The Week in Review
Robin Hood in Reverse
In a Senate floor speech, Sanders detailed his reasons for opposing steep cuts in programs for working families, the elderly, children and the poor after Congress extended tax breaks for millionaires and refused to close tax loopholes that let corporations evade taxes. “This budget is Robin Hood in reverse,” Sanders said. “It takes from struggling working families and gives to multi-millionaires. Soaring deficits must be addressed”, he added, “but in a way that is fair, protects the most vulnerable people in our country, and requires shared sacrifice.”
Read more about what was cut »
Watch Bernie lay out the case in a Senate floor speech »
Worse to Come
“This is just the beginning," Sanders warned. The House on Friday approved a budget with even deeper spending cuts. The proposal, which Sanders called “an extraordinarily radical document,” also would end Medicare and Medicaid as they are known today plus cut taxes by $1 trillion of the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations.
Obama’s Plan
President Obama called Wednesday for more spending cuts and higher taxes on the wealthy to lower the national debt. The president “said a lot of the right things,” Sanders said in a cautious assessment of Obama’s speech. He wondered, however, if it was "just rhetoric” and hoped Obama won't “cave in again” and “be blackmailed again” like he was in a December deal to extend tax breaks for the wealthy and like he was with the “very bad” budget bill that Congress passed on Thursday.
Tax Day
Monday is the deadline this year for filing income tax returns. “For the well-off, this could be the best tax day since the early 1930s: Top tax rates on ordinary income, dividends, estates, and gifts will remain at or near historically low levels thanks in part to legislation passed in December and signed by President Obama,” Bloomberg/Businessweek reported. Sen. Bernie Sanders voted against the tax breaks for the rich after mounting a filibuster to try to block the deal. The billions in revenue that were lost by extending tax breaks for those making more than $250,000 a year drove up budget deficits. As a result, Congress voted Thursday for steep spending but left taxes alone.
Tax Evaders
Some of the country’s most profitable corporations aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. To Sen. Sanders, it’s unfair to cut funding for housing, home heating assistance, health care and other programs while corporations not only skirt their tax responsibilities (,) but also get tax refunds from the federal government. The Nation produced a slide show on a list Sanders prepared of the worst corporate income tax avoiders.
