people on top are doing phenomenally well. And despite the fact that the media in most cases misses this point, virtually everything that takes place here in congress has to do with which side you are on. And our republican friends have made it very, very clear. They are there, receiving huge amounts of money in campaign contributions, working with lobbyists, to protect this top 1%, or the top 1/10th of 1% whose incomes and wealth have soared in recent years, while ordinary people have seen major set backs, economically.
So what you have right now, and one of the outstanding facts, Thom, I don’t know if you have additional facts on this, but last that I heard the top 400 people, 400 people, own more wealth in America than the bottom 1/2 of America, about 150 million people. And with this wealth, what these people do is invest in politics, that’s campaign contributions, invest in media, so they can control the message. They certainly have enormous power over the economy. They’re working right now to continue these disastrous trade policies, which have resulted in the closure of thousands and thousands of factories in America, and jobs being sent over abroad or absurd tax proposals which protect the wealthy and large corporations. So where we are right now is a major, major debate about the future of this country.
Right up there, to my mind, at the top of the debate, is the need right now to create millions and millions of good paying jobs so that we can substantially lower this disastrous unemployment rate. And one way you do that is invest in our crumbling infrastructure. And when you do that you do a number of things. When you rebuild our roads, and bridges and water systems and airports and rail and schools, etc. you are not only putting people back to work, you’re also making the country more competitive because you have a good rail system, good air system, good broadband system, good cell phone service. We’d become more productive and more internationally competitive. Second of all what you’re doing is lowering the deficit because when people are put back on payrolls, and are earning a paycheck, they’re paying taxes. Because the major reason that we have such a high deficit now is unemployment is so high, small businesses are struggling, they’re not paying taxes, and our revenue level is the lowest that it has been in decades.
The other things that we can be doing to rekindle the economy is transform our energy system to become energy independent so that we’re not spending 350 billion dollars a year importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries. And lastly, and this is coming up, right now, very soon, and I hope the American people engage in this debate. Is whether we continue these disastrous trade policies, such as NAFTA, CAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China, which in my view, have cost us millions of jobs as corporations have shut down plants in this country and moved to China.
Thom, some good news I think, in the midst of a lot of bad news is, I think, and I say this as chairman of the defending social security caucus, as you have heard me state on this show, have been very concerned about some of the things President Obama and other democrats have been saying about social security. The republicans, we know, have always wanted to attack social security, make major cuts, privatize social security. I was disturbed by what some democrats had to say. I’m very happy that just last week the president announced that Social Security was not going to be in his deficit reduction package. So, for a while at least, we are in a position now of being able to defend social security. We’ve got to focus on Medicare, we’ve got to focus on Medicaid.
There are ways to do deficit reduction that are fair. You ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes, you do away with the loopholes that large corporations have enjoyed for years. You take a hard look at military spending and you ask the question why the United States has to spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined, triple defense spending, since 1997. We can make cuts there as well. So right now, as a nation, we are on a cutting edge here, and profound decisions will be made about where we go in the future. The republican party has increasingly become a right wing extremist party, whose members in many cases believe that we should abolish Social Security, abolish Medicare as we know it, make major cuts in Medicaid, while you give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and large corporations. I think that they are way out of touch with where the American people are, but that’s the battle that we are currently engaged in.
Thom Hartmann: I’m curious your thoughts on this, in the minute we have left, in this dance between the house and senate right now where the republicans seem hell bent for leather on cutting something, clean energy programs or something, in exchange for …
Bernie Sanders: Of course this deals with disaster relief.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah for disaster relief. I mean they’re not cutting anything to pay for rebuilding Iraq.
Bernie Sanders: No. Historically, because we are a nation, because we are one nation, when earthquakes strike California or a tornado strikes Joplin Missouri, or floods strike the midwest, we as a nation say we are there to help you rebuild your communities. For the first time in modern history, what republicans are now saying, not all but the vast majority, are now saying oh you want disaster relief to help replace and rebuild the homes that have been lost in a flood in Vermont or New Jersey, you want help for the business communities, the businesses that have been destroyed, well we’re going to have to cut other programs, we’re going to have to have a major disaster. This is a horrible, horrible approach, which I am going to fight as strongly as I can. In fact just passed a vote against that approach a few minutes ago.
Thom Hartmann: God on you. That’s great. Senator Bernie Sanders with us, it’s Brunch with Bernie, your calls, our national town hall meeting, coming up next.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
