Bernie Sanders

Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is a Senator from the state of Vermont since 2007, former eight-term Congressman from the Vermont at-large district, Mayor of Burlington from 1981 to 1989 and an unsuccessful contender to Hillary Clinton for Democratic nomination in the 2016 Democratic primary. In February 2019, Sanders announced he would run again in 2020, joining multiple other Democratic candidates pursuing the party nomination.

Political Spectrum


Immigration
During his time in the House Sanders voted, along with almost all Republicans and a majority of the House Democratic caucus for the Community Protection Act of 2006, which passed the House on Sept. 21, 2006, but died in the Senate. A number of liberal Democrats supported the bill, including such prominent lawmakers as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and future Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. By backing it, Sanders went against the urgings of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Council of La Raza, a prominent Hispanic group.

According to the Congressional Research Service’s official summary of the bill, it would, among other things, "''permit indefinite detention of specified dangerous aliens under orders of removal who cannot be removed, subject to review every six months." The bill itself says, "With regard to length of detention, an alien may be detained under this section, without limitation, until the alien is subject to an administratively final order of removal.''"

Sanders also voted for a 2006 amendment to a large Homeland Security appropriations bill. It was designed to bar the Department of Homeland Security from providing "a foreign government information relating to the activities of an organized volunteer civilian action group, operating in the State of California, Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona." The most prominent of such groups at the time were the so-called "The Minutemen" who were a group of civilians patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to stop people from crossing into the United States illegally.

Responding to Hillary Clinton's point about his voting record for the amendment during the debate Sanders aid "No, I do not support vigilantes, and that is a horrific statement, an unfair statement to make,".

Sanders believes a path to citizenship should be created for new immigrants. He voted for the comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013, saying, "It does not make a lot of sense to me to bring hundreds of thousands of [foreign] workers into this country to work for minimum wage and compete with American kids". Sanders opposes guest worker programs and is also skeptical about skilled immigrant (H-1B) visas, saying, "Last year, the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. These firms are responsible for shipping large numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries."

In an interview with Vox, he stated his opposition to open-borders immigration policy, describing it as:

"... a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States ... you're doing away with the concept of a nation-state. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs."

Abortion
In a 1992 House floor speech Bernie Sanders criticized abortion restrictions imposed on Title X funding as an attack on low-income women; in a 1993 House floor speech he called for the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act; and in another 1993 House speech he called for the codification of abortion rights into federal law, a proposal now being supported by Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. In 2009 Sanders helped to narrowly defeat the Hatch Amendment, which would have prohibited the federal funding of abortions in the Senate, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s health care reform bill.

“Sen. Sanders has consistently voted against the Hyde Amendment when it has been subject to an up-or-down vote,” says campaign spokeswoman Arianna Jones. “At least four times.”

While it’s true that Senator voted many times for spending bills that contained the Hyde Amendment, both as a House member and a senator, the nature of these omnibus spending bills is an undemocratic but accepted part of the legislative process that even NARAL Pro-Choice America does not use when tallying politicians’ support or opposition to the Hyde Amendment. Instead, it scores key individual votes, such as two in 2015, when Sanders voted in support of (failed) efforts to strike Hyde language from a health care bill and a human trafficking bill.

Sanders has consistently voted to repeal the Hyde Amendment when it comes to up-and-down votes. The Democrats, on the other hand, didn’t include language in the party platform supporting the repeal of Hyde until the 2016 presidential election cycle.

Gun Laws
Vermont's Senator has voted to repeal DC assault weapons bans and firearms registration, contradicting his past support for a 1994 assault weapons ban. But that was because they were part of a bill that would’ve granted Washington DC a Congressional district. His vote for an amendment to Obamacare preventing insurance companies from hiking rates on gun owners had been attached to numerous other provisions for cancer victims, children’s health insurance and women’s health.

He has supported a ban on the sale of assault weapons, limits to firearm magazine capacities, mandatory background checks for online and gun-show purchases , prohibitions on cross-state conceal-carry, the enforcement of trigger lock laws, bans on underage firearm possession and 72-hour background checks, and increases on minimum prison sentences for crimes involving firearms.

However, his vote against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act has been particularly disconcerting to gun control advocates since it received strong bipartisan support, with its “common sense” provisions like national criminal background checks. When asked why he voted against he stated that his objection was that he believed that handgun waiting periods, which were included in the final version of the Brady bill, are best left to the states. However, Sanders voted yes for a version of the bill that contained background checks. This was the reason the NRA backed his election in 1990, over a Republican, who had then recently changed his mind to support such waiting periods.

Later in his career, Sanders voted for the post-Newtown Manchin-Toomey universal federal background check bill as a US Senator in 2013. He also supported the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act which allowed firearms manufacturers not to be held accountable in court for the crimes committed with weapons of their production.

In January 2019, Senator Sanders joined 39 Democrats in introducing the Background Check Expansion Act, a bill that would require background checks for either the sale or transfer of all firearms including all unlicensed sellers. Exceptions to the bill's background check requirement included transfers between members of law enforcement, loaning firearms for either hunting or sporting events on a temporary basis, providing firearms as gifts to members of one's immediate family, firearms being transferred as part of an inheritance, or giving a firearm to another person temporarily for immediate self-defense.

Healthcare
In 2009 Sanders co-sponsored a bill aimed to preserve access to Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program during an economic downturn. During the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March of 2010, Sanders voted in favor of the legislation and successfully pressured the then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to give a public option proposal a vote on the floor of the Senate. He has a 100% pro-consumer vote on the issues of healthcare and has voted repeatedly against repealing the Affordable Care Act, and in favor of expanding the program.

Since the beginning of his work in Senate, Sanders has been a big supporter of a single-payer healthcare system which he later turned into legislation paralleling the United States National Health Care Act introduced in 2003 by former Representative John Conyers (D-MI). The key points of the bill include:
 * Creating a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service. The bill would effectively end fundamental parts of today's healthcare system such as networks, premiums, deductibles, copays, and surprise bills.
 * Expanding and improving Medicare coverage to include: dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, and more.
 * Stoping the pharmaceutical industry from making disproportionate profits by making sure that no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need by capping what Americans pay for prescription drugs under Medicare for All.

Religion
Born in the Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Bernie Sanders followed the path of many young American Jews. He went to Hebrew school, was bar mitzvahed and traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz. In an interview Sanders commented on his religious affiliation: “I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said he believes in God, though not necessarily in a traditional manner.

“I think everyone believes in God in their own ways,” he said. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”

In 2001, Bernie voted against the Community Solutions Act, which allows federal funds to go to religious organizations that proselytize while providing social services and that engage in employment discrimination based on religion. Civil rights groups were concerned that religious beliefs could be used to exclude people from critical federally funded social services based on sexual orientation or an unwillingness to adhere to the providers’ religious beliefs. The ACLU argued that the Community Solutions Act violated the Establishment Clause due to federal funding of services that specifically support one religion over another.

Bernie also voted for an amendment to the bill that prohibited organizations receiving funding from employment discrimination or utilizing federal funds for religious purposes.

Sanders is rated by Americans United for Separation of Church and State as strongly in favor of the separation of church and state. Senator believes that public laws ought to be independent of any one particular faith to maximize religious freedoms for all.

LGBT Rights
Senator Sanders was one of the first U.S Politicians to call for abolishing all laws against homosexuality, he did so as early as the 1970s. As a Mayor of Burlington, Vermont he supported the designation of the Burlington "Lesbian and Gay Pride Day" and signed a resolution recommending all government levels to support gay rights.

When elected to the House, Sanders voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which was signed by President Bill Clinton that same year. Sanders opposed "Don't ask, don't tell", the US policy on LGBT service members in the military, which was implemented in 1994 and ended in 2011 and supported civil unions in Vermont in 2000.

In 2006, when the Bush White House proposed a so-called Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Sanders spoke out against the Republican plan, saying it was “designed to divide the American people.”

In 2015 a''fter the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Sanders issued the following statement:''

“''Today the Supreme Court fulfilled the words engraved upon its building: ‘Equal justice under law.’ This decision is a victory for same-sex couples across our country as well as all those seeking to live in a nation where every citizen is afforded equal rights. For far too long our justice system has marginalized the gay community and I am very glad the Court has finally caught up to the American people.''”

In May 2017, Sanders was one of forty-six senators to introduce the Equality Act of 2017, which would ensure full federal non-discrimination equality by adding sexual orientation and gender identity to other protected classes, such as race or religion, in existing federal laws. The bill never got through the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. .

Wall Street Regulations
In 1999 as a representative from Vermont, Sanders opposed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, which repealed the provision of the Glass–Steagall Act preventing any financial institution from acting as both a securities firm and a commercial bank. . Senator Sanders was one of the 25 members of the Senate who voted against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 known also as the Wall Street bailout bill which created the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) fund made to purchase toxic bank assets. Back then Senator said of the bill:

"This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets. This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand-picked by the Bush administration. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective way that we should be. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits."

He also proposed alternative solutions for banking sector bailout in form of a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers.

On May 6, 2015, Sanders introduced legislation designed to break up financial institutions deemed as "too big to fail". With three of the four banks that were bailed out during the 2007–08 global financial crisis now 80% larger than they were then, Sanders believes that "no single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure would send the world economy into crisis. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist."

Estate Tax
In January 2019 Senator Sanders announced his legislative proposal called “For the 99.8% Act”. The bill would tax the estates of those who inherit more than $3.5 million, which Sanders estimates is 0.2 percent of the country. Currently, the estate tax only applies to individuals who inherit more than $11 million, as a result of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Republicans. The tax would establish the following rates: The Post, citing Sanders aides, said the plan would raise $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires, although it is unclear how long it would take to raise the money. Over the next 10 years, however, Sanders staffers told the Post the levy would reap $315 billion.
 * $3.5 million to $10 million: 45 percent tax
 * $10 million to $50 million: 50 percent tax
 * $50 million to $1 billion: 55 percent tax
 * more than $1 billion: 77 percent tax

Social Security
In contrast to his then congressional colleague Joe Biden, Senator Sanders strongly advocated against the Balanced Budget Amendment which was the central part of the GOP’s “Contract With America” promise to eliminate the deficit. If adopted, it would have capped federal spending at what government brought in in revenue, providing an easy tool for those looking to cut federal programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits to reduce the deficit. The bill was passed in the house but defeated in the Senate, with Sanders being one of the 132 congressmen voting against it. In February of 2019, Sanders introduced his version of the Social Security Expansion Act, previously introduced by Rep. John Larson of Connecticut. His proposal would increase Social Security benefits, raise taxes on high earners, and extend the solvency of the program’s trust fund. It's main premises are: It would also extend the solvency of the Social Security system until 2071(It is widely believed that the system in the current state will become insolvent in 2034). The reform would be funded by imposing the same current 6.2% tax that applies to incomes below $132,900 on incomes above $250,000, leaving the gap of incomes between $132,900 and $250,000 at a currently applied tax cap. Additionally, it would boost the current 3.8% surtax on net investment income on high-income taxpayers to 10%.
 * Gradually increase the lowest Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) factor in the benefit formula from 90 percent of a worker's first $11,000 of average income (roughly) to 105 percent by 2040 – increasing benefits for most workers by about $2,200 per year in 2040 (the increase would be about $1,000 per year if in place today)
 * Adopt the faster-growing, experimental Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) for Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLAs)
 * Create a minimum benefit of 125 percent of the poverty line for people who have worked 30 years or more
 * Allow children of disabled or deceased workers to continue receiving benefits until age 22, as long as they remain in school

Income and Corporate Taxes
To raise money for his "Medicare for All" proposal along with his plans for affordable housing and universal childcare Sen. Bernie Sanders put forward an “extreme wealth tax” on the highest-income Americans, along with a “national wealth registry” that he said would help prevent them from avoiding the tax.

The tax rate would start at 1 percent on a net worth of more than $32 million and rise with income above that, topping out at 8 percent on wealth over $10 billion. It would raise $4.35 trillion over a decade.

Sanders announced that he would be also including a boosted “exit tax” in the bill, a provision that would affect Americans who expatriate to avoid taxes with rates ranging from 40 percent of the net value of all assets under $1 billion and 60 percent above $1 billion.

In September 2019 his presidential campaign unveiled its scheme to curb inequality in the United States. An “Income Inequality Tax” on companies with massive pay disparities between the executive suite and the median worker.

The plan calls for increasing the corporate tax rate by half a percent on companies that pay their chief executives 50 times more than their median employee, and progressively hike up the corporate rate the bigger the inequality. The current corporate tax rate is 21 percent — the result of President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cut.

Under the scheme, if a CEO makes more than 100 times the median employee, their corporate tax rate increases 1 percent, to 22 percent; more than 200 times the median employee, the company pays an additional 2 percent on the corporate tax rate, and so on, up to a 5 percent increase to the corporate tax rate for companies that pay their CEOs more than 500 times the median employee.

Bernie Sanders's proposal for new income tax brackets would establish them in the following rates :

Justice System Reform
Sanders has been a consistent critic of mass incarceration. In 1991, Congress was debating a punitive crime bill that would have, among many other steps, widened the use of the death penalty and ramped up prison sentences. The final bill — a compromise after Democrats and Republicans went back and forth to see who could look tougher — was sponsored by Democrats, actually getting more votes from Democrats than Republicans in the House.

Sanders, then Vermont’s representative in the House, argued the bill was “not a crime prevention bill” but “a punishment bill, a retribution bill, a vengeance bill.” He criticized it for expanding the use of the death penalty as other developed nations were reeling it back or ending its use altogether. He quipped that America was on a path to “put half the country behind bars.”

While he did vote for a controversial 1994 crime law that helped scale up incarceration, he was always clear that he opposed its mass incarceration elements — and questioned if the US should lock up so many people to begin with. Instead, Sanders said he voted for the 1994 law because he supported certain parts of it — such as the Violence Against Women Act, which helped crackdown on domestic violence and rape.

“We have the highest percentage of people in America in jail per capita of any industrialized nation on Earth,” Sanders said in 1991. “''We’ve beaten South Africa. We’ve beaten the Soviet Union. What do we have to do, put half the country behind bars?''”

In August of 2019, Sanders put those criticisms into a policy proposal that covers a variety of issues, including reeling back long prison sentences, ending cash bail, improving oversight of police, boosting public defenders, legalizing marijuana, banning private, for-profit prisons and abolishing the death penalty.

Since the President and Congress have a limited authority over the state and local judiciary he plans to implement these proposals by introducing a number of direct and indirect policies such as tripling the congressional spending on indigent defense, to $14 billion annually, creating a federal agency to provide support and oversight for state public defense services, decriminalizing non-violent drug offences, establishing an Office of Prisoner Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within the Department of Justice to investigate civil rights complaints from incarcerated individuals and provide independent oversight to make sure that prisoners are housed in safe, healthy, environments and many, many more. Sanders also aims to eliminate barriers for people released from prisons and jails to help them reintegrate with society.

Environmental issues
Bernie Sanders has consistently taken pro-conservation votes throughout his time in office.

He voted against the weakening of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and voted in favor of two amendments to strengthen it. Later on, Sanders was in favor of the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013. This act would have encouraged important conservation practices to protect wetlands, soil quality, and wildlife. In 2017, he voted to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from drilling as he does each time the issue is brought to a vote. In 2018 he has received a 100% rating on the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) environmental scorecard and holds a lifetime score of 92 percent.

One of his signature policies for the 2020 election season is the so-called "Green New Deal" which name has been inspired by the post-Great Depression New Deal enacted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The strategy aims at transforming the American energy system to 100 percent renewable energy and creating 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis. The main points of the plan include:
 * Ensuring a just transition for communities and workers, including fossil fuel workers.
 * Ensuring justice for frontline communities, especially under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly.
 * Saving American families money with investments in weatherization, public transportation, modern infrastructure, and high-speed broadband.
 * Committing to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change.
 * Investing in conservation and public lands to heal our soils, forests, and prairie lands.
 * Ending the greed of the fossil fuel industry and holding them accountable.

Sanders wants to directly invest a historic $16.3 trillion public investment toward these efforts with the aim of reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization of the American economy by 2050 at the latest. He also pledges to declare climate change a national emergency and commit $40 billion to a Climate Justice Resiliency Fund which will assist under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly – to recover from, and prepare for, the climate impacts. He expects the plan to pay for itself in fifteen years by generating additional tax revenue from the wholesale of energy produced and increasing tax burden on fossil fuel corporations, among others.