The Senate has rules and traditions aplenty and one was contravened today in a way which was valuable. Senator Cornyn of Texas spoke about Republican interest in working on the economy with legislation. There wasn't anything very specific in his speech, just a hint they were interested. Next up was Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Usually I don't enjoy his speeches as his voice is deep and he does a lot of hand-waving and he often gets red-faced while appearing angry. But, his speech today was wonderful. He spoke more of the Democratic Party's views of the economy and legislation needed to improve things. Early in the speech he did some hand-saving, but that faded and he kept his hair in place so as to not look like a wild man. He mentioned Sen. Cornyn and the Republicans without being too offensive.
The main things were that he told a story about "trickle-down" economics with a chart showing how much of the country's new GDP went to 1% of our more wealthy citizens and how much went to the lowest 90%. It was incredibly shocking to see the portion going to the 90% shrinking steadily from the 1950s (slowly), but then taking a nosedive about 1982 when Ronald Reagan was in office and Republican economics were front-and-center in the nation's political discussions. Then the portion of our new GDP going to the 1% rose and rose until today it is 100%. Now the wealth and income gap is immense.
I would suggest going to C-SPAN.org to see his speech, but it's not there yet (give 'em a day or two to put it on their webpage). It's worth anyone's time.
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