MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: We are now faced with the issue of what we do with the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

And if you can believe it, we have people here, many of my Republican colleagues, who tell us: Oh, I am so concerned about our record-breaking deficit. I am terribly concerned about a $13.7 trillion national debt, terribly concerned about the debt that we"re going to be leaving to our kids and our grandchildren. But wait a minute--it"s very important that we give over a 10-year period $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent.

We talk about a lot of things on the floor of the Senate, but somehow we forget to talk about the reality of who is winning in this economy and who is losing. And it is very clear to anyone who spends two minutes studying the issue that the people on top are doing extraordinarily well at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing.
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But the highest priority of many of my Republican colleagues is to make sure that millionaires and billionaires get more tax breaks. I think that that is absurd.

I am sure that in a little while, my friends are going to come down to the floor and say, we"re very concerned about the deficit. We"re very concerned about the national debt. But you know what we"re more concerned about? Giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country.

We just don"t have enough money for working families and their needs. We"re going to cut back on food stamps. We"re surely not going to expand unemployment compensation. We got a higher priority, Mr. President. We have got to, got to, got to give tax breaks to billionaires.

I mean, that"s what this whole place is about, isn"t it? They fund the campaigns, they get what"s due them.

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MADDOW: Joining us now is the independent senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

Senator Sanders, thank you for coming back to the show. It"s nice to see you.

SANDERS: Good it be with you, Rachel.

MADDOW: Do you feel like you are alone in making that case you made today in that impassioned speech? Or do you feel like you have allies in Washington in the Senate?

SANDERS: I"ve got allies but not a whole lot. I think our real allies are with the American people who are sick and tired of hearing Republicans talking about the deficit at the same time as they want to give $700 billion in tax breaks to people who don"t need it. And, Rachel, all of this takes place at a time when the top 1 percent have seen a huge increase in their income and now earn more money than the bottom 50 percent. This makes sense to nobody except my friends in the Republican Party on the Senate.

MADDOW: Do you feel, though, that in making that case, Democrats agree with you by and large on this as a matter of policy? But we"re not hearing very many people make as sharp an argument about it, certainly as an impassioned an argument about it as you are. A lot of the biggest voices, the most powerful voices on the Democratic side have been talking from the very beginning about compromise and sort of half measures on this.

SANDERS: Well, you know, I fear that you"re right, Rachel. And I think the point you made a moment ago in your production about, you know, the president constantly compromising is a sad but true point.

Look, what these Republicans want is very clear. And it"s not just the tax breaks today. What they want to do, really, and I don"t want to get people nervous, but they really do want to move this country back into the 1920s.

They want really to privatize and eliminate Social Security. They really are not staying up nights worrying about what happens when elderly people become sick and have no place to go. They want to cut back on Pell Grants. They certainly want to eliminate the authority of the EPA so that the coal companies, the oil companies can do whatever they want.

The Republicans have an agenda. They"re pretty open and honest about it. They"ve rallied their troops.

What the president and the Democratic leadership and all of us have got to do is rally our troops. We need a Tea Party of progressives who are going to demand that the Democratic leadership and the president fight for the middle class and for working families.

MADDOW: What"s going to happen with unemployment benefits in this short session in the Senate? As you know, unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans at midnight tonight because of the Senate not taking action today. Do you have any hope that those will be extended in this session?

SANDERS: I certainly hope so. Look, we are suffering through, as everybody knows, a horrendous recession. And one of the key features of this is long-term unemployment.

In Vermont, all over this country, you have people who can"t find work, who have no income at all, and to leave those people hanging out there with nothing is not only immoral, it"s bad economics. If you provide extended unemployment to people who need it, they"re going to spend that money. They"re going to stimulate the economy. But we have got to address that issue.

But I want you--just to get back to this point: the Republicans want to give for the billionaires in this country, people like Rupert Murdoch, $1 million a year in tax breaks. And yet, they are balking--they are balking, resisting providing unemployment compensation for people who have no jobs. I think, you know, that is just horrendous.

MADDOW: Senator, when I hear the president come out of that meeting with Republicans today and say that he thinks Republicans are approaching this with a spirit of trying to work together, as you noted from my intro, it strikes me as detached from the reality of where Republicans admit that they are.

Is it possible that the White House is gaming this out in a way we cannot see? That I"m missing something, that there"s a broader strategy here that doesn"t work at face value?

SANDERS: Well you know, Rachel, a couple of years ago, I might have suggested that, yes, maybe we"re missing something. Maybe the president is on to something.

Look, the bottom line is: everybody wants, you know, the Democrats, the Republicans, the president to work together. People don"t want to see the fractious contentiousness that we"re having right now. But the president has got to have learned something in the last two years.

What you have just shown right on your TV there is these guys are very clear. They want to destroy the Obama presidency. Their job is to represent millionaires and billionaires. They really do want to privatize Social Security. They really do not want young people to be able to get help in order to go to college.

At some point, you got to learn that lesson. They do not want to work with you. And the alternative approach rather than keep going back with a cup in your hand is to rally the American people, the vast majority of whom support you.

Most people think it is absurd to give tax breaks to billionaires when you have a $13 trillion national debt. Most people think it is appropriate and moral and right to make sure that people who are unemployed have money come in so their families do not become desperate. We have the ideas that the American people agree with, we need the president and the leadership to start rallying those people and start putting the Republicans on the defensive.

MADDOW: Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont--thank you for your time tonight, sir.

SANDERS: Good to be with you.

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