Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.
Senator Sanders tears into this infamous deal from Hell and thanks the Gangsters of 6 for this disgrace. He details the programs we cherish which will be cut or eliminated. Dems bent over backwards to get Coburn to deal by offering cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Isn’t that lovely!
Sanders on the floor July 20th 2011:
Sanders wrote in Huffington Post a moving piece:
…What we are talking about is that Social Security cuts would go into effect virtually immediately. Ten years from now, the typical 75-year-old person will see their Social Security benefits cut by $560 a year. The average 85-year-old will see a cut of $1,000 a year. Now, for some people here in Washington, maybe the big lobbyists who make hundreds of thousands a year, $560 a year or $1,000 a year may not seem like a lot of money, but if you are a senior trying to get by on $14,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year and you’re 85 years old, the end of your life, you’re totally vulnerable, you’re sick — a $1,000 per year cut in what you otherwise would have received is a major, major blow.
…
But it’s not just Social Security. We have 50 million Americans today who have no health insurance at all. Under the Gang of Six proposals, there will be cuts in Medicare over a 10-year period of almost $300 billion. There will be massive cuts in Medicaid and other health care programs. There will be caps on spending, which mean that there will be major cuts in education. If you are a working-class family, hoping that you’re going to be able to send your kid to college and thinking that you will be eligible for a Pell grant, think twice about that. Pell grants may not be there. If you’re a senior who relies on a nutrition program, that nutrition program may not be there. If you think it’s a good idea that we enforce clean air and clean water provisions so that our kids can be healthy, those provisions may not be there because there will be major cuts in environmental protection.
Sanders should mount a filibuster of this deal if it happens. He hints he might:
This senator is going to fight back. I was not elected to the United States Senate to make devastating cuts in Social Security, in Medicare, in Medicaid, in children’s programs while lowering tax rates for the wealthiest people in this country.
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