Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, took to the floor of the Senate at 10:24 this morning to denounce the tax cut deal struck between the White House and congressional Republicans — and kept going for more than eight hours.

Mr. Sanders is fiercely opposed to the deal to continue all of the Bush-era tax cuts, even for the highest-income Americans. He thinks that it is a huge and unnecessary giveaway to the rich. And he has already put Senate leaders on notice that they will have to jump over all the procedural roadblocks available to him. As a result, a vote to overcome a filibuster is already set for Monday afternoon.

But unlike Senate Republicans who have made a strategy of throwing obstacles in the way and then heading back to their offices or just going home, allowing the Senate clock to tick its way toward the inevitable, Mr. Sanders on Friday decided to use the floor time available to him to make a full-throated display of his opposition to the bill.

“I think everyone knows, the president of the United States, President Obama and the Republican leadership have reached an agreement on a very significant tax bill,” Mr. Sanders began. In my view, the agreement that they reached is a bad deal for the American people. I think we can do better, and I am here today to take a strong stand against this bill, and I intend to tell my colleagues and the nation exactly why I am in opposition.

“You can call what I am doing today whatever I want,” said Mr. Sanders, who often calls himself a socialist. “You can call it a filibuster. You can call it a very long speech. I’m not here to set any great records to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides.”

While Mr. Sanders may have not set out to create a spectacle, he certainly got some attention. Many of his colleagues were not at the Capitol to listen; many were not even in Washington. For example, the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, who personally sealed the tax cut deal with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was home in Kentucky.

But even if they were not in the Senate chamber, or near a television set to watch C-Span, Mr. Sanders’s very long speech was amplified with modern accouterments not even dreamed about when Mr. Smith went to Washington. As the minutes and hours ticked by, his staff sent out a flurry of Twitter messages, including quotes and updates on his remarks. His filibuster is also being streamed live on //sanders.senate.gov.

His speech, however, was more interesting and more lucid in chunks larger than 140 characters.

“This nation has a record breaking, $13.8 trillion national debt at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing,” Mr. Sanders said. “It seems to me to be unconscionable, unconscionable for my conservative friends and for everybody else in this country to be driving up this already too high national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who don’t need it and in some cases, Mr. President, don’t even want it.”

(He was referring to the Senate President pro tempore, not speaking to Mr. Obama directly.)

“Two of the wealthiest people in the world — Bill Gates of Microsoft, Warren Buffett, Berkshire — billionaires. They said ‘It’s absurd. We don’t need a tax break.’ All over the country, you hear a lot of folks who have a lot of money saying ‘don’t drive up the deficit and force our kids to pay higher taxes to pay off the national debt in order to give tax breaks to the richest people in this country.’”

Beyond the continuation of lower income tax rates for high-earners, Mr. Sanders also railed against other aspects of the tax deal including a provision granting a generous tax exemption to wealthy estates and the continuation of a 15 percent rate on capital gains and dividends, which he noted would mean a big tax break for rich people who live off passive income from accumulated wealth.

“The agreement between the president and the Republican leadership also calls for a continuation of the Bush-era 15 percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends, meaning that those people who make their living off their investments will continue to pay a substantially lower tax rate than firemen, teachers, nurses, carpenters, and virtually all the other working people of this country. And I just don’t think that’s fair. That’s wrong.”

Mr. Sanders also dismissed assertions that the tax cut deal was worthwhile because it will keep jobless benefits flowing to the long-term unemployed, saying that assistance should have been approved regardless of what happened to the Bush-era rates. “Let me be very clear,” he said. “In the midst of a serious and major recession, at a time when millions of our fellow Americans are out of work, through no fault of their own, but they have been out of work for a very, very long time, it would be, in my view, immoral and wrong to turn our backs on those workers.”

And then, at 4:20 p.m., another Tweet:

Sen. Bernie Sanders is trending FIRST in the nation right now. We will continue to tweet the senator’s speech. #filibuster

A later Tweet knocked down a report that Mr. Sanders was going to end his speech at 6 p.m.

About 6:40 p.m., this update arrived: Sen. Bernie Sanders is now in his 9th hour of non-stop #filibuster. Sanders has not left the floor once in that time.

But around 7 p.m., the gentleman from Vermont left the floor.