The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class by Bernie Sanders

Author:Bernie Sanders [Sanders, Bernie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, economics, Social Science, Language Arts & Disciplines, Speech, Business & Economics, International, Law, Corporate Finance, Social Classes, Economic Conditions, Taxation
ISBN: 9781468178470
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2011-03-01T07:10:55+00:00

(Mr. LEVIN assumed the Chair.)

Mr. SANDERS. If these tax breaks for the wealthiest people are extended for two years, there is a strong likelihood they will be extended for many years beyond those two and perhaps even permanently. That brings us back to the Bush-era nonsense of believing that tax breaks for the rich and trickle-down economics are going to help the middle-class and working families of this country.

While the personal income tax issue and extending them for the top two percent has received a lot of national attention, what has not gotten a whole lot of discussion is that that is not the only unfair and absurd tax proposal out there. The agreement struck between the President and the Republican leadership continues the Bush-era 15 percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends, meaning those people who make their living off of their investments will continue to pay a substantially lower tax rate than firemen, teachers, and nurses. So if you are a wealthy person and you earn money from dividends—I believe the overwhelming majority of those dividends accrue to the top 1 percent—you are going to be paying a tax on that income of 15 percent, which is less than you pay if you are a fireman, a police officer, a teacher, or a nurse. So what we are doing there is extending not only the personal income tax breaks for the very rich but a host of other taxes as well.

On top of all of that—and I know many of my colleagues have picked up on this and are extremely upset, and I think that is one of the reasons the Democrats in the House just yesterday said they don’t want to bring this proposal to the floor for a vote—this agreement includes a horrendous proposal regarding the estate tax.

The estate tax is a proposal Teddy Roosevelt talked about in the year 1906. It was eventually enacted in 1916. Here is what Teddy Roosevelt said about this issue in August of 1910—and it is worth repeating this because what the proposal struck between the President and the Republican leadership does is lower the estate tax substantially. Here is what Teddy Roosevelt said in 1910: “The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. ...”

This is Teddy Roosevelt, who by then had served as President of the United States.

He continued: “No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered—not gambling in stocks, but service rendered.”

This guy was pretty prophetic back in 1910.

He continues: “The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated inheritance

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