From Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.....
Americans Taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart Welfare because of low wages.
Does that make sense?
July 26, 2013
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In the midst of all the discussion about
welfare reform, it turns out that the major welfare beneficiary in our country
is the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame. The wealthiest family in America is worth
more than $100 billion. One way they got so rich is by paying workers so little
that tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees use food stamps to feed their
families and Medicaid to pay doctor bills. So with the number of Americans
living in poverty in America near a 60-year high, with the gap between the rich
and the rest of us growing wider and with youth unemployment in America at
staggering levels, one proposal Bernie backs is raising the minimum wage to
$10.10 an hour. It’s been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. In addition to
helping workers, a catch-up raise would have a side benefit. There would be
“real savings for taxpayers who would not have to subsidize Wal-Mart because of
its low wages,” Bernie told Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Some Republicans don’t just
want to keep the minimum wage from going up. In a blunt exchange at a Senate
hearing, Sen. Lamar Alexander told Bernie the minimum wage, on the books since
the 1930s, should be abolished.
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Alice in Wonderland
Republicans at a Senate hearing last week
denied that climate change is even occurring, let alone that something should be
done about it. They belittled a NASA report that June was the second warmest in
recorded history. They scoffed at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration report that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the United
States. “To deny the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientists believe
that not only is global warming real, but that it is man-made is almost beyond
intellectual comprehension,” Bernie said. He likened the hearing to something
out of Alice in Wonderland. Meanwhile, his idea of taxing carbon emissions that
cause climate change “has been gaining surprisingly diverse and bipartisan
support over the past year” according to NPR, “everywhere but in
Washington.”
Watch "Through the Looking Glass" »
Listen to the NPR report on Bernie's carbon tax bill
»
Read more about the Sanders-Boxer bill »
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/
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