Sanders: We're Living in a 'Very Ugly Moment in American History'

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said we’re living in an “ugly moment in American history” because of income inequality in the country.

“We’re living in very, very strange and disconcerting times. We have more people living in poverty today than in any time in the history of the United States of America. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty,” Sanders said last night on MSNBC.

“Meanwhile, the rich are doing phenomenally well and corporations are enjoying record-breaking profits. And it is astounding to me from a moral perspective that folks in the Republican party stay up nights figuring out how they can give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and large corporations and then come back and try to cut food stamps for families who are hungry, for kids who are hungry, try to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It is really a very ugly moment in American history,” he added.

The self-proclaimed socialist, 72, has hinted at a run for president in 2016, lamenting that the other hopefuls likely to be angling for the Oval Office aren’t committed to a “political revolution.”

“We have right now in real terms almost 13 percent of our people are unemployed. We have not extended unemployment benefits, long-term unemployment benefits. So you have folks out there now who have virtually no income coming in. They have families. They have kids. How are they going to eat? We have veterans out there who are trying to get into the food stamp program,” Sanders said.

“So to me what you’re looking at is an ugly kind of class warfare where the people on top want more and more and more. And they’re pushing down in an incredibly terrible way the most vulnerable people in our country.”

Sanders called the question of hunger “a basic moral issue that we as a nation have got to really discuss.”

“Tax breaks to billionaires and cuts to nutrition programs for kids. If a kid does not have enough food to eat, how is that child going to do well in school? He or she is not going do well in school,” he continued.

“So you’re attacking the most vulnerable people in this country. There is a rise in poverty among senior citizens, elderly people. They don’t have enough to eat. What kind of nation are we when we give tax breaks to billionaires, but we can’t take care of the elderly and the children?”