In a November 28 speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) lambasts corporate CEOs who are lobbying for cuts to safety-net programs.
A group of CEOs — including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs as well as the heads of Coca-Cola, AT&T, Comcast and Pfizer — met privately that day with President Obama and Vice President Biden to discuss the fiscal cliff negotiations. Many belong to the Campaign to Fix the Debt CEO Fiscal Leadership Council, which has campaigned for slashes in “entitlement” programs as part of a debt- and deficit-reduction deal.
The council contains many Wall Street CEOs whose companies, such as Goldman Sachs, benefited from federal government bailout, as well as CEOs of companies that receive large defense contracts, such as General Electric, Boeing and Honeywell. Sanders notes the irony of this in his floor speech: “We have folks from Wall Street who received huge bailouts from the people of our country, from working families in this country, because of the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior…and now these very same people are coming here to Congress to lecture us and the American people about how we have to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”
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