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Atop the Powerful Budget Committee at Last, Bernie Sanders Wants to Go Big - The New York Times WWW.NYTIMES.COM To the chagrin of Republicans, the democratic socialist senator will play a central role in shepherding Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s agenda through Congress. This was him on Seth Meyers: Seth Meyers: President Biden made, I think, a great effort yesterday to send a message of unity, and as someone who talked in the lead up to the election about how he is the kind of politician who has friends on the other side aisle; he wants to work with republicans, yet we're already seeing even today that Mitch McConnell is taking steps to limit what the democrats in the senate can do. Do you think there is some sort of bipartisan work that can be done in the senate or are you expecting a sort of McConnell-inspired gridlock? Bernie Sanders: Look, I think we should do our best to reach out to republicans who represent communities that are suffering terribly in terms of unemployment, lack of healthcare, and other very serious problems --- but --- I don't think our reaching out should go on indefinitely. This country today is hurting and people are hurting really, really badly. We're looking [sic] about people and people who cannot feed their kids (literally) who are worried about being evicted, can't afford to go to the doctor even when they are sick. We have got to move and move quickly. So I think we should reach out republicans, [but] if they choose to not come on board --- which I suspect will probably be the case --- we have the majority, we should use that majority in a very aggressive way. Now I'm gonna be chairman of the budget committee which handles what we call 'reconciliation' and that is a senate process by which you can pass not all kinds of legislation but a whole lot of very important legislation with a [simple] majority vote, not 60 votes, and it is my view that we should make sure that we address the needs of the American people in that reconciliation bill, and if we pass it with 51 votes, we pass it with 51 votes.