October 5th, 2011

From The Hill:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had a terse warning Tuesday for those hoping to rein in deficit spending by hiking Medicare’s eligibility age: “Ain’t gonna happen.”

“Forty-five thousand people are dying in America this year because they don’t have access to healthcare, and we’ll be damned if we’re going to allow more people to die by raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67,” Sanders told a liberal crowd gathered in Washington for the Take Back the American Dream conference.

Sanders’s criticism Tuesday was largely directed toward the Republicans, who are also near-united in their opposition to tax hikes, even on the country’s most profitable corporations.

Some Republicans have responded to similar remarks by accusing the Democrats of inciting a class conflict.

“Class warfare may make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told Fox News Sunday last month. “We don’t need a system that seeks to divide people.”

Read more on the statements from both parties on The Hill.