Organizing Help Wanted

We must defend America’s middle class before millionaires and billionaires own the entire country.

Bernie Sanders January 26, 2011

On Dec. 2, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivered a speech entitled ‘Milton Friedman’s Legacies: On the U.S. Economic Crisis in response to the University of Chicago creating the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. In case you can’t guess where he stands on the issue, that’s an anti-MFI button on his lapel. (Photo by David Schalliol)

There is a war going on in this country and I am not referring to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am referring to the war waged by the wealthiest people in America on the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The nation’s billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end and they are apparently unconcerned for the future of this country if it gets in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth.

If we act, we can win this fight. If we don't—if they roll over us now—there is no stopping them.

On the floor of the Senate, we discuss a lot of things. But one thing we fail to talk about is who is winning in this economy and who is losing, and what that means for parents struggling to survive while working longer hours with lower wages, and worrying about whether their children will have the same kind of standard of living they have.

Right now, the top 1 percent controls more than 23 percent of all income earned in America. The top 1 percent controls more than the bottom 50 percent. It’s not only that the rich are getting richer. The very, very rich are getting richer. In the last 25 years, we have seen 80 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent.

On top of all this, while the millionaires get richer and there are more and more billionaires, as a result of the Citizens United decision, what we are beginning to see in elections is unbelievable – a group of billionaires getting together and deciding where they are going to spend their money. Billionaires are going to flood states with all kinds of negative, dishonest ads in an effort to defeat people defending the middle class and to elect people who will stand up for right-wing billionaires.

The Republicans’ goal – and to their credit, they have been pretty honest about it – is to bring this country back to where we were in the 1920s. All of the progressive legislation that started with FDR is on the chopping block. Despite the great successes of Social Security over the last 75 years, despite the fact that Social Security today has a $2.6 trillion surplus, they are targeting Social Security. They are targeting Medicare. In Arizona today, people on Medicaid who need transplants are no longer able to get them – that is a real death panel.

Right now, according to a number of studies, we are losing about $100 billion every year because corporate America and the very wealthy are stashing their money in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. We should be aware that in 2009, ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits and not only did the company not pay anything in taxes, it got a $106 million refund from the IRS. We should also be aware that since 1997, we have almost tripled funding for the military. So if we are serious about reducing the deficit, those are things we need to look at – not at Social Security, not programs everyday Americans need.

Our job now is to rally Americans to put pressure on a handful of Republicans – to tell them, go into your hearts, talk to your constituents and tell me if it is appropriate to hold hostage the future of this country for an agenda that benefits only the very rich.

If we act, we can win this fight. It is crucial that we do, because if we don’t – if they roll over us now – there is no stopping them. It is time we organize.

Your help is wanted.

SPECIAL DEAL: Subscribe to our award-winning print magazine, a publication Bernie Sanders calls "unapologetically on the side of social and economic justice," for just $1 an issue! That means you'll get 10 issues a year for $9.95.

SUBSCRIBE FOR $1/ISSUE

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont’s at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website.