By Nicola Slawson
Good morning.
The Senate narrowly passed (click here) a bill to suspend the debt ceiling on Thursday night, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a federal default that could have wreaked havoc on the US economy and global markets.
The final vote was 63 to 36, with 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supporting the bill while five Democrats and 31 Republicans opposed. Sixty votes were needed to pass the bill.
“Tonight’s vote is a good outcome because Democrats did a very good job taking the worst parts of the Republican plan off the table,” the Senate’s Democrat majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said after the vote. “And that’s why Dems voted overwhelmingly for this bill, while Republicans certainly in the Senate did not.”...
Bernie Sanders' answer to these debt ceiling and insufficient taxes is simple and does not victimize students, the "Make Billionaires Pay Act." If this legislation passed in 2020 the USA would not be facing the problems it has today. The problem with the National Debt is the indulgence of the wealthy by the Republicans. Democrats need to drive home the idea that legislated corruption is real and the IRS as unpopular they are, must be collecting taxes due the USA TREASURY!
Depriving the USA Treasury the money to function through "taxes due" is corruption. Plain and simple. If the USA Treasury had the monies to function for the country, the students would not be victims either.
...“The legislation (click here) I am introducing today will tax the obscene wealth gains billionaires have made during this extraordinary crisis to guarantee healthcare as a right to all for an entire year,” said Sanders. “At a time of enormous economic pain and suffering, we have a fundamental choice to make. We can continue to allow the very rich to get much richer while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Or we can tax the winnings a handful of billionaires made during the pandemic to improve the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans. In my view, it is time for the Senate to act on behalf of the working class who are hurting like they have never hurt before, not the billionaire class who are doing phenomenally well and have never had it so good.”
“As more than 160,000 Americans have lost their lives and millions more have lost their jobs, it is unconscionable that the super-wealthy are getting even richer in the midst of this crisis,” said Markey. “Despite overwhelming need, Republicans continue to look for any excuse under the guise of deficit reduction to cut vital support programs like jobless aid and health insurance for the most vulnerable. The American people pay with their lives every day for the criminal negligence of the Trump administration to combat the coronavirus. It is time the country’s wealthiest do the same off with their profits.”...
The Republicans are corrupt to the core and we all know it now.
President Biden will sign the bill to protect the country from default. Why? Because he doesn't want to have to worry about forcing more elderly into homelessness when their Social Security checks stop coming. Did the Republicans care about that? No. They care about cutting Social Security and forcing citizens to work longer into their retirement years so the grave is closer to cutting off monthly checked Americans worked hard to achieve.
