Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007 and as U.S. Representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007. Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, though he has a close relationship with the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career.[2] Sanders ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president and is running again in 2020. Before entering each race, he pledged to serve as a Democrat if elected.
An advocate of social democratic and progressive policies, Sanders is known for his opposition to economic inequality and neoliberalism. On domestic policy, he supports labor rights, universal and single-payer healthcare, paid parental leave, tuition-free tertiary education, and an ambitious Green New Deal to create jobs addressing climate change. On foreign policy, he supports reducing military spending, pursuing more diplomacy and international cooperation, and putting greater emphasis on labor rights and environmental concerns when negotiating international trade agreements. Commentators have described his political philosophy as aligned with the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Nordic model, noting the strong influence his views have had on Democratic Party politics since his 2016 presidential campaign.[3][4][5]
Sanders was born into a working-class Jewish family and raised in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. He attended Brooklyn College before graduating from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student, he was an active protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality, as well as for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement. After settling in Vermont in 1968, he ran unsuccessful third-party political campaigns in the early to mid-1970s. As an independent, he was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981 and reelected three times. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990, representing Vermont's at-large congressional district; he later co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He served as a U.S. Representative for 16 years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006; he was reelected to the Senate in 2012 and 2018.
In April 2015, Sanders announced his campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Despite initially low expectations, he went on to win 23 primaries and caucuses and around 43% of pledged delegates, to Hillary Clinton's 55%. His campaign was noted for its supporters' enthusiasm, as well as for rejecting large donations from corporations, the financial industry, and any associated Super PAC. Instead, the campaign was funded largely by internet-based contributions averaging $27 apiece, and the success of this fundraising strategy led to varying degrees of adoption by other candidates in subsequent elections.[6] In July 2016, he formally endorsed Clinton in her general election bid against Republican Donald Trump, while urging his supporters to continue the "political revolution" his campaign had begun.
In February 2019, Sanders announced a second presidential campaign, joining a large field of Democratic candidates pursuing the party nomination. This time, he entered the race as a strong candidate with national recognition, along with a large base of small-dollar donors which has propelled his campaign's fundraising. As of January 2020, Sanders had raised more money than any other Democratic candidate, and only self-funded billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg had more cash on hand.[7] In the first three states of the primary season, Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa but lost narrowly to Pete Buttigieg in pledged delegates, and he won New Hampshire and Nevada outright.
Bernard Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.[8] His father, Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders (1904–1962),[9] was born in Słopnice, Galicia, in Austria-Hungary (now part of Poland),[10][11] to a Jewish family. In 1921, Elias immigrated to the United States, where he became a paint salesman.[10][12][13] Bernard's mother, Dorothy Sanders (née Glassberg, 1912–1960), was born in New York City[14][15] to Jewish immigrant parents from the Russian Empire.[16][17]
Sanders became interested in politics at an early age, "A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including six million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important."[a][20] In the 1940s, many of his relatives in German-occupied Poland were murdered in the Holocaust.[9][15][21]
Sanders lived in Midwood, Brooklyn.[8] He attended elementary school at P.S. 197, where he won a borough championship on the basketball team.[22][23] He attended Hebrew school in the afternoons, and celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1954.[21] His older brother, Larry, said that during their childhood, the family never lacked for food or clothing, but major purchases, "like curtains or a rug," were not affordable.[24]
Sanders attended James Madison High School, where he was captain of the track team and took third place in the New York City indoor one-mile race.[22] In high school, he lost his first election, finishing last out of three candidates for the student body presidency. Not long after his high school graduation, his mother died at the age of 46.[15][21] His father died a few years later in 1962, at the age of 57.[11]
Sanders studied at Brooklyn College for a year in 1959–1960[25] before transferring to the University of Chicago and graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in political science in 1964.[25] He has described himself as a mediocre college student because the classroom was "boring and irrelevant," while the community was more important to his education.[26]
Early career
Political activism
Sanders later described his time in Chicago as "the major period of intellectual ferment in my life."[27] While there, he joined the Young People's Socialist League (the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America)[28] and was active in the Civil Rights Movement as a student for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[15][29] Under his chairmanship, the university chapter of CORE merged with the university chapter of the SNCC.[30] In January 1962, he went to a rally at the University of Chicago administration building to protest university president George Wells Beadle's segregated campus housing policy. "We feel it is an intolerable situation when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments," Sanders said at the protest. He and 32 other students then entered the building and camped outside the president's office.[31][32] After weeks of sit-ins, Beadle and the university formed a commission to investigate discrimination.[33] After further protests, the University of Chicago ended racial segregation in private university housing in the summer of 1963.[27]
Joan Mahoney, a member of the University of Chicago CORE chapter at the time and a fellow participant in the sit-ins, described Sanders in a 2016 interview as "a swell guy, a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but he wasn't terribly charismatic. One of his strengths, though, was his ability to work with a wide group of people, even those he didn't agree with."[34] He once spent a day putting up fliers protesting police brutality, only to notice later that Chicago police had shadowed him and taken them all down.[31] He attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech.[15][31][35] That summer, Sanders was fined $25 (equivalent to $209 in 2019) for resisting arrest during a demonstration in Englewood against segregation in Chicago's public schools.[27][36][37]
In addition to his civil rights activism during the 1960s and 1970s,[30] Sanders was active in several peace and antiwar movements while attending the University of Chicago, becoming a member of the Student Peace Union. He applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War; his application was eventually turned down, by which point he was too old to be drafted. Although he opposed the war, Sanders never criticized those who fought in it, and he has long been a strong supporter of veterans' benefits.[38][39] He also was briefly an organizer with the United Packinghouse Workers of America while in Chicago.[27] He also worked on the reelection campaign of Leon Despres, a prominent Chicago alderman who was opposed to mayor Richard J. Daley's Democratic Party machine. Throughout his student years, Sanders read the works of many political authors, from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and John Dewey to Karl Marx and Erich Fromm.[2]
Professional history and early years in Vermont
After graduating from college, Sanders returned to New York City, where he worked various jobs, including Head Start teacher, psychiatric aide, and carpenter.[26] In 1968, he moved to Stannard, Vermont, a town small in both area and population (88 residents at the 1970 census) within Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom region, because he had been "captivated by rural life." While there, he worked as a carpenter,[28] filmmaker, and writer[40] who created and sold "radical film strips" and other educational materials to schools.[41] He also wrote several articles for the alternative publication The Vermont Freeman.[42] He lived in the area for several years before moving to the more populous Chittenden County in the mid-1970s. During his 2018 reelection campaign, he returned to the town to hold an event with voters and other candidates.[43]
Liberty Union campaigns
Sanders began his electoral political career in 1971 as a member of the Liberty Union Party, which originated in the anti-war movement and the People's Party. He ran as the Liberty Union candidate for governor of Vermont in 1972 and 1976 and as a candidate for U.S. senator in 1972 and 1974.[44] In the 1974 senatorial race, he finished third (5,901 votes; 4%), behind 33-year-old Chittenden County state's attorney Patrick Leahy (D; 70,629 votes; 49%) and two-term incumbent U.S. Representative Dick Mallary (R; 66,223 votes; 46%).[45][46]
The 1976 campaign was the zenith of the Liberty Union's influence, with Sanders collecting 11,317 votes for governor and the party. His strong performance forced the down-ballot races for lieutenant governor and secretary of state to be decided by the state legislature when its vote total prevented either the Republican or Democratic candidate for those offices from garnering a majority of votes.[47] The campaign drained the finances and energy of the Liberty Union, however, and in October 1977, less than a year after the 1976 campaign concluded, he and the Liberty Union candidate for attorney general, Nancy Kaufman, announced their retirement from the party.[47][48]
After his resignation from the Liberty Union Party in 1977, Sanders worked as a writer and as the director of the nonprofit American People's Historical Society (APHS).[49] While with the APHS, he produced a 30-minute documentary about American labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president five times as the Socialist Party candidate.[28][50]
Mayor of Burlington (1981–1989)
Campaigns
Urged by his close friend and political confidant Richard Sugarman, Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1980, at age 39.[51] He ran against incumbent Democratic mayor Gordon "Gordie" Paquette, a five-term mayor who had served as a member of the Burlington City Council for 13 years before that, building extensive community ties and a willingness to cooperate with Republican leaders in controlling appointments to various commissions. Republicans had found Paquette so unobjectionable that they failed to field a candidate in the March 1981 race against him, leaving Sanders as his principal opponent. Sanders's effort was further aided by Citizens Party candidate Greg Guma's decision to exit the race so as not to split the progressive vote. Two other candidates in the race, independents Richard Bove and Joe McGrath, were non-factors in the campaign, with the battle coming down to Paquette and Sanders.[47]
Sanders castigated the pro-development incumbent as an ally of prominent shopping center developer Antonio Pomerleau, while Paquette warned of ruin for Burlington if Sanders were elected. The Sanders campaign was bolstered by a wave of optimistic volunteers as well as by a series of endorsements from university professors, social welfare agencies, and the police union. The final result came as a shock to the local political establishment when Sanders won by just ten votes.[47]
Sanders was reelected three times, defeating both Democratic and Republican candidates. He received 53% of the vote in 1983 and 55% in 1985.[52] In his final run for mayor in 1987, Sanders defeated Paul Lafayette, a Democrat endorsed by both major parties.[53] In 1986, he unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Governor Madeleine Kunin (D) in her run for reelection. Running as an independent, he finished third with 14% of the vote, while Kunin won with 47%, followed by Lt. Governor Peter P. Smith (R) with 38%.
After serving four two-year terms, Sanders chose not to seek reelection in 1989. He went on to lecture in political science at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government that year and at Hamilton College in 1991.[54]
Administration
During his mayoralty, Sanders called himself a socialist and was so described in the press.[55][56] During his first term, his supporters, including the first Citizens Party city councilor Terry Bouricius, formed the Progressive Coalition, the forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party.[57] The Progressives never held more than six seats on the 13-member city council, but they had enough to keep the council from overriding Sanders's vetoes. Under his leadership, Burlington balanced its city budget; attracted a minor league baseball team, the Vermont Reds, then the Double-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds;[15] became the first U.S. city to fund community-trust housing;[58] and successfully sued the local cable television franchise, thereby winning reduced rates for customers.[15]
As mayor, Sanders also led extensive downtown revitalization projects. One of his primary achievements was improving Burlington's Lake Champlain waterfront.[15] In 1981, he campaigned against the unpopular plans by Burlington developer Tony Pomerleau to convert the then-industrial[59] waterfront property owned by the Central Vermont Railway into expensive condominiums, hotels, and offices.[60] He ran under the slogan "Burlington is not for sale" and successfully supported a plan that redeveloped the waterfront area into a mixed-use district featuring housing, parks, and public spaces.[60]
Sanders was a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America throughout the 1980s.[61] In 1985, Burlington City Hall hosted a foreign policy speech by Noam Chomsky. In his introduction, he praised Chomsky as "a very vocal and important voice in the wilderness of intellectual life in America" and said that he was "delighted to welcome a person who I think we're all very proud of."[62][63]
Sanders hosted and produced a public-access television program, Bernie Speaks with the Community, from 1986 to 1988.[64][65] He collaborated with 30 Vermont musicians to record a folk album, We Shall Overcome, in 1987.[66][67] That same year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Sanders one of America's best mayors.[68][69] As of 2013, Burlington was regarded as one of the most livable cities in the United States.[70][71]
U.S. House of Representatives (1991–2007)
Elections
In 1988, incumbent Republican congressman Jim Jeffords decided to run for the U.S. Senate, vacating the House seat representing Vermont's at-large congressional district. Former Lieutenant Governor Peter P. Smith (R) won the House election with a plurality, securing 41% of the vote. Sanders, who ran as an independent, placed second with 38% of the vote, while Democratic State Representative Paul N. Poirier placed third with 19%.[72] Two years later, he ran for the seat again and defeated Smith by a margin of 56% to 39%.[73]
Sanders was the first independent elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since Frazier Reams of Ohio,[74] as well as the first socialist elected to the House in decades.[75][74] He served as a representative from 1991 until he became a senator in 2007, winning reelection by large margins except during the 1994 Republican Revolution, when he won by 3%, with 50% of the vote.[76]
Legislation
During his first year in the House, Sanders often alienated allies and colleagues with his criticism of both political parties as working primarily on behalf of the wealthy. In 1991, he co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of mostly liberal Democrats that he chaired for its first eight years,[15] while still refusing to join the Democratic Party or caucus.[77]
In 2005, Rolling Stone called Sanders the "amendment king" for his ability to get more roll call amendments passed than any other congressman during the period since 1995, when Congress was entirely under Republican control. Being an independent allowed him to form coalitions across party lines.[78]
Banking reform
In 1999, Sanders voted and advocated against rolling back the Glass–Steagall legislation provisions that kept investment banks and commercial banks separate entities.[79] He was a vocal critic of Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan; in June 2003, during a question-and-answer discussion, Sanders told him he was concerned that Greenspan was "way out of touch" and "that you see your major function in your position as the need to represent the wealthy and large corporations."[80][81][82][83]
Cancer registries
Concerned by high breast cancer rates in Vermont, on February 7, 1992, Sanders sponsored the Cancer Registries Amendment Act to establish cancer registries to collect data on cancer.[84][85] Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a companion bill in the Senate on October 2, 1992. The Senate bill was passed by the House on October 6 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on October 24, 1992.[86]
Firearms and criminal justice
In 1993, Sanders voted against the Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks when buying guns and imposed a waiting period on firearm purchasers in the United States; the bill passed by a vote of 238–187.[87][88] He voted against the bill four more times in the 1990s, explaining his Vermont constituents saw waiting-period mandates as more appropriately a state than federal matter.
Sanders did vote for other gun-control measures.[89][87] For example, in 1994, he voted for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act "because it included the Violence Against Women Act and the ban on certain assault weapons." He was nevertheless critical of the other parts of the bill.[90][91] Although he acknowledged that "clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them," he maintained that governmental policies played a large part in "dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence" and argued that the repressive policies introduced by the bill were not addressing the causes of violence, saying, "we can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails."[92]
Sanders has at times favored stronger law enforcement and sentencing. In 1996, he voted against a bill that would have prohibited police from purchasing tanks and armored carriers.[93][94] In 1998, he voted for a bill that would have increased minimum sentencing for possessing a gun while committing a federal crime to ten years in prison, including nonviolent crimes such as marijuana possession.[93][87][95]
In 2005, Sanders voted for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.[96] The purpose of the act was to prevent firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable for negligence when crimes have been committed with their products.[97] As of 2016, he said that he has since changed his position and would vote for legislation to defeat this bill.[98]
Opposition to the Patriot Act
Sanders was a consistent critic of the Patriot Act.[99] As a member of Congress, he voted against the original Patriot Act legislation.[100] After its 357–66 passage in the House, he sponsored and voted for several subsequent amendments and acts attempting to curtail its effects[101] and voted against each reauthorization.[102] In June 2005, he proposed an amendment to limit Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to obtain individuals' library and book-buying records. The amendment passed the House by a bipartisan majority, but was removed on November 4 of that year in House–Senate negotiations and never became law.[103]
Opposition to the War in Iraq
Sanders voted against the resolutions authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 1991 and 2002, and he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He voted for the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists[104] that has been cited as the legal justification for controversial military actions since the September 11 attacks.[105] He voted for a non-binding resolution expressing support for troops at the outset of the invasion of Iraq, but gave a floor speech criticizing the partisan nature of the vote and the Bush administration's actions in the run-up to the war. Regarding the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity by a State Department official, he stated: "The revelation that the President authorized the release of classified information in order to discredit an Iraq war critic should tell every member of Congress that the time is now for a serious investigation of how we got into the war in Iraq and why Congress can no longer act as a rubber stamp for the President."[106]
Trade policy
In February 2005, Sanders introduced a bill that would have withdrawn the permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status that had been extended to China in October 2000. He said to the House, "Anyone who takes an objective look at our trade policy with China must conclude that it is an absolute failure and needs to be fundamentally overhauled", citing the American jobs being lost to overseas competitors. His bill received 71 co-sponsors but was not sent to the floor for a vote.[107][108]
U.S. Senate (2007–present)
Sanders entered the race for the U.S. Senate on April 21, 2005, after Senator Jim Jeffords announced that he would not seek a fourth term. Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, endorsed Sanders, a critical move as it meant that no Democrat running against him could expect to receive financial help from the party. He was also endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic National Committee chairman and former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Dean said in May 2005 that he considered Sanders an ally who "votes with the Democrats 98% of the time."[109] Then-Senator Barack Obama also campaigned for him in Vermont in March 2006.[110] Sanders entered into an agreement with the Democratic Party, much as he had as a congressman, to be listed in their primary but to decline the nomination should he win, which he did.[111][112]
In the most expensive political campaign in Vermont's history,[113] he defeated businessman Rich Tarrant by an almost 2-to-1 margin. Many national media outlets projected Sanders as the winner just after the polls closed, before any returns came in. He was reelected in 2012 with 71% of the vote,[114] and in 2018 with 67% of the vote.[115]
Legislation
While a member of Congress, Sanders sponsored 15 concurrent resolutions and 15 Senate resolutions.[116] Of those he co-sponsored, 218 became law.[117][118] While he has consistently advocated for progressive causes, Politico wrote that he has "rarely forged actual legislation or left a significant imprint on it."[119] According to The New York Times, "Big legislation largely eludes Mr. Sanders because his ideas are usually far to the left of the majority of the Senate ... Mr. Sanders has largely found ways to press his agenda through appending small provisions to the larger bills of others."[120] During his time in the Senate, he had lower legislative effectiveness than the average senator, as measured by the number of sponsored bills that passed and successful amendments made.[121] Nevertheless, he has sponsored over 500 amendments to bills,[122] many of which became law. The results of these amendments include a ban on imported goods made by child labor; $100 million in funding for community health centers; $10 million for an outreach program for servicemembers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression, panic attacks, and other mental disorders; a public database of senior Department of Defense officials seeking employment with defense contractors; and including autism treatment in the military healthcare program.[123]
Finance and monetary policy
In 2008 and 2009, Sanders voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP, also known as the Wall Street bailout), a program to purchase toxic banking assets and provide loans to banks that were in free-fall.[124][125] On February 4, 2009, he sponsored an amendment to ensure that TARP funds would not displace US workers. The amendment passed and was added to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.[123][126] Among his proposed financial reforms is auditing the Federal Reserve, which would reduce its independence in monetary policy deliberations; Federal Reserve officials say that "Audit the Fed" legislation would expose the Federal Reserve to undue political pressure from lawmakers who do not like its decisions.
On December 10, 2010, Sanders delivered an 8 1⁄2–hour speech against the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010,[b] which proposed extending the Bush-era tax rates. He argued that the legislation would favor the wealthiest Americans. "Enough is enough! ... How many homes can you own?" he asked.[131][132][133] Nevertheless, the bill passed the Senate with a strong majority and was signed into law a week later.[134] In February 2011, Nation Books published the speech as The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, with authorial proceeds going to Vermont nonprofit charitable organizations.[135]
In 2016, Sanders voted for the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which included proposals for a reformed audit of the Federal Reserve System.[127][128][129]
Foreign policy
On June 12, 2017, U.S. senators agreed to legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran.[136] The bill was opposed only by Sanders and Republican Rand Paul.[137] He supported the sanctions on Russia, but voted against the bill because he believed the sanctions could endanger the Iran nuclear deal.[138]
In 2018, Sanders sponsored a bill and was joined by Senators Chris Murphy (D–CT) and Mike Lee (R–UT) to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen,[139] which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties[140] and "millions more suffering from starvation and disease."[141][142] After the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 (which, according to multiple intelligence agencies, was ordered by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman),[143] his bill attracted bipartisan co-sponsors and support, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 56–41.[144][139][140][141][143] [139] The bill passed the House in February 2019 by a 247-175 vote and President Trump vetoed it in March, saying, “This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future."[145]
Health care
In mid-December 2009, Sanders successfully added a provision to the Affordable Care Act to fund $11 billion to community health centers, especially those in rural areas. The provision brought together Democrats on the left with Democrats from conservative, rural areas, helping to secure the 60 votes needed for passage.[123] On May 4, 2017, in response to the House vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, he predicted "thousands of Americans would die" from no longer having access to health care.[146] PolitiFact rated his statement "mostly true."[147]
In September 2017, Sanders along with 15 Senate co-sponsors submitted the Medicare for All bill, a single-payer healthcare plan. The bill covers vision and dental care, unlike Medicare. Some Republicans have called the bill "Berniecare" and "the latest Democratic push for socialized medicine and higher taxes." He responded that the Republican Party has no credibility on the issue of health care after voting for legislation that would take health insurance away from 32 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act.[148]
As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, Sanders has introduced legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the Older Americans Act, which supports Meals on Wheels and other programs for seniors.[149]
Immigration policy
In 2007, Sanders helped kill a bill introducing comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that its guest-worker program would depress wages for American workers.[150] In 2010, he supported the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as minors.[150] In 2013, he supported the Gang of Eight's comprehensive immigration reform bill after securing a $1.5 billion youth jobs program provision, which he argued would offset the harm of labor market competition with immigrants.[150]
Income and wealth distribution
In April 2017, Sanders introduced a bill that would raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15 an hour, an increase over an earlier Democratic $12 an hour proposal.[151] On May 9, 2018, he introduced the Workplace Democracy Act, a bill that would expand labor rights by making it easier for workers to join a union, ban right-to-work laws and some anti-union provisions of the Taft–Hartley Act, and outlaw some union-busting tactics. Announcing the legislation, he said, "If we are serious about reducing income and wealth inequality and rebuilding the middle class, we have got to substantially increase the number of union jobs in this country."[152]
Sanders opposed the 2018 United States federal budget proposed by the Trump administration, calling it "a budget for the billionaire class, for Wall Street, for corporate CEOs, and for the wealthiest people in this country ... nothing less than a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor to the top 1%."[153]
After the November 2017 revelations from the Paradise Papers and a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies which says just three people (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett) own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population, Sanders stated that "we must end global oligarchy" and that "we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent."[154]
On September 5, 2018, Sanders partnered with Ro Khanna to introduce the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act, which would require large corporations to pay for the food stamps and Medicaid benefits that their employees receive, relieving the burden on taxpayers.[155][156]
Veterans affairs
On June 9, 2014, Sanders sponsored the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs in the wake of the Veterans Health Administration scandal of 2014. He worked with Senator John McCain, who co-sponsored the bill.[157][158] His bill was incorporated into the House version of the bill, which passed both chambers on July 31, 2014, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on August 7, 2014.[159]
Supreme Court nominees
On March 17, 2016, Sanders said he would support Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, though he added, "there are some more progressive judges out there."[160] He opposed Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Court, saying that Gorsuch had "refused to answer legitimate questions."[161] He also objected to Senate Republicans using the nuclear option to "choke off debate and ram the nomination through the Senate."[161] He voted against Gorsuch's confirmation as an associate justice.[162]
Committee assignments
As an independent, Sanders worked out a deal with the Senate Democratic leadership in which he agreed to vote with the Democrats on all procedural matters unless the Democratic whip, Dick Durbin, agreed that he need not (a request rarely made or granted). In return he was allowed to keep his seniority and received the committee seats that would have been available to him as a Democrat; in 2013–14 he was chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs (during the Veterans Health Administration scandal).[163][164]
Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously chaired the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for two years. Since January 2017, he has been Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee.[164] He appointed economics professor Stephanie Kelton, a modern monetary theory scholar, as the chief economic adviser for the committee's Democratic minority and presented a report about helping "rebuild the disappearing middle class," which included proposals to raise the minimum wage, boost infrastructure spending, and increase Social Security payments.[165]
As of 2020, Sanders's committee assignments are as follows:[166]
Committee on the Budget (Ranking Member)
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy
Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
Subcommittee on National Parks
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Subcommittee on Children and Families
Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, (Ranking Member)
Committee on Veterans' Affairs (former Chair)
Caucus memberships
Sanders was only the third senator from Vermont to caucus with the Democrats, after Jeffords and Leahy. His caucusing with the Democrats gave them a 51–49 majority in the Senate during the 110th Congress in 2007–08. The Democrats needed 51 seats to control the Senate because Vice President Dick Cheney would likely have broken any tie in favor of the Republicans.[167] He is a member of the following caucuses:
Congressional Progressive Caucus
Democratic Caucus of the United States Senate
United States Senate Afterschool Caucus[168]
Approval ratings
Polling conducted in August 2011 by Public Policy Polling found that Sanders's approval rating was 67% and his disapproval rating 28%, making him then the third-most popular U.S. senator.[169] Both the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda) have given him 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate.[170] In 2015, he was named one of the Top 5 of The Forward 50.[171] In a November 2015 Morning Consult poll, he reached an 83% approval rating among his constituents, making him the most popular U.S. senator.[172] Fox News found him to have the highest net favorability at +28 points of any prominent politician included in its March 2017 poll.[173] He ranked third in 2014 and first in both 2015 and 2016.[172][169][174]
In April 2017, a nationwide Harvard-Harris Poll found that Sanders had the highest favorability rating among the political figures included in the poll,[175] a standing confirmed by subsequent polling.[176]
2016 presidential campaign
