Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is currently, as I write this at 3:14 PM Central Time, leading a pseudo-filibuster to prevent the President’s extension of the Bush tax policy from hitting the floor in the Senate. The link there is to the page on HuffPo carrying the CSPAN live feed. So far Senator Sanders is the only member of the body to commit themselves to attempting to derail the travesty that is tax cuts for billionaires while people starve in America.

Sanders has committed himself to oppose and defeat the extension of the Bush tax cuts, even recognizing the need for transpartisan alliances to break the hold of the oligarchy over tax policy:

Sanders vowed to do everything he can on Capitol Hill to block Obama’s deal from going through, but conceded that he will need some Republican support to kill the bill.

“Our goal now is to start peeling off some Republicans,” said Sanders. But, he added, citizens also have a role to play in pressuring GOP deficit hawks to fight the bill.

“Tie up those lines!” he said. “E-mail people! Our position should be very, very clear.”

While winning over a handful of Republicans may be ambitious, retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) has already vowed to defeat any tax bill, arguing nobody should have any tax breaks extended with the deficit at $13.7 trillion, and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has also came out in opposition to Obama’s agreement.

This is an unqualified Good Thing. Jim DeMint is the King of Teabaggers on the Senate side. We need a fight like this, right now, just like Audit the Fed. Even if we hate being in the same room as some of these groups, we need all the people we can cobble together to challenge the economic elites.

If there was ever a time to call your teabagger aunt, brother, mom, whatever, this is it. Hopefully, in the future there will be more fights like this where people can offer mass resistance against the economic status quo. For now, we need to support Senator Sanders however we can.

Crossposted at Captured State