Skip to content Skip to footer

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Tax Deal a “Moral Outrage“

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today on the agreement announced Monday between the White House and congressional Republicans:

Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today on the agreement announced Monday between the White House and congressional Republicans:

In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else that the Republicans would deny extended unemployment benefits to 2 million workers who are desperately struggling to pay their bills and maintain their dignity. It is also beyond comprehension that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire middle class of this country so that millionaires and billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my view, that is not what this country is about and it is not what the American people want to see. Our job is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower taxes for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and increase the national debt that our children and grandchildren would have to pay.

The immediate political task in front of us is to rally the American people so that in the next several weeks we can find at least a few Republicans who will join us in saying no to increasing the deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and no to holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage. I believe that we have the American people on our side on this issue. My office, and I come from a small state, has received more than 600 calls today, 99 percent of them in opposition to this so-called compromise that the president negotiated with the Republicans.

I will do everything in my power to stand up for the American middle class and defeat this agreement.

Urgent appeal for your support: Help us fight political repression.

Truthout urgently appeals for your support. Under pressure from an array of McCarthyist anti-speech tactics, independent journalists at Truthout face new and mounting political repression.

We rely on your support to publish movement journalism — in fact, we’re almost entirely funded by readers like you. Yet, donations are down at this moment of crisis. We may end this month in the red without additional help, so we’ve launched a fundraiser.

We have 6 days to hit our $36,000 goal. Please contribute a tax-deductible gift to Truthout at this critical moment.