Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., express Congress’ growing frustrations with President Barack Obama’s decision to enter a third conflict with a Muslim nation.
MSNBC TRANSCRIPT:
>>> is libya in our vital interest as a country?
>> no, i don’t think it’s a vital interest for the united states. but we clearly have interest there. and it’s a part of the region which is of vital interest for the united states.
>> but what they were doing and gadhafi’s history and the potential for the disruption and instability was very much in our interest as bob said, and seen by our european friends and our arab partners as very vital to their interests.
>> secretaries gates and clinton talking about the military intervention in libya and whether it serves our vital interest. president obama addressing the nation in about three hours. america looking for clarity on not just libya but recent events in general in the middle east. many americans unsure how the limited scope of this mission so-called protecting civilians and calling for moammar gadhafi to go, not to mention, america’s relationship with bahrain, saudi arabia, egypt, you get the point. joining this conversation, a man with a keen interest in this and a man who represents not only the great state of vermont but the ideology of many in this country, senator bernie sanders from vermont. senator, what questions do you have you would like to hear answered from this president?
>> well, here’s my concern. we have lost thousands of lives in afghanistan and iraq. and at the end of the day, those are going to cost us trillions of dollars. i think fighting two wars simultaneously may well be enough. i’m not sure i want to see this country drawn into a third war, which will cost us substantial sums of money. i hope the president will tell us today that if our friends in europe, if the uk, france and italy feel very strongly about this issue, i hope they will do what they want to do. but i am not enthusiastic about the united states getting drawn into a third war when we have a $14 trillion national debt and when we have lost so many lives already in afghanistan and iraq.
>> at the same time, don’t we have to be honest about the nature of our energy dependency, particularly oil as an overland transportation fuel? and the hypocrite call relationship of foreign policy relationship with any number of countries as we’ve tried to maintain a balance of power?
>> my own view is we have to move as quickly as possible away from foreign oil where we’re spending about $350 billion a year, move to energy independence, move to energy efficiency and to sustainable energy. but we cannot continue to keep going to war in the middle east every time there is a crisis there. look, the truth of the matter is, i am focusing right now on a budget situation where our republican friends want to devastate programs like head start, the social security administration, college grants, the middle class and working class families, the environmental protection agency. their arguing is there’s not enough money to funding those programs. meanwhile, we’re spending more on a third war in libya. my hope is the president will tell us today that our involvement there is going to end very, very shortly.
>> you mentioned the budget debate. how optimistic are you feeling in your ability to fend off the attack on some of the programs you just outlined?
>> i think what every poll i have seen tells us is the american people believe that it is absurd that we move toward deficit reduction solely on the backs of the middle class and working families, lower income people and not ask the wealthiest people in this country who are doing phenomenonly well to pay one penny more in taxes at the same time as their real tax rate is lowest on records, they have received hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks. what we’ve recently learned, corporation after corporation, whether it’s general electric, exxonmobil, chevron, bank of america, you name it, these banks have made huge profits are paying either nothing or have gotten rebates from the irs. to my mind, before you decimate programs in terms of education, the environment, community health centers and health care, you’ve got to ask the wealthiest people in this country and some of the large corporations to engage in shared sacrifice. don’t balance the budget on the most vulnerable alone.
>> and, again, i think that most reasonable people would agree with some version of what you just said at the very least, that isolating the resolution on the most vulnerable because they’re the least predictly represented —
>> exactly.
>> which is the only reason, right?
>> you got it. look, i have introduced an amendment which would impose a surtax of 5.4% on incomes of over $1 million. and that would bring in almost enough money to negate all of these terrible republican cuts. in addition to that, we do away with some of the loopholes that the oil companies take advantage of. yes, of course, there have to be some cuts. but you just don’t go after the sick, the elderly, children, students and say to the richest people in this country who are doing phenomenally well, you don’t have to play any role. we’re going to balance the budget solely on working families. i think your point is right. what’s the reason for that? working people don’t make huge campaign contributions, don’t have lobbyists crawling all over capitol hill. i think what the republicans are proposing is wrong a need revenue, ask the wealthiest people to help us toward deficit reduction.
>> the last question i have on the revenue side — i don’t know whether anybody’s done any math on this. but in the event we did not have the massive unemployment crisis ha we have, in the event we did not have the massive housing crisis where we traded the financial crisis in 2008 and we exchanged it, again, due to lack of political representation, we exchanged the financial crisis for a housing and unemployment crisis, is there any indication as to how much that unemployment and that housing crisis has created this deficit?
>> of course. there’s no question about that. i don’t think many serious people dispute that. as a result of the dishonesty and illegal behavior on wall street which plunged us into a recession, revenue coming into the government has substantially declined. there’s no question about it. people are unemployed, they’re not playing taxes.
>> if the reason you have a shortfall is because of a spike in unemployment because of a screwed-up economic policy, once again, isn’t that the way you solve that problem by, one, holding accountable those who created it, and, two, creating jobs?
>> absolutely. look, everybody understands the fastest way out of the recession by definition is putting people back to work. i think people do not understand that unemployment is a lot higher than the official statistics out there. real unemployment today, dylan, is close to 16%, if you include people who have given up looking for work and people who are working part time. then throw on top of that millions of people who are seen a reduction in their wages. so obviously if you’ve got an economy moving, we put people back to work rebuilding our infrastructure, transforming our energy system. if you do those things and put people to work, more money will come into the treasury.
>> it’s not a complicated math problem. we all know that defunding food stamps is probably the stupidest place to start i’ve ever heard. senator, thank you for your efforts.
>> thank you.