Bernie Sanders

We are the only Nation in the industrialized world not to guarantee health care for all people.

I hope you give serious thought and build into your analysis the savings as well as the expenditures.

The criticism, Mr. Chairman, has been that it is pretty easy, if my bill goes from $2 billion to $8 billion, we are spending $6 billion.

I think the average person would think it is incomprehensible, again--of course, that is the word we keep using about this whole financial disaster--that trillions of dollars are being lent out without transparency or accountability.

But don't you think it is a little bit weird and a little bit undemocratic that the taxpayers of this country are providing help--maybe it is good, maybe it is bad, maybe it is right.

How do you lend out $2 trillion of Federal funds through the Fed and nobody knows anything about this?

The amount of money is so huge that nobody can get their hands around it.

The recklessness, the greed, I suspect the illegal behavior of maybe a few hundred, a few thousand people has impacted and destroyed the lives of millions of people in this country.

Do you believe that Wall Street leaders engaged in illegal behavior and that some of them should end up behind bars in the coming years?

Don't you think we have a right to know a little bit more than these banks are telling us?

I proposed the surtax on people whose families had at least a million dollars in income, because they are the people who benefited from Bush's economic policies in general.

In other words, some people became incredibly rich, and then when things got bad, it is the average Joe who has to bail them out.

But if we do something----

Say a word about income and wealth and equality. Can you have a sustainable strong economy when so few have so much and so many have so little?

Do you think, by the way, and I know that is out of the jurisdiction of this committee and maybe it is in the Health and Education Committee, that we might want to take a look at reconfiguring how we determine real unemployment in America?

We have the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of childhood poverty.

One of my real frustrations with the Bush administration, well before the immediate financial crisis, is their refusal to address the reality that even before the crisis, the middle class in this country was in serious decline.

We are the only major country on earth without a national health care program.

Fair enough. But it is our business, $20 billion or $10 billion is a heck of a lot of money.

Am I correct in understanding that a new nuclear power plant could cost as much as $20 billion? Is that within the ball park?

I think they would be very surprised that a mishap of this scope ends up with no fine at all

Clearly, that was not the original intention. The original intention was not to have dozens of locations around this Country where we are storing very lethal waste with a half-life of thousands of years.

I have every reason to believe, or at least strong reason to believe that Yucca Mountain as a repository for nuclear waste will never going to happen.

Can I have your commitment that you will send a representative to Montpelier tomorrow?

There was no fine at all.