http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=297410<snips>
In countless speeches over the past seven years, Democrats have rightly slammed "the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy" as reckless, unnecessary, and unjust. Yet Senator Bernie Sanders has provided Senate Democrats with ample opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and his colleagues have failed to seize that opportunity.
Last year, Sanders introduced the National Priorities Act to rescind the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and use those revenues for health care, education, childcare, veterans services, infrastructure, deficit reduction and other vital needs. The bill had no cosponsors, was never brought to the floor for a vote, and it languishes in the Senate Finance Committee.
Yesterday, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Sanders announced his latest effort to restore fiscal sanity to the tax code, hoping that the third time will be a charm. Again, his amendment would rescind the tax cuts only for the wealthiest .3 percent of taxpayers in order to increase revenues by $32.5 billion over the next three years (less than 3 months of spending in Iraq). It is currently cosponsored by Senators Clinton, Sherrod Brown, Richard Durbin, Tom Harkin, Edward Kennedy, Barbara Mikulski, and Chuck Schumer. (Disappointingly, Senator Obama hadn't indicated his intention to sign on at the time of this post.)