Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders
Bernard "Bernie" Sandersis an American politician, serving as the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. He has always caucused with the Democratic Party, which has entitled him to committee assignments and at times given Democrats a majority. Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously served for two years as chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. He publicly identified...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth8 September 1941
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks.
There is something fundamentally wrong about the way we [americans] are moving as a country, when billionaires are able to buy elections as a result of Citizens United. There`s something fundamentally wrong when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent.
In and out of government, I've always been willing to take on complicated, sometimes unpopular, issues and work them through to have a solution.
In Germany, many other countries, college tuition is free. Why isn`t free in America? Why do we have the highest rate of childhood poverty when other countries have rates much lower than we have? Why don`t we have pay equity for women workers? Why aren`t we leading the world in transforming our energy system in terms of climate change? We can do that. Are we dumb? Are we lazy? Not the case.
If you ask me about my views on the environment, on women's rights, on gay rights, I am liberal. I don't have a problem with that at all. Some of my best friends are liberal.
Don`t take it out on the Muslims. Don`t take it out on Latinos. Try to help us work together to create a country where your kids and you can have a decent standard of living. It has to be a bold and radical agenda.
I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment.
We're not going to give tax breaks to billionaires and then cut back on the needs of our elderly or poor or kids or education. We're not going to privatize Social Security - in fact, we're going to strengthen it. We're going to provide quality education for every kid in America, from preschool through college. We have to take on these corporate leaders who are selling out the American people, whose allegiance is now much more to China than it is to the United States. If we have the courage to take these people on, I think we can overwhelm George W. Bush and his friends.
I very strongly disagreed with President Clinton on the deregulation of Wall Street. I opposed that strenuously.
I have taken on virtually every element of the big money establishment, whether it's the Koch brothers, and the big energy companies, whether it's the industrial complex, whether it's Wall Street. I have taken on the drug companies. I have taken on the insurance companies.
Goldman Sachs was one of those companies whose illegal activity helped destroy our economy and ruin the lives of millions of Americans. But this is what a rigged economy and a corrupt campaign finance system and a broken criminal justice is about. These guys are so powerful that not one of the executives on Wall Street has been charged with anything after paying, in this case of Goldman Sachs, a $5 billion fine.
You want your kids to have an opportunity. We`re going to fight to give you that.
The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.
Why is it that two-thirds of white, rural men voted Republican? Why? That's what we have to address. That's crazy. These people are working longer and longer hours.