On Reaganomics’ flop at the box office:
For my friends, my republican colleagues, to tell me that we need more tax cuts for the very rich, because that’s going to create jobs, that’s what trickle down economics is all about. What I would say to them is: Ya had your chance! It failed! In case you don’t know, losing 600,000 private sector jobs in eight years is not good. That’s very, very bad. That’s an economic policy that is bad. We don’t need to look at that movie again. We saw it. It stunk! It was a very bad movie!
On the gulf between lawmakers and the poor:
Do you know what dented can stores are? Most members of the House and Senate, and governors, do not get their meals from dented cans. But millions of Americans do.
On free trade agreements:
Under President Bush alone, we lost some 48,000 factories. We went from 19 million manufacturing jobs to 12 million manufacturing jobs. And in many cases those were good jobs.
Obviously it is a lot cheaper for the American companies to set up plants in China, hire Chinese workers at 50 cents an hour or 75 cents an hour or whatever it is, and have them build products for the Chinese markets that it is to pay American workers $15 an hour, $20 an hour, provide health insurance, deal with the union, deal with the environment. You know, that’s not a great revelation. I think anyone could have figured that one out, but you know, the big money interests around here, they pushed it, and Congress and President Clinton at that time signed it and we were off and running.
On how we should be spending the tax-cut money instead:
The Federal Highway Administration reports that 130 billion must be invested annually for a 20-year period to improve our bridges and the operational performance of our highways. At present, Mr. President, one in four of the nation’s bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete… We need to improve our infrastructure, and when we do that, we can create millions of jobs.
On unemployment benefits:
I get upset when I hear that the Republicans’ unwillingness to support an extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months is a major compromise…Whenever the unemployment is above 7.2 percent, always, whether the president was Democratic or the president was Republican, what people did was say we have got to extend unemployment benefits. It’s kind of common sense. It’s not partisan.
After speaking for eight and a half hours:
If the American people stand up and say we can do better than this, that we don’t’ need to drive up the national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, if the American people stand and we are prepared to follow them, I believe we can defeat this proposal , I believe we can come up with a better proposal that better meets the need of this country, and in particular the children of this country. I believe we can do that. And with that, ladies and gentleman, I yield the podium.
Pages: 1 2
About Rhonda Winter
[...] it looks like that is starting to change. The green mountain state now not only has the magnificent Bernie Sanders for a senator, universal health care and state run cannabis dispensaries; is it perhaps time to [...]