VideoTranscript:
Rachel Maddow: do you feel like you are alone in making that case you made today in that impassioned speech? do you feel like you have allies in washington in the senate?
Bernie Sanders: i have allies but not a lot. our real allies are with the american people who are sick and tired of hearing republicans talking about the deficit at the same time as they want to give $700 billion in tax breaks to people who don't need it and rachel, all of this takes place at a time when the top 1% have seen a huge increase in their income and now earn more money than the bottom 50%. this makes sense to nobody except my friends in the republican party on the senate.
Rachel Maddow: do you feel, though, in making that case democrats agree with you by in large on this as a matter of policy? but we're not hearing very many people make as sharp an argument about it, certainly as an impassioned an argument about it as you are. a lot of the biggest voices, the most powerful voices on the democratic side have been talking from the very beginning about compromise and sort of half measures on this.
Bernie Sanders: well, you know, i fear that you're right, rachel. and i think the point you made a moment ago in your production about, you know, the president constantly compromising is a sad but true point. look, what these republicans want is very clear. it's not just the tax breaks today. what they want to do, really, and i don't want to get people nervous, but they really do want to move this country back into the 1920s. they want to privatize and eliminate social security. they are not staying up nights worrying about what happens when elderly people become sick and have no place to go. they want to cut back on pell grants. they certainly want to eliminate the authority of the epa so that the coal companies, oil companies can do whatever they want. the republicans have an agenda. they're pretty open and honest about it. they've rallied their troops. what the president and the democratic leadership and all of us have got to do is rally our troops. we need a tea party of progressives who are going to demand the democratic leadership and the president fight for the middle class and for working families.
Rachel Maddow: what's going to happen with unemployment benefits? in this short session in the senate? as you know, unemployment benefits expire for millions of americans at midnight tonight because of the senate not taking action today. do you have any hope that those will be extended in this session?
Bernie Sanders: i certainly hope so. look, we are suffering through, as everybody knows, a horrendous recession. one of the key features of this is long-term unemployment. in vermont all over this country, you have people who can't find work, who have no income at all and to leave those people hanging out there with nothing is not only immoral, it's bad economics. if you provide extended unemployment to people who need it they're going to spend that money, they're going to stimulate the economy. but we have got to address that issue. i want you, just to get back to this point. the republicans want to give for the billionaires in this country, people like rupert murdoch, a million a dollars a year in tax breaks, yet they are balking, resisting providing unemployment compensation for people who have no jobs. i think, you know, that is just horrendo horrendous.
Rachel Maddow: senator, when i hear the president come out of that meeting with republicans today and say he thinks republicans are approaching this with a spirit of trying to work together, as you noted from my intro, it strikes me as detached from the reality where republicans admit they are. is it possible the white house is gaming this out in a way we cannot see, that i'm missing something, that there's a broader strategy here that doesn't work at face value?
Bernie Sanders: well you know, rachel, a couple of years ago i might have suggested that, yeah, maybe we're missing something. maybe the president is on to something. look, the bottom line is, everybody wants, you know, the democrats, the republicans, the president to work together. people don't want to see the fractious contentiousness that we're having right now. but the president has got to have learned something in the last two years. what you have just shown right on your tv there is these guys are very clear. they want to destroy the obama presidency. their job is to represent millionaires and billionaires. they really do want to privatize social security. they really do not want young people to be able to get help in order to go to college. at some point you have to learn that lesson. they do not want to work with you. and the alternative approach rather than keep going back with a cup in your hand is to rally the american people, the vast majority of whom support you. most people think it is absurd to give tax breaks to billionaires when you have a $13 trillion national debt. most people think it is appropriate and moral and right to make sure people who are unemployed have money come in so their families do not become desperate. we have the ideas that the american people agree with, we need the president and the leadership to start rallying those people and start putting the republicans on the defensive.
Rachel Maddow: independent senator bernie sanders of vermont. thank you for your time tonight, sir.
Bernie Sanders: good to be with you.
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