There are useless people, and there’s Bernie Sanders. This man has single-handedly turned me from a liberal Obama supporter into a very certain left-of-center moderate that despises the DSA as much as MAGA. How? Well, our latest installment is Bernie killing a bill to fight pediatric cancer:

Pediatric cancer advocates scrambled to get to the Senate to watch the moment. Reporters who had covered the issue, including this one, were given the heads-up about its imminent passage. At least three kids who are bereaved siblings of cancer victims and one pediatric cancer survivor sat in the Senate gallery.

And then, it failed. A single senator stood in the way. It was Bernie Sanders.

In a dramatic, heated exchange on the Senate floor—caught by the C-SPAN cameras but largely missed by the news-consuming public—Sanders announcedhis opposition to quick passage for the bill. He did so not because he disagreed with its objective—which is to give the FDA the authority to push pharmaceutical companies to study combination drug therapies—but because he worried that extraneous provisions attached to it would make it harder to achieve other priorities. He argued that the Senate ought to be passing similarly important, bipartisan-supported health care measures along with it. His staff insisted to me that they would revisit the bill soon, and they seemed confident it would all get done in the new year.

I mean look, I say a lot of mean things about far lefties, and some of them are probably a bit hyperbolic. Not in this case. This ass hole literally killed a bill to help kids with cancer because the bill didn’t deal with other things he wants done. Like, really. Kids with cancer dude? The week before Christmas, he killed a bill to help kids with cancer. I knew he was a piece of shit before, but this is the kind of low that I did not think was possible.

We often have the argument over which side is worse. Both sides in politics claim the high ground. I think we are reaching the point where both parties literally have extremists so far out on the horseshoe that they’re just both assholes who need to go home. Bernie isn’t the only person who has played football with this bill, amazingly. Take his right-wing mirror, Rand Paul, for example:

The bill was on the doorstep of passage through the Republican-controlled House when Elon Musk suddenly decided to take it upon himself to kill it. In a series of caustic tweets, he called for GOP lawmakers to scrap every element of the legislation that wasn’t a simple continuation of the current government policy. The health care components that had been negotiated were scrapped.

And then, for a brief moment, they looked like they might be revived.

In the hours after Congress passed that pared-down December 2024 funding bill, lawmakers revisited three pediatric cancer provisions. One of them, which would provide money for pediatric cancer research, passed the Senate with unanimous consent. The Give Kids a Chance Act failed. This time it was Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who objected.

Ok, so the socialist left-wing nut and the libertarian right-wing nut have taken turns blocking care for kids with cancer. Shocking? Not at all. What is this a fight over, you ask? What could possibly cause these two men to take turns sticking it to children with cancer? Trust me, it’s as dumb as you can imagine.

For example, Rand Paul had come around to support a unanimous consent request on the Give Kids a Chance Act in part because lawmakers had added to it a provision he wanted: one that would give the FDA authority to share information about innovator (i.e., brand-name) drugs to prospective applicants. That specific provision is projected to save roughly $1.2 billion over the ten-year budgetary window (according to Hill aides), which would go into a Medicare account. Why does that matter, you ask? Because Sanders wanted the savings to be used to fund community health centers instead. And once money goes into Medicare, it’s hard to take it out for use elsewhere. No politician wants to be attacked for raiding a social safety net program.

That was just one problem that Sanders had with the bill. He also wanted all of the provisions that Musk scrapped back in December 2024 to be passed as well, not just the Give Kids a Chance Act. Among them: mandatory funding for the national health service corps and mandatory funding for the teaching health center program. Were they not important, too, he asked on the Senate floor.

“We must revive that bipartisan agreement that was worked on month after month after month by Democrats and Republicans,” Sanders said.

Efforts were made to try and push through. Sen. Bill Cassidy, who took over the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee from Sanders in 2025, tried holding out carrots, making what appeared to be a commitment to his colleague to help get community health care funding passed. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a major proponent of the Give Kids a Chance Act, tried wielding a stick instead.

“He is literally killing kids in front of us because of his political movement,” he said of Sanders on the Senate floor. “It is ridiculous.”

Jesus f’ing Christ, Markwayne Mullin sounds like the f***ing adult in the room here! Does anyone know how ridiculous that is? Markwayne Mullin. From Oklahoma. The sane adult in the room. Are you for real?!?

Look, one can and should argue that this is Chuck Schumer and 8 Democrats who voted to reopen the government’s fault- they didn’t take easy victories like this and put it in their demands to vote to end the shutdown, let alone the health care subsidies for millions of Americans. Even so, this is not a bill that really should need to be in a negotiation. It’s not like money going into the Medicare fund is a bad thing, especially for the socialist that says he wants to put literally everyone on Medicare. But fine. This bill may be incremental progress on health care, but it’s progress no less, and lawmakers should vote for progress for their constituents any time they have a chance to. Moving legislation is hard.

Lawmakers like Bernie Sanders make it harder, doing stupid stunts like this on bills that no one wants them to fight over. There’s a reason this guy hasn’t passed very many bills in his 30 plus years in Congress. He’s the last person you should take advice from on who to elect to Congress to make American life better.

Just a reminder that Bernie Sanders endorsed Bob “Crooksy” Brooks for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District on the day Bob announced. Yes, that Bob Brooks. And that Bob Brooks. And that Bob Brooks. Yep, still that Bob Brooks. He also supported Graham Platner in Maine, the guy who rocked a Nazi tattoo for a decade. He also helped give us lying grifter and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard with his praise, and the guy who killed ACA subsidies for millions, John Fetterman as our Senator.

Can’t Bernie go home and knit or something and stop hurting America?