Sanders, Welch focus on new direction for Congress

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

Posted November 10, 2006

BURLINGTON — Senator-elect Bernie Sanders and Congressman-elect Peter Welch said this week that Democratic leadership skills will be put to the test now that they control both chambers of Congress.

Sanders, who hopes to introduce legislation to allow people to purchase drugs imported from Canada once the new Congress convenes in January, said people around the country will be watching Democrats closely to see if they will cave into the corporate interests as he claims their GOP counterparts did in recent years.

“The easy part is to say no to a continuation of Bush’s right-wing policies. The hard part is to stand up against the powerful corporate monied interests in Washington and begin, in fact, to face the problems facing the middle class in this country,” said Sanders, in a post-election interview with reporters.

And, if the Democrats can’t live up to the expectations, they will pay the price politically.

“If the Democrats do not show the American people that in fact their control of government can make a difference in the lives of ordinary people they will pay a terrible, terrible price for it,” said Sanders.

In a separate interview with reporters, Welch believes there can be bipartisan solutions on some areas, from energy policy to allowing the government to negotiate better drug prices for Medicare patients.

Welch said some of these bills were passed with GOP leaders using “strong-arm tactics” to force moderate Republicans to back proposals they might not support under different circumstances. He believes Democrats can provide those different circumstances.

The ouster of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday, which came just one day after the election, should help usher in a new policy direction.

Rumsfeld’s departure seemed to underscore the view of many that the Nov. 7 election was largely a referendum on the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War.

And despite the call by some for an immediate withdrawal, neither Sanders nor Welch believes that is the best policy to pursue.

“I don’t think you can do a quote-unquote immediate withdrawal,” said Sanders. “I think the policy has got to be we will withdraw our troops as soon as possible, and by that I mean that, I believe, we can have our troops out in the next year and maybe a significant number of them before that. I don’t think you can snap your fingers and just bring all the troops home tomorrow. I just don’t think that’s practical.”

Sanders said Pres. George W. Bush should be asking military leaders to draw up plans for an orderly withdrawal of troops from Iraq within a year, while at the same time supporting the country’s government.

Welch said he would like to see an aggressive approach to shifting the country’s Iraq policy.

“I believe we clearly have to move aggressively towards a change in direction that would include acts that require the Iraqis to take more responsibility for their won future and I think part of that should be a timetable and redeployment and to be successful you need to build a broad base of consensus,” Welch said.

Welch said he supports the plan proposed by Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, who believes troops can be out of Iraq in a year, with redeployment out of the country and into other parts of the Middle East happening almost right away.

Welch said getting troops out of Iraq should take too priority, and Democrats should not get distracted by holding too many hearings on possible misdeeds of the Bush administration, or automatically launching impeachment proceedings.

However, he did say that two areas specifically Congress should investigate — Allegations of war profiteering, and if there was political pressure put on intelligence gathering agencies before the Iraq invasion.

Welch and Sanders noted that the first order of business should be attempts to roll back some of GOP’s economic policies, such as tax breaks to large oil companies and the wealthy, and reign in some of the free trade arrangements that have led to the loss of manufacturing jobs.

“I think Vermonters, and people around this country, voted for a change and direction in Iraq and to put our fiscal house in order and work on issues that affect working families and middle income Americans that have been left behind,” said Welch.

The pair also said the Congress should move forward on meaningful health care reform, raise the minimum wage, expand the availability of low-cost drugs to seniors through the Medicare Part D program, and allow people to purchase drugs from Canada.

Sanders said the Senate has to begin to focus on issues that affect the middle class. For starters, health care reform should be on the table. And, he would like to make Vermont a demonstration project for a single-payer health care delivery system.

With 630,000 people, 10 regional hospitals, two tertiary care hospitals in Fletcher Allen Health Care and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, along with several federally-funded health care clinics, Sanders believes the state is just the right size to try a pilot program to provide health care for every resident.

“In a state like California, we are the equivalent of a mid-sized city,” said Sanders. “Trust me, if we use our brains and work together we can provide health care to every man, woman and child in this state. This is really not rocket science. We can do this. I intend to focus on making sure that we lead the nation in providing quality health care … as a right of citizenship.”

Sanders said he also hopes to have Vermont continue to lead the nation in the development of alternative energy solutions for the country.

With Democratic allies like John Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Sanders believes there will be a focus on putting a halt to any more “free” trade deals, and the group may try to roll back some aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, among other global trade pacts.

“Trade is a good thing and structured to benefit American workers, and not just the CEOs of large corporations,” said Sanders.