These people are trash.
Sanders announced in his Senate speech that he will not back any unanimous consent request to speed up the passage of the America COMPETES Act—which the House approved in February—unless there is a roll call vote on two “extremely important” amendments he has introduced.
Taking aim at microchip firms, the senator said that “providing $53 billion in corporate welfare to an industry that has outsourced tens of thousands of jobs to low-wage countries and spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks with no strings attached may make sense to some people, but it does not make sense to me, nor do I think it makes sense to the American people.”
Sanders’ first amendment “would prevent microchip companies from receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or equity stakes to the federal government,” he explained. “If private companies are going to benefit from over $53 billion in corporate welfare, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared with the American people, not just wealthy shareholders.”
“In other words, all this amendment says is that if these companies want taxpayer assistance, we are not going to socialize all of the risks and privatize all of the profits,” he added. “If these investments turn out to be profitable as a direct result of these federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a return on that investment.”
The second amendment “would simply eliminate the $10 billion bailout for Jeff Bezos to fly to the moon,” Sanders said, acknowledging the billionaire’s personal wealth. “If Mr. Bezos wants to go to the moon, let him use his own money, not the taxpayers’.”
While Sanders criticized those two particular elements of the America COMPETES Act, progressives and foreign policy experts have also raised other concerns. As Common Dreams reported last month, an analysis by Ashik Siddique of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies called the bill “part of a dangerous trend of feeding tensions between the U.S. and China.”
America COMPETES Act Ignores Social Needs, Feeds Tensions With China: Analysis
what the fukk?
