February 24, 2021

It's often comedians who give the best political interviews. Tuesday night Jimmy Kimmel did a great job interviewing the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Bernie Sanders.

Jimmy started the interview by asking Sanders if he was in his office or "a hotel room in Cancun right now." Sanders admitted that some Senators get grief for their travels "depending on which side of the aisle you're on."

Asked about his work on the Budget Committee, Sanders immediately turned his focus to economic inequality. Sanders said being chairman is "a lot of fun because as you can appreciate the budget deals with all aspects of the federal government, in fact, all aspects of American life, and we intend to do a number of hearings. We are trying to understand why the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. Why half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Why so many of our people are uninsured or underinsured. And why so many of our people, millions of people, are working for starvation wages."

Sanders wants a $15.00 minimum wage, and he has news for Republican colleagues.

"...Under Trump, we have seen this country and the Republican Party move, to my mind, very far away from reality. And the fact that you got colleagues of mine in the Senate who refuse even today to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the election.”

Sanders said his committee is “reaching out to Republicans and saying ‘Look, if you want to rebuild our infrastructure, come on aboard, you want to lower the cost of prescription drugs, you want to provide health care to all people, you wanna raise the minimum wage in this country. We’d love to have you.’”

“But if you are not prepared to come on board, we are going to go forward and we’re gonna do it alone. We’ve got 50 votes plus the vice president. We can do it in the Senate, we’ve got the votes in the House. That’s what we intend to do.”

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