WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Tuesday that if Democrats cede ground on the tax package now, it will come back to haunt them in the 112th Congress, adding that he will do "anything and everything" to stop the recently-reached deal between the White House and Republicans from going through.
"This is only the beginning," said Sanders of what he referred to as the Republican's "right-wing" agenda. "They want a governmental crisis. Then they're going to shut down the government."
The package opposed by Sanders would allow the Bush tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans to be extended for two years in return for GOP cooperation on the reauthorization of unemployment benefits for just 13 months.
Sanders told a roomful of reporters at the Capitol Tuesday that his main objective in opposing the package is to guard against future cuts in social welfare programs by not significantly increasing the national debt to give tax cuts to the rich.
"We are protecting the middle class by waging this fight and saying, 'You can't grow the national debt so that the Republicans can come back and slash benefits or move toward raising the retirement age or making other cuts in Social Security,'" said Sanders.
Warren Buffett often references the fact that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary does. Sanders added Tuesday that the idea that billionaires should pay a lower effective tax rate than teachers, or nurses, or firemen or cops is "incomprehensible."
Though Sanders said he'd be willing to filibuster the tax deal struck by President Obama and Senate Republicans, he also expressed sympathy for the president's difficult position. His heart is in the right place, Sanders said of Obama, but what he has failed to recognize is that the American people want a fight.
Sanders called it "a winnable fight," telling reporters that what Republicans really want is to destroy Obama's ability to govern.
"I can tell you with absolute certainty that a couple of months from now our Republican friends will have driven up the national debt by giving tax breaks to the very rich, and then they're going to come back and say, 'Oh my word! We have a growing national debt and a big deficit! We're going to have to cut back on Pell Grants, on education, on health care, on environmental protection -- all of which will impact the middle class!'" said Sanders.
If Congress fails to reauthorize the unemployment benefits, it will be the first time in more than half a century that extended benefits have been allowed to expire when the national unemployment rate is above 7.2 percent.
Even if President Obama manages to reach a deal with Republicans that would extend Bush-era tax cuts for two years and unemployment benefits for one year, as was discussed Saturday, such a deal will fall far short of a Democratic victory.
HuffPost's Arthur Delaney notes that in 1983, a GOP-controlled Senate and White House reauthorized benefits for 17 months.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Sanders laid out his view in full:
In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else that the Republicans would deny extended unemployment benefits to 2 million workers who are desperately struggling to pay their bills and maintain their dignity. It is also beyond comprehension that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire middle class of this country so that millionaires and billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my view, that is not what this country is about and it is not what the American people want to see. Our job is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower taxes for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and increase the national debt that our children and grandchildren would have to pay.The immediate political task in front of us is to rally the American people so that in the next several weeks we can find at least a few Republicans who will join us in saying no to increasing the deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and no to holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage.
I believe that we have the American people on our side on this issue. My office, and I come from a small state, has received more than 600 calls today, 99 percent of them in opposition to this so-called compromise that the president negotiated with the Republicans.
I will do everything in my power to stand up for the American middle class and defeat this agreement.