Bernie Sanders

Investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy create more jobs than investments in fossil fuels.

We can do more. We surely can. And on-bill finance programs can help.

So let's work on that together, and thank you.

So you are saving people $360 a year in their heating.

So these are people who come in with weatherization efforts, with new lighting.

I would hope, Senator Sessions, and all members of the panel, that we pursue this issue of on-bill financing.

You see the application for geothermal all over the Country.

Good morning and welcome to an important hearing sponsored by the Green Jobs Subcommittee.

I am announcing today that my office will soon be introducing legislation to support utilities that want to go forward on on-bill financing for their customers.

I would just simply suggest that during the financial crisis you acted very, very boldly--$16 trillion in revolving loans.

I believe you do have the emergency authority to provide emergency loans to small businesses so that we can create millions of jobs.

I would urge your support to do what you can to make sure that those outrageous interest rates are done away with.

Can you give us any reason why Congress should not do the same for the large financial institutions?

I get calls in my Vermont office every week from people who are paying 25 or 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards.

I think the perception on the part of these demonstrators, and millions of other Americans, is that as a result of the greed, the recklessness and the illegal behavior on Wall Street we were plunged into this horrendous recession we are…

Are you prepared to provide low-interest loans to small businesses in the same way you provided it to large financial institutions around the world?

But you do have the authority. Some would disagree that--whether you should have that authority--to deal with unemployment.

I secured a provision in Dodd-Frank, which you were not too enthusiastic about as I recall, which allowed for an audit of the Fed during the financial crisis.

Do you believe--if you were sitting where we were, would you be supportive of breaking up these large financial institutions?

When you have six financial institutions with that much economic power, why shouldn't we break them up?

Do you believe that this economy will recover so long as we continue to have this growing gap between the very, very rich and everybody else where some people have so much, and so many people have so little?

The top 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. The wealthiest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

I think most Americans perceive today that the middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing, real unemployment as you know is about 16 percent, 25 million people without jobs or underemployed, and yet at the same time we have growing…

But I think everybody knows, of course, that's what we do all the time.

But I'm worried about the manufacturer of solar panels.