Bernie Sanders Sends Shudders Up Koch Spines By Explaining Why Republicans Attack The IRS

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Sen Bernie Sanders exposed a dirty little secret that the Kochs and other conservative billionaires don’t want you to know. The Republican attacks on the IRS are part of a deliberate strategy to help the Kochs buy our democracy.

Video:

Sen. Sanders said:

So when you see Republicans beating up on the IRS, when you see Republicans defunding or cutting back on funding for the IRS so there is less ability to monitor what these organizations are doing, this is not an accident. This is real goal, and let’s be very very clear. What the leadership of the Republican Party wants, and you should talk to them about it. They won’t deny it. Is they want to end all campaign finance regulations. They don’t want to have to go around in this circle anymore.

What they want is the ability of the Koch brothers and others to be able to contribute as much money as they want directly into the candidates that they support, and that is the direction in which we are moving. So you weaken the IRS. You come up with the phony social welfare situation. You pass Citizens. You have a Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United on McCutcheon. It leads us directly into a situation will billionaires own and control the candidates that they support.

What Sen. Sanders explained in the video above is what the Republican Party and the Koch brothers don’t want the American people to understand. The IRS scandal isn’t about the “targeting” of conservative groups. The scandal is a Republican attempt to scare the IRS off of looking into their dark money groups and the billionaires who fund them. Republicans are trying to protect their money machine.

The GOP is extremely dependent on large donors for their funding. They don’t have the small donor base that fuels the Democratic Party. This is why Republicans are pushing for more unlimited contributions in politics. More unlimited contributions mean more direct spending by billionaires to buy their candidates, and when a billionaire owns a member of Congress, that member no longer works for the American people.

The Republican majority in the House is an example of a billionaire owned legislative body. House Republicans aren’t interested in passing legislation to extend unemployment benefits, help veterans, and create jobs. Their top priority is to take away programs that help the non-wealthy (Obamacare, Medicare, food stamps, school lunches, etc.) and replace them with tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation.

Speaker John Boehner loves to refer to the House as the People’s House, but really it is a billionaire’s lounge. The Koch brothers and the other billionaires are trying to purchase our representative democracy. The last thing they want is for people to catch on to their newfound purchasing power.

The battle to preserve our democracy begins by making sure as many Americans as possible hear and understand the words of Sen. Sanders. Because the Koch brothers can buy candidates, but they can’t buy votes.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association