Bernie Sanders. (Photo from Sanders’ Twitter feed.)
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senate Budget Committee chairman, is visiting states like Iowa with Republican-dominated congressional delegations to tout the three-and-a-half trillion-dollar federal spending plan he’s helped craft.
“This is the moment that tests our mettle. Do we stand and fight?” Sanders asked an Iowa crowd this weekend. “We will and we’re going to prevail.”
Sanders spoke Sunday afternoon in downtown Cedar Rapids. Sanders said the bill offers solutions to a range of problems like climate change as well as a lack of child care and affordable housing. He described it in a tweet as the “most significant” piece of legislation since the so-called New Deal of the 1930s.
“So many good people are struggling economically to provide for their families and when half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, we can do better than that,” Sanders said in Cedar Rapids, to cheers.
Sanders also cited the bill’s proposed expansion of Medicare to cover dental visits, hearing aids and eye glasses. Sanders said all the items were within reach if the country’s wealthiest citizens pay their fair share in taxes.
Preya Samsundar, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said “Iowans won’t be distracted” by the Democrats’ spending agenda “when American lives are in danger in Afghanistan.”