On Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blocked a vote on confirming the Obama administration’s nominee for the Commodity Future Tradings Commission. The nominee is Gary Gensler, who has worked for Goldman Sachs and pushed to “deregulate electronic energy trading and exempt from regulation credit default swaps, which Sanders blamed for the downfall of” AIG.
Usually, Sanders votes with the Democratic majority, with whom he caucuses. His blocking of the nomination is causing a small political stir, with Sanders being hailed by some and derided as obstructionist by others. However, Bloomberg reports that this is action “an informal device in which senators ask their party leaders to delay action on a bill or nomination, according to a Congressional Research Service report. It is up to the majority leader to decide how long the request will be honored, the report said”
Senator Sanders seems to differ in his opinion of what his actions mean. On Democracy Now!, Sanders clarified his views:
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I don’t believe that we need more of the same old same old. The philosophy that Gensler espoused when he was working for Bill Clinton in the Treasury Department was strongly deregulation, was the Robin Rubin theory of economics. And in many respects, accentuated by eight years of George Bush, that type of deregulation activity, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the putting derivatives under the radar screen, deregulating that and allowing these transactions to take place without public notice, these are the actions that took us to where we are right now…
Just think for a minute that you had Bernie Madoff running a $60 billion Ponzi scheme, and Bush’s SEC couldn’t discover it. And the reason for that is that anything that Wall Street did, anything that corporate America did, was good, and you don’t want the government investigating or regulating.
And unfortunately, Gary Gensler was in the middle of that. Gensler, as part of the Treasury Department under Robert Rubin, pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the breakdown of those walls, which have led us precisely to where Citigroup is today, where AIG is today. So, essentially, this is a hard-working guy. He is a decent guy. I don’t have any animus against him personally. But I think President Obama has brought around him a lot of the Rubin mentality, which is not only deregulation, it’s unfettered free trade. And I think we need some more progressive-type thinking to advise the President.
Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!, also asked Sanders about his views on socialism, because he is a self-described democratic socialist:
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders, you’re the independent senator from Vermont. For years, you called yourself a socialist. You hear the Republicans saying we’re not going to socialize this, for example, healthcare, etc. What is socialism? And where do you think it applies today?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I think if people take a good look at what has gone on in Scandinavia, in Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, some other European countries, what they will find is that the people in those countries have good quality healthcare which is virtually free. Workers have, in some cases, thirty, forty days paid vacation. A college education in many of these countries is either free or virtually free. At a time when our country has an 18 percent rate of childhood poverty, which leads to so many people ending up in jail, in many of these countries the poverty rate for kids, and poverty in general, is three, four, five percent. Workers are more likely to be members of unions and have more power on their jobs to protect their own interests. People’s interest in politics and the political process is greater. So I think what you have seen is governments which are more responsive to the needs of working people and the middle class than certainly is in this country, where, among other things, we have by far the highest rate of inequality, in terms of distribution of wealth and income, of any major country on earth.
So what democratic socialism means to me is having a government which represents the middle class and working people, which guarantees the basic necessities of life for all of our people. Healthcare, obviously, has got to be a right, not a privilege. We need to make sure that our kids get off to a good start in life, not seeing so many kids living in poverty, childcare being the disastrous disaster that it is right now with so many working families unable to find quality affordable childcare. In other words, a government which works to protect all of the people, rather than, as we have right now, governments for so many years which have protected the needs of the very wealthy and the powerful large corporations.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you consider yourself a socialist today?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Democratic socialist, yes.
The interview continues after that and is an interesting insight into the views of one America’s most successful socialists and independents. There is also more about why he is blocking the confirmation of Gensler.
Is this in the wrong thread?
Non-profit health care hasn’t been a leading edge idea in several decades. Churches, religious groups and social welfare groups used to own and operate hospitals but have abandoned the field when people chose for-profit hospitals and clinics. Claiming that non-profit health care is a bright shining light is ignoring the fact that the shining light is the light on the front of the engine of the train called the free-market. Non-profit organization when it comes to health care is a contradiction. The so-called non-profit will have employees who will expect to earn a salary and will be motivated to maintain and increase that salary. The single-payer in this case will be the government and the government will be as successful in providing quality health care as it has been in providing quality government education.
Contrary to claims that single-payer health care operated by the government will reduce costs, it will increase costs and in the end it will ration health care. You can’t have it both ways in a government health care system.
The only way to maximize quality health care and minimize costs is to allow people to choose what health care they want to buy and eliminate government mandates on the care that is provided.
There are many countries who have tried to adopt government health care solutions: England, France, Sweden, Canada and Cuba. If any of them had fantastic results we would be bombarded with advocates trumpeting the “Swedish health care solution” or the “Cuban health care solution” and apart from Michael Moore there isn’t anybody doing that.
Government isn’t the solution to providing health care, government is a looming problem.
“Democratic socialist” hmmm I like that–
Thanks to Senator Sanders for introducing a long-awaited single payer bill in the Senate. Perhaps the topic will now be discussed and the potential savings “scored.”
Nobel economists have expressed support for single payer and the Lewin analysts have said that only a single payer plan will allow us to cover everyone and control costs going forward.
We’ve all seen the recent Machiavellian machinations of AHIP’s Ignagni and Pharma’s Billy Tauzin pretending that they are willing to cooperate with Obama. The insurers trumpet their support for universal coverage so long as they get to decide the rules and take the profits. They will never submit to regulation. If we have denials and unaffordable premiums now–can you imagine what it will be like when they are the only game in town?
We can’t afford the Administration’s public-private hybrid system either. A nonprofit single payer plan is the only way to go.
Contact the President today:
(202) 456-1111 http://www.whitehouse.gov
And thank Bernie Sanders at (202) 224-5141
Bernie is less of a socialist than most of the Democrats in congress.