By Igor Bobic

Huffington Port, Dec. 19, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/rand-paul-marco-rubio-cuba-2016_n_6355646.html

A dispute between two possible presidential candidates escalated on Friday around the topic of newly opened diplomatic relations with Cuba, and the latest jabs took place on — where else — the Internet.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took to Twitter and Facebook to lambaste Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed Thursday on Fox News that his fellow Senate Foreign Relations Committee member “has no idea what he’s talking about” on Cuba. Paul came out in support of the Obama administration, which reached a historic accord with the communist island that included the release of U.S. Agency for International Development worker Alan Gross.

“The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. Why not Cuba?” the Kentucky Republican wrote on Facebook. “I am a proponent of peace through commerce, and I believe engaging Cuba can lead to positive change.”

“Seems to me,” Paul continued, “Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism. Finally, let’s be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans. A recent poll demonstrates that a large majority of Cuban-Americans actually support normalizing relations between our countries.”

Rubio, who is the son of Cuban immigrants, loudly protested the shift in policy all week. He chided the president on Wednesday for “coddling dictators and tyrants” and for dealing with a regime that has “harassed, imprisoned and even killed” its own people.

The spat highlights a fissure in the Republican party, and is a sign of things to come should both senators decide to run for the White House. But it’s not the first time the two have tangled over foreign policy. Last year, Rubio delivered a speech in Paul’s home state in which he passionately made the case against isolationism — a philosophy the libertarian senator from Kentucky has flirted with in the past.

At this rate, we may as well just cancel the debates.

Travis Gettys 16 Dec 2014 at 13:40 ET

SOURCE: Raw Story

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) plans a legislative push for the breakup of Wall Street’s largest banks and lifting the cap on contributions to Social Security.

“If Congress cannot regulate Wall Street, there is just one alternative,” said Sanders in a speech Saturday. “It is time to break these too-big-to-fail banks up so that they can never again destroy the jobs, homes, and life savings of the American people.”

Sanders, who has signaled he may run for president in 2016 to offer a true progressive alternative, said he would introduce legislation at the start of next congressional session to break up the largest investment banks.

“If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” he said.

He made the remarks during a debate on a controversial spending bill that contains provisions written by Citigroup lobbyists to weaken Dodd-Frank oversight of banking.

“If Wall Street lobbyists can literally write a provision into law that will allow too-big-to-fail banks to make the same risky bets that nearly destroyed our economy just a few years ago, it should be obvious to all that their incredible economic and political power is a huge danger to our economy and our way of life,” Sanders said.

Sanders also said he would introduce legislation intended to strengthen Social Security to lift a growing number of American seniors above the poverty level.

“The best way to expand Social Security is to ask the wealthiest people in our country to pay more into the system by scrapping the cap on income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax,” he said.

Sanders said current rules allow a billionaire to pay the same amount into Social Security as a person who earns $117,000 a year.

“This is regressive, this is unfair, this is absurd,” the senator said. “If we lifted this cap and applied the Social Security payroll tax to income above $250,000 — not $117,000, but $250,000 a year, we could not only extend the solvency of Social Security for decades to come, which is what we want to do, but we could also provide the resources necessary to expand Social Security benefits. That is exactly what we should be doing, and that in fact is what the American people want us to do.”

A poll conducted in August found that 90 percent of Democratic voters supported lifting the cap, the senator said, along with 73 percent of independent voters and 73 percent of Republican voters.

“Sadly, despite this overwhelming support for expanding Social Security, the CEOs at the Business Roundtable — the organization representing the largest corporations in America — came out with a plan last year which does exactly what the American people do not want to do,” Sanders said. “The American people want to expand Social Security and the Business Roundtable came out with a plan that would increase the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70 and severely cut the COLA of senior citizens and disabled veterans.”

Watch his speech before the U.S. Senate posted online by Bernie Sanders:

http://www.cubavision.icrt.cu/