WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today outlined a progressive economic agenda to reverse a 40-year decline of the American middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else in the United States.
In a Senate floor speech, Sanders detailed measures to create millions of new jobs, raise wages, protect the environment and provide health care for all. He said the most significant question facing the American people is: “Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?”
The collapse of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has left the United States with more wealth and income inequality than any major country and the highest rate of childhood poverty. “Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages,” he said. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median female worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, household income for the median middle-class family is less than it was a quarter century ago.
“We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing. Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent,” Sanders said.
Sanders detailed a 12-point economic program to:
* Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.
* Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.
* Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.
* Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.
* Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.
* Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.
* Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.
* Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.
* Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.
* Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.
* Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.
* Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.
Contact: Michael Briggs (202) 224-5141
Sounds like a campaign
Sounds like someone has decided to run for President.
This list certainly looks good. (Sounds like Obama in 2008, a bit…).
How could he lose?
He did the math and tallies showed this platform would improve the lot of two hundred ninety seven million Americans, and maybe help the ecosphere recover, if we all got lucky.
What could go wrong?
Being of the McGovern
Being of the McGovern generation, he could lose and Ted Cruz win. I’m thinking a Hilary/Bernie ticket, covers all my bases.
Elizabeth Warren
I think so too. But without a Southerner or Westerner to balance her, ol’ Hil might not get far.
I actually prefer Elizabeth Warren for President…VP, I don’t really think of one.
If Warren doesn’t run, and Bernie does, I will vote for him, as I always have.
Mitt Romney by a nose
My prediction – the Dems will allow Bernie to run for a while, then he’ll have to lose to their anointed one, most likely Hillary Clinton at this point, at the proper time. It will be a replay of the Dean campaign.
Sanders will not be offered the VP position (too radical!) and someone we’ve never really heard of will be asked to be VP. They’ll be chosen scientifically to cynically appeal to voters, so it might be a male hispanic. Sanders will be given a cabinet position, perhaps.
Hillary will then lose (It’s the Republican’s turn again for the White House and she has too much baggage) and Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush will be our next President.
The only real hope for Hillary is that the Republicans run a slate so awful that people come out to vote against it, like they did with McCain/Palin. Perhaps a bare win due to the lesser of two evils.
Hillary has a problem, though. She can’t point to doing much of anything for regular people in her lifetime of government service. She’s a bit of a warmonger, too, supporting all the recent invasions. She hasn’t come out against spying on innocent Americans to the best of my knowledge.
Just a thought
You said “she can’t point to doing much of anything for the regular people…” – wouldn’t that make her a Republican?
Well, who are her top corporate contributors ?
Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=n00000019
Top corporate contributors Citibank, Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan Chase, DLA Piper, Morgan Stanley.
She’s a neocon war hawk on international policy, and the favorite candidate of the financial sector, for good reason.
Whether she is a republican or not, I don’t vote for neocon, war hawk, pro wall street at the expense of working people candidates. All we can do is pray that the democrats won’t nominate her, because she won’t bring out the democratic wing of the democratic party, and she will loose. If we don’t want a repeat of Nader / Gore, you can’t run a candidate like Hilary Clinton, and expect a different outcome.
Biden his time
Based on what I hear from the VP’s themselves, and seems well known, the position is at best an exalted sinecure, and at worst an insurance backstop, or demographic see-saw counterweight.
Some candidates, e.g., Bush/Quaye, (as G Sr. learned by seeing Nixon/Agnew) pick a running mate to make themselves more untouchable. McCain/Palin could qualify here too, but this is actually a different kind of minefield.
And other than the Iago-like maneuvers of a Cheney, or LBJ, I don’t see how the VP position can exert any real influence. Sidekick, confidante..sure..but I think it’s mostly political ballast.
The Senatorial duties of the VP’s job are negligible- altho in a more closely divided chamber the tie breaker role can be critical.
This is all to say that not only is Bernie ideologically worlds away from Hillary, I can’t see how his placement on a ticket is anything but a net loss. Maybe for Bernie, if self ambition trumps effectiveness, it’s a big feather in his cap. But for those who relish his voice and ability to advance legislation that at least tries to have impact for the less powerful, a cozy spot on the Clinton couch would be a wash.
Bernie and Jane
Mr. President and the First Lady.
When I have more time I’ll check out the math….