Free Outsider in the White House by Bernie Sanders, Huck Gutman Page B

world.
    Justice. An economy in which all people do well, not just the very rich. And that’s what I’ve been fighting for.
    I then described some of what I had seen in Vermont as I traveled around the state during the two preceding years.
    I talked about the meeting I had with a woman in Danville, who told me that both she and her husband were working sixty hours a week in order to save money to send their daughters, excellent high school students, to college. But despite their back-breaking efforts, they didn’t know if they would succeed—given the high cost of college and the enormous debt they would have to sustain.
    I talked about the young farmer I had met in Troy. She and her husband go out milking at 5 a.m., seven days a week. But despite their hard work and their love of the land, they didn’t know if they would be able to stay on the farm because of the collapse of milk prices.
    I talked about the senior citizens I met throughout the state who, despite Medicare, were unable to afford their prescription drugs. And how some of them were forced to choose between adequately heating their homes in the winter or buying the food they needed.
    And I talked about the young workers who had no health insurance and dead-end jobs.
    My point was that while the economy might have been working well for the people on top, it was leaving many, many people far behind.
    Next came my legislative achievements. For years my opponents had been telling Vermonters that as an Independent I couldn’t pass major bills or amendments. It was important to set the record straight. In fact, I had an impressive legislative record.
    I had helped lead the effort to raise the minimum wage and to pass the Northeast Dairy Compact, legislation of great importance to Vermont farmers. It was my amendment that passed the House and told the president that he couldn’t put $50 billion at risk bailing out the Mexican economy on behalf of Wall Street investment banks. Another amendment of mine stopped an outrageous example of corporate welfare—a $31 million Pentagon bonus for the board of directors and CEO of Lockheed-Martin for merging their companies and laying off 17,000 workers. In Vermont it gets cold in the winter, very cold, so my office led the effort in the House to stop Gingrich’s attempt to eliminate the fuel assistance program, LIHEAP, restoring almost full funding for it, as well as seeing through a major amendment for affordable housing. Further, I passed legislation that prevented insurance companies from discriminating against battered women, and an amendment stating that an HMO or insurance company could not force a woman and her newborn baby out of the hospital before they were ready to go. And there were other successful amendments and bills that I had authored. The important point was to show Vermonters that an Independent could pass legislation relevant to our state and to the nation.
    But then came, perhaps, the most important point that I wanted to make. I continued:
What this election is about is whether Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and the Republican Party are going to have another two years to push through the most reactionary, extremist agenda in the modern history of America—or whether we stop them cold right now and tell them that greed and bigotry and scapegoating are not what America is all about.
    What this election is about is whether Gingrich and Armey and the Republican Party are going to be successful in slashing Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental protection, veterans’ programs, nutrition, affordable housing, and a dozen other programs impacting tens of millions of Americans—while at the same time they give huge tax breaks to the rich and large corporations, and build B-2 bombers and Star Wars gadgets that the Pentagon doesn’t want.
    Finally, I concluded by emphasizing what is too frequently ignored in politics: that despite all of the problems and pettiness that