Bernie Sanders: What kind of nation are we when we give tax breaks to millionaires but we can’t take care of the elderly and the children?
March 24, 2014

Once again, Sen. Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians out there willing to speak plainly about just what Paul Ryan and the GOP's agenda is for America and what's left of our middle class and those living in poverty. Following Rev. Al Sharpton discussing a recent Gallup report on which Americans are most likely to struggle for food, Sanders weighed in:

“What kind of nation are we when we give tax breaks to millionaires but we can’t take care of the elderly and the children?” Sen. Bernie Sanders asked on Monday. He was reacting to a new report that more than 18 percent of Americans last year struggled to afford food. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are calling for deeper and deeper cuts in food stamps, a program that provides help mostly to children and seniors. We are living in “a very ugly moment,” the senator told the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Here's more from PoliticusUSA: Paul Ryan Quivers as Bernie Sanders Outs the Dirty Secret Behind His Poverty Propaganda:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sent a shiver down Rep. Paul Ryan’s spine tonight by exposing the secret behind the his sudden interest in poverty programs.

Sen. Sanders said, “You have folks out there now who have virtually no income coming in. They have families. They have kids. How are they going to eat? We have veterans out there trying to get into the food stamp program. To me, what you’re looking at is an ugly kind of class warfare where the people on top want more and more and more, and they’re pushing down in an incredibly terrible way the most vulnerable people in our country.” [...]

Later Sen. Sanders ripped Republicans for claiming that the problem is that children get too much help from the federal government, “These are the same people who want to eliminate the estate tax, which applies to only the top three tenths of one percent of all Americans, which is the richest of the rich, then they are going after kids. The politics of this, Al, is what they are trying to do is deflect attention away from income and wealth inequality. Attention away from the fact that the rich are doing extraordinarily well, and tell their supporters that the real problem in America is that children are getting too much help from the federal government, and that’s the kind of mentality that we have got to fight back against.”

Sen. Sanders nailed it. This is a classic case of Republicans trying to blame the victims of their policies. Republicans crashed the economy, threw millions out of work, then blamed the unemployed, and their children for needing assistance. While the GOP tries to take the food out of the mouths of those who are struggling, the rich continue to get richer. Read on...

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