MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Government Budget
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Let me bring in Bernie Sanders independent Senator from Vermont. Well, Senator here we go again. I mean, we`ve seen this movie before. But I think the shocking thing in all of these, is that the White House is telling House members to take the deal. What`s your reaction to that?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I) VERMONT: Well, I think what they`re afraid of is a three-month continuing resolution, the Republicans then controls the future of the budget and that`s what they worry about. But I think what Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters said is absolutely right.
Look, the illegal behavior on Wall Street caused this horrendous recession. To deregulate again, to force the taxpayers to have to protect this wild speculation makes zero sense to me. That provision has got to go out.
But Ed let me also tell you, there are other aspects to this bill which are equally bad. Should we as a nation which has so many unmet needs, kids can`t afford to go college, kids graduating school deeply in debt, a crumbling infrastructure, childcare system which is a disaster, the need to transform our energy system. Should we spend 60 percent of our discretionary money on the military in that bill, it`s about $600 billion for the military and laying the ground work for never-ending wars in the Middle East.
Further more, you know, we bailout Wall Street you made that point. Well, you know what? It`s also in this bill, is a real attack on worker`s pensions. You have workers in this country who have worked decades and decades with the expectation they`re going to have a decent pension. This bill lays the groundwork to say to those workers oh, by the way we`ve change our mind we`re cutting your pension by 30 or 50 percent.
So, you know...
SCHULTZ: Yeah.
SANDERS: ... I understand, it`s hard, you know, Republicans have to (ph), people negotiating and they want to protect Wall Street and want to protect the rich, it`s true. But I think we can do better than the agreement that we presently have.
SCHULTZ: Let`s say it passes in the House Senator. Where is it in the Senate? The Democrats still have the majority, the President wants the budget. Would there be enough Democrats to say no to this?
SANDERS: I will say a very, very loud no Ed, but I can`t give the answer I don`t know how many others will do that.
SCHULTZ: You clearly would vote against it?
SANDERS: Absolutely. This is -- look again, you know, it`s tough negotiating and it`s easy to beat up on the Democrats. But they`re only half the negotiators, but I think there are so many onerous provisions in here. I believe that the American people want us to do better and believe that we should do better.
SCHULTZ: Well, the $585 billion of military spending, it`s reported that a good portion of that is going to be going to train Syrian moderates for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, we as Americans, it`s like we`re going down two roads that we`ve been down before that didn`t turn out very well. I know that...
SANDERS: You know, Ed not good...
SCHULTZ: Go ahead.
SANDERS: ... proportion, I mean $580 billion is a massive amount of money, so it`s not huge amount. But what it does is, it lays the predicate for us to be continuously involved for whatever it seems to be, for a never-ending period in these bloody wars in the Middle East. But, the other issue is, if you look at the military budget, huge cost overruns, huge amount of fraud with the defense contractors. We need a strong defense. We need a strong National Guard.
SCHULTZ: Yeah.
SANDERS: But I don`t think we need to spend close to $600 billion. We`re spending almost as much as the rest of the world combined. Enough is enough, we have unmet needs in this country we have to got address.
SCHULTZ: And finally back to the Dodd-Frank. In your opinion how important is it to keep that in there? I mean to make sure that the Democrats holds the line on this because, what budget would be worth what we`ve been through before?
SANDERS: Exactly.
SCHULTZ: What would we play that?
SANDERS: Exactly, this is, you know, the American people were furious, they had to bailout Wall Street because of their illegal reckless activity, and now Wall Street is saying, oh, yeah we would like to go back to where we were before. We would like to have all of these wild speculation and derivative, and if it fails and you made that point. If it wins we make a lot of money, if it fails hey taxpayers, thanks very much you`re there for us. No, we don`t want to back to that path.
SCHULTZ: Senator Bernie Sanders, good to have you with us tonight, sir. Thank so much for joining us. I appreciate you time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source