Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) took to the Senate floor Wednesday and warned that the Republican budget plan would tip America toward oligarchy by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest citizens while slashing aid for the neediest.
Sanders said the GOP plan was to “stick it to working families in a horrendous way,” and that the GOP’s proposed cuts would decimate the middle class and further increase the gap between the rich and everyone else.
“At a time when the middle class is in decline and poverty is increasing,” Sanders said, “what our Republican friends are saying is, ‘let us attack virtually every significant program that improves lives for low income or moderate income people.'”
“Rich get richer, they get more. Poor get poorer, they get less,” he added. “Maybe that sense of morality makes sense to some people.”
Sanders assailed Republicans’ cuts to health care, Head Start, and Pell Grants, all of which he said would render many services cost prohibitive for needy Americans. He also addressed the specific impact to his constituents, noting that a proposed GOP cut to heating oil subsidies would directly impact those he represents — particularly senior citizens struggling to get by on Social Security — in a state with notoriously cold winters.
“While I applaud [Republicans] for being straightforward, about that vision, I think the more the American people take a hard look at that vision at where they want this country to go, the more outraged will be millions and millions of citizens,” Sanders said.
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