U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders raised concerns about America’s political future after billionaire Elon Musk influenced the House’s efforts to pass a government spending bill this week. In a video on his official YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@SenatorSanders), the Vermont Senator sharply criticized the growing shift toward elite-driven governance. Watch the video or read the transcript on Civil Today.

Hello everybody. As I am sure you have heard, there is a lot that’s going on here in Washington D.C. So let me say a few words and try to explain it.

Bottom line.

After all is said and done, is that after months of negotiations, Senate Democrats and House Republicans reached an agreement called a Continuing Resolution, which would continue to fund the government for three months.

Frankly, that agreement was not something that I was all that excited about. But it was better than nothing, and I was prepared and am prepared to vote for it.

And one of the reasons is that it contained a reasonable increase in funding for primary health care, something that I feel very strongly about, and that my committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, is responsible for. And given the enormous crisis that we’re facing in health care in this country today, it really would be of help to many millions of Americans.

What this legislation would do is significantly, or modestly at least, increase funding for community health centers all over this country, which treat about 30 million Americans who are low income or working class. And it would also increase the number of young doctors who go out into rural America and also into underserved areas. That is where we need the doctors and the nurses. And that’s what this legislation would do.

In any case, within the House of Representatives, the Republican House and the Democratic Senate, there was a widespread agreement on this resolution, and it was just about ready to be passed. In fact, the Republicans posted it on their website. We were ready to go.

But then, out of nowhere, the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, began tweeting his opposition to this legislation. In fact, he was very blunt about it. He told Republicans that if they voted for this proposal, which they had already agreed to do, he would take out his wallet and spend as much money as it took to defeat them in primaries and drive them out of office.

You got that?

Take a deep breath and appreciate what’s going on here.

The wealthiest person in the world, who spent at least $277 million to elect Donald Trump and a republican Congress, has now claimed complete ownership of that party. And what he’s saying is, hey Republicans, forget your constituents. Forget your constitutional responsibilities. If you don’t do what I, Elon Musk, want you to do, you’re out of office. And I have the money to do just that.

My friends, what we are looking at here has nothing to do with democracy.

What we are looking at here is oligarchy.

This is up and up government by the billionaire class for the billionaire class.

And by the way, Musk is not only trying to intimidate Republicans. He is trying to inject himself into the Democratic Party as well. He is threatening to target Democrats who are standing up to him and his agenda.

Further and very dangerously, and this is the guy, you know, who owns Twitter. As part of his campaign to defeat this resolution.

Musk has been spreading an enormous amount of disinformation and outright lies about what is in the bill.

He said that the measure would include a 40% pay raise for Congress.

That’s a lie.

It is a 3.9% increase. The same as federal employees are receiving.

He said that this legislation would fund bioweapons labs.

Not true.

In fact, it provides funds to protect Americans from emerging infectious diseases.

He said that the country would be just fine if the government shut down.

Really?

Here’s what happens if Mr. Musk gets his way and the deal implodes.

Funding for kids cancer research gets cut.

At a time when we already paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs pharmaceutical middlemen will be able to continue to overcharge you for prescriptions.

Americans recovering from devastating floods, fires, and hurricanes, often due to climate change, won’t get the help that they need.

That’s what happens if the proposal go down. And what happens if the government shuts down? Well, our troops won’t get their paychecks. Nearly 7 million women and children who rely on WIC nutrition assistance could go hungry. And 2 million federal government workers, some of whom don’t make a whole lot of money, won’t be getting paid.

Now let us be very clear. Elon Musk was not elected to be president of the United States. In fact, he was not elected to be dogcatcher. And by the way, what all of this hoopla is really about, above and beyond everything I’m talking about, is that when Trump and musk come into power in late January, do you know what their first order of business will be? You think it’ll be to fixed healthcare? You think we deal with climate change, deal with homelessness? Well, if you thought that, you’re dead wrong.

Their first order of business will be to provide massive tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. And the largest corporations. So think about it. At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, when Musk himself is worth almost half a trillion dollars. What these guys want to do is give more tax breaks to billionaires, and, the heads of large corporations.

So where do we go from here?

Let us understand the gravity of what we dealing with. This is not politics as usual. This is not just Democrats versus Republicans, conservatives versus liberals or progressives. It’s much deeper than that.

What we are dealing with right now is that the billionaire class, which owns so much of our economy, which owns so much of our media, they are now moving aggressively to own our political system as well.

So we got a lot of work in front of us. We’ve got to educate. We’ve got to organize and we have got to stop them.

Thank you very much. Have a great holiday season.

Transcriot by Civil Today.