Bernie Sanders Slams Dems Voting for CR: ‘This Was a Very, Very Bad Vote ... It Raises Health Care Premiums for over 20 Million Americans’

Sanders: “Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution. And to my mind, this was a very,very bad vote. What it does, first of all, is it raises health care premiums for over 20 million Americans by doubling, in some cases tripling or quadrupling. People can’t afford that when we are already paying the highest prices in the world for health care. Number two, it paves the way for 15 million people to be thrown off of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Studies show that will mean that some 50,000 Americans will die every year unnecessarily And all of that was done to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the one percent. As everybody knows, just on Tuesday, we had an election all over this country. And what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working-class people, to his authoritarianism. That is what the American people wanted, but tonight, that is not what happened. So we’ve got to go forward, do the best that we can to try to protect working-class people, to make sure that the United States not only does not throw people off of health care, but ends the absurdity of being the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but to be honest with you, tonight was not a good night. Thank you.”