Senator Sanders Filibusters Obama’s Estate Tax Deal

On Friday, Senator Sanders (I-VT) launched a filibuster in which he discusses the many reasons why he believes the estate tax proposal in the Obama deal is “a horrendous proposal.” The description of the 8.5-hour speech from Senator Sanders’ website is below:

Saying he was prepared to speak “as long as possible” against a tax deal between the White House and congressional Republicans, Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor to make the case against deepening the deficit and widening the income gap in America by extending Bush-era tax breaks for the very wealthy. “I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides,” Sanders began. After eight and a half hours of speaking without leaving the Senate floor, Sanders brought his day-long stand to a close Friday night. He concluded, “If the American people stand up and say, we can do better than this, that we don’t need to drive up the national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, that if the American people are prepared to stand – and we’re prepared to follow them – I think we can defeat this proposal. I think we can come up with a better proposal which better reflects the needs of the middle class and working families of our country and, to me, most importantly, the children of our country. And with that, Madam President, I would yield the floor.”

The Filibuster, Bernie Sanders: US Senator for Vermont, December 11, 2010.

A portion of the speech is in the video below:

See Hani Sarji, In Filibuster of Obama Deal, Sanders Calls Estate Tax Proposal “Horrendous”, Forbes, Dec. 10, 2010.