Politico, an interview dated Jan. 12 -
[... Sanders] There are enormous challenges facing the Congress, and we need to show the public that we can face all of them simultaneously.
How should Democrats approach reconciliation during the 117th Congress? How far should they go?
Understanding that my Republican colleagues have in the past — both under Bush and certainly under Trump — used reconciliation for massive tax breaks for the rich and large corporations, and they’ve also used reconciliation to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, I’m going to use reconciliation too, but in a very different way.
I’m going to use reconciliation in as aggressive a way as I possibly can to address the terrible health and economic crises facing working people today.
As we speak, my staff and I are working. We’re working with Biden’s people. We’re working with Democratic leadership. We’ll be working with my colleagues in the House to figure out how we can come up with the most aggressive reconciliation bill to address the suffering of the American working families today.
Has President-elect Biden signaled how he might want to use this tool? Do you think it could be used for massive investments in infrastructure, for example?
I think we should think about how we use reconciliation in two ways. And it’s still not clear to me whether the two ways end up being in one piece of legislation or two. One is, dealing with the immediate crisis. Children in America are hungry. People are sleeping on the street. People are facing eviction. People have no health care in the middle of a pandemic. That is the immediate crisis of today, and it must be addressed.
But, there is also a systemic crisis that has been brewing for years that must be addressed. … What we’ve got to do is create millions of good-paying jobs, and that means clearly, as the president-elect has indicated, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, our roads and bridges. And I would add affordable housing to that, as well.
But it also means creating millions of jobs by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and retrofitting homes and buildings throughout this country, and moving to sustainable forms of energy, and creating jobs in health care. If this crisis has told us anything, it’s that we don’t have enough doctors, we don’t have enough nurses and other health care personnel. We have to build a primary health care system which is now in very, very poor shape.
So, short-term, we know what the crises are. [...]
Second of all, we have structural problems that have to be addressed as well, to get the economy to work for working families.
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You’re a staunch supporter of "Medicare for All." Do you envision reconciliation being used for a massive expansion of health care? What might that look like?
Well, look, I am a very strong advocate of "Medicare for All." I introduced legislation in the Senate. I think at the end of the day, the American people understand that our current health care system is so dysfunctional, so cruel, so wasteful, so expensive, that we need to do what every other major country on Earth does and get health care to all people. What we will be doing is working within the context of what Biden wants.
I will tell you this — that during this terrible pandemic when we’re seeing record-breaking numbers of people being diagnosed with the virus — the idea that 90 million people are worried about whether they can go to the doctor or not is cruel, it’s insane, it’s unacceptable. And that’s something that I think should be addressed and will be addressed in reconciliation.
[italics emphasis added] The constraint of what Biden wants has a sister worry; another Joe; with a 50-50 party split there unfortunately is Joe Manchin, Dem side.
Manchin votes with the Dems on organizing, but is as reactionary as many Republicans, indeed, more reactionary than some. Friction in the machine.
However Sen. Sanders over the years is somewhat familiar with friction. He will adapt to doing the best feasible work from the Committee chair.
What Joe Biden and Joe Manchin want will be the big rock Bernie will have to push uphill. A long, steep uphill. However - For an old guy he will show stamina.