Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ memory is slipping.
MSNBC confronted the 76-year-old Sanders over comments he made in 2013 amid a looming government shutdown, with the obvious implication that Democrats are doing the exact same thing Sanders accused Republicans of five years ago.
“Budget chief Mick Mulvaney was a congressman, as you remember, the last time there was a government shutdown in 2013, and he named you this morning when he was talking about what you had to say then, lets listen,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi told Sanders before previewing a clip of Mulvaney.
“’What they are saying to the American people tonight is maybe we have lost the presidential election, maybe we’ve lost seats in the Senate and the House’ – this is Sanders talking in 2013 – ‘it doesn’t matter we can now bring the government to a shutdown, throw some 800,000 hardworking Americans out on the street, we’re going to get our way no matter what,’” Mulvaney, Trump’s director of Management and Budget, said in the clip.
The current threat by Senate Democrats to oppose a measure to keep the government running through mid-February over demands of amnesty for illegal immigrants in Obama’s former Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “is exactly what they accuse Republicans of doing back in 2013,” Mulvaney said.
“There is absolutely no reason to have to insert a DACA discussion, an immigration discussion, into the funding bill today,” he said.
“Senator, your response?” Velshi questioned Sanders.
“I, that doesn’t sound like … I’m not … I don’t recall saying anything like that,” Sanders said.
Footage from C-SPAN2 posted to YouTube on September 27, 2013 shows Sanders did, in fact, say something like that.
“ … You do not hold the American people hostage by threatening to shut down the government, or for the first time in the history of the country, not paying our bills and bringing this country and perhaps the entire world into a major financial crisis,” Sanders said from the Senate podium days before the funding deadline.
“What Democracy is not about is a handful of members of the House of Representatives, extreme right-wing Republicans, saying ‘if we do not get our way, we are prepared to punish tens of millions of Americans. Ya, we lost the election, ya we lost seats in the House and the Senate, but we are prepared to bring this government down. We are prepared to cause perhaps a major global financial crisis unless we get our way.’”
Lawmakers in the House approved a bill Thursday to keep the government funded through mid-February, and the issue has since moved to the Senate, where Senate Democrats are expected to shoot down the measure. The bill also includes a six-year reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage for more than 8.9 million children.
Senate Democrats are reportedly threatening to shut down the government over their demands to include protections for illegal immigrants who are currently shielded from deportation by Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. The Trump administration canceled the program last year – which was created unilaterally by Obama – but extended protections through this spring to give lawmakers time to develop a more permanent solution.
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