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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT: From Vermont, a Gruff Voice for Shielding Entitlements
WASHINGTON When President Obama cut a deal with Congressional Republicans in December 2010 to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, Senator Bernard Sanders, the brusque Vermont independent who calls himself a socialist, decided it was time for a protest.
He had a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal in a Senate cafeteria, marched into the chamber and began talking. He talked for so long railing for 8 hours 37 minutes about economic justice, the decline of the middle class and reckless, uncontrollable corporate greed that his legs cramped. So many people watched online that the Senate video server crashed.
Today the issue of tax cuts for the wealthy is once again front and center in Washington, as part of the debate over how to reduce the federal deficit. And Mr. Sanders is once again talking, carving out a place for himself as the antithesis of the Tea Party and becoming a thorn in the side to some Democrats and Mr. Obama, who he fears will cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits as part of a deficit reduction deal.
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The Senate is a polite place, so Republicans have little to say about their colleague from Vermont with the thick Brooklyn accent. (He acquired it growing up in Flatbush.) After four years of accusing Mr. Obama of practicing European-style socialism, they are hardly enamored of a man who actually embraces European-style socialism, and who carries a brass key chain from the presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs, who ran in the early 1900s as the Socialist Party candidate.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/us/politics/bernard-sanders-a-voice-for-shielding-entitlements.html?_r=0
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)that one has to be an independent in order to act like a Democrat.
cali
(114,904 posts)anyway, his being an independent has more to do with his history with The Vermont Progressive Party than anything else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Progressive_Party
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)All Democrats should be joining him in his fight against the inclusion of the Social Safety Net programs in any discussion about the Deficit.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)msongs
(67,421 posts)RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)a SOCIALIST <ooh, nasty word> Democrat!
There's not a damn thing wrong with socialism, in my book. The rich already have it. I think that certain things should be socialized,
like medicine, banks, and energy, to name a few!
NICO9000
(970 posts)I love this man. He is a true man of the people. It's awesome how he has no problem describing his politics as democratic socialism.
southern_belle
(1,647 posts)I want to move to Vermont so baaaad!
handmade34
(22,756 posts)origins in Vermont were in our neck of the woods (NEK)
navarth
(5,927 posts)but my temperature goes up every time I hear 'entitlements'. grrr...
Stuart G
(38,436 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)It would be an interesting tactic to use heading into the 'fiscal cliff' zone.
Especially if he laced his verbal marathon with gems like this one from today,
"We must do deficit reduction, but we don't do it by cutting programs to people who lost arms, legs and eyesight defending our country, Sanders said on WCAX-TV. http://www.sanders.senate.gov/