Income and wealth inequality

Campaign video on income inequality

A cornerstone of Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign was to fight the increasing wealth inequality in the United States. In April 2015, Sanders articulated his position in an interview with The Guardian:

What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels. This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans ... You know, this country just does not belong to a handful of billionaires.^[36]

In July 2015, Sanders introduced legislation that would incrementally increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020.^[37]^[38] In 2023, Sanders called instead for a $17 minimum wage, citing inflation.^[39]^[40]

Taxation

Sanders supports repeal of some of the tax deductions that he says benefit hedge funds and corporations, and would raise taxes on capital gains and the wealthiest one percent of Americans. He would use some of the added revenues to lower the taxes of the middle and lower classes.^[41]^[42] He has suggested that he would be open to a 90% top marginal tax rate (a rate that last existed during the years after World War II) for the wealthiest earners, as well as a 52% top income tax bracket.^[43] He has proposed a top marginal rate of 65% for the federal estate tax, up from the current 40% rate.^[44]

While running for the Senate in 1974, Sanders said, "nobody should earn more than $1 million" (more than $5 million in 2018 dollars).^[45]^[46]

In February 2014, Sanders was one of fifteen senators to sign a letter to the Treasury Department and IRS urging the Obama administration to implement rules that would "only close a loophole that has until now allowed donors to evade campaign finance law disclosure requirements" and defending the proposed changes as not restricting "anyone’s right to speak, or to spend money to influence elections."^[47]

In 2016, Sanders wrote an op-ed to Philadelphia magazine stating that while he supported city government initiatives to fund universal pre-kindergarten education, he opposed mayor Jim Kenney's soda tax on the grounds that it would disproportionately impact the poor.^[48]

In March 2017, Sanders introduced legislation ending the ability of corporations to defer from paying taxes in the United States on their foreign earnings until the money was repatriated. The bill also had provisions that limited the tax benefits of corporate inversions and prohibiting American companies from asserting themselves as foreign companies in the event that their management and operations were based in the US. In a press conference, Sanders stated that the US had "a rigged tax code that has essentially legalized tax-dodging for large corporations."^[49]

On October 1, 2017, during an interview, Sanders referred to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 promoted by President Trump and most of the Congressional GOP as "just really bad policy" and furthered that he did not understand "why anybody would support a proposal which is massive amounts of tax breaks to the people who don't need it." Sanders advocated for people to instead focus on meeting the needs of the middle class and working families of this country, as opposed to "the top 1 percent."^[50]

On January 31, 2019, after Republicans introduced a bill in the Senate to repeal the estate tax, Sanders introduced an expansion of the estate tax, lowering its exemption amount and forming a progressive rate structure. In a statement, Sanders said the bill "does what the American people want by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality" and that the US would "not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little."^[51]

On October 14, 2019, Sanders unveiled an economic plan that would increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 35 percent and mandate companies that either are publicly traded or have at least $100 million in either their annual revenue or balance sheet total grant workers 2 percent of the company's stock until employees own a minimum of 20 percent of the company. The Sanders campaign stated that the economic plan would "give workers an ownership stake in the companies they work for, break up corrupt corporate mergers and monopolies, and finally make corporations pay their fair share" and asserted that a Sanders presidency would end what he believes is corporate greed ruining the United States "once and for all".^[52]

In March 2022, Sanders proposed to deal with price gouging exacerbating the ongoing inflation crisis by imposing a 95 percent windfall tax through 2024, similar to the windfall tax on corporations implemented in the United States during World War II.^[53]

Wall Street reform

On May 6, 2015, Sanders introduced legislation designed to break up "too big to fail" financial institutions. With three of the four banks that were bailed out during the 2007–08 global financial crisis now 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."^[54]^[55] As a representative from Vermont, Sanders opposed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, signed in 1999 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. Sanders supports legislation sponsored by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to reinstate Glass–Steagall.^[56]

Infrastructure and industrial policy

In his "Plan to Rebuild America", the January 27, 2015 legislative proposal he co-sponsored with Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the ranking member of the appropriations committee, and backed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the AFL–CIO and other trade unions, Sanders insisted on the pivotal role played by infrastructure investments:

For too many years, we have dramatically underfunded the physical infrastructure that our economy depends on. That is why I have proposed the Rebuild America Act, to invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize our infrastructure. [...] Importantly, the Rebuild America Act will support more than thirteen million good-paying jobs – jobs that our economy desperately needs.^[57]

While clearly rooted in the Rooseveltian, progressive tradition,^[58] this policy proposal also reflects more generally the pre-Reagan Era bipartisan American policy consensus, which was more favorable to the notion of infrastructure spending^[59] and infrastructure-driven development.

In June 2019, Sanders was one of eight senators to sponsor the Made in America Act, legislation that would designate federal programs which had funded infrastructure projects not currently subject to Buy America standards and mandate the materials used in these federal programs were domestically produced. Bill cosponsor Tammy Baldwin said the bill would strengthen Buy America requirements of the federal government and that she was hopeful both Democrats and Republicans would support "this effort to make sure our government is buying American products and supporting American workers."^[60]

On June 20, 2021, Sanders stated that he would not support paying for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which would spend over $1.2 trillion on roads, bridges, broadband, passenger rail, a new entity called ARPA-I, and the hydrogen economy, among others, via a proposed gas tax or a surcharge on electric vehicles.^[61] He voted for the IIJA.^[62]

In 2022, Sanders denounced the CHIPS and Science Act, which gives $174 billion to public basic research and $106 billion to semiconductor firms, as a corporate welfare-centric "blank check" bill.^[63] He voted against the bill.^[64]

Over the next month, Sanders supported the Inflation Reduction Act, a reconciliation bill projected to increase investments in clean energy, battery storage, sustainable agriculture and transportation, green banks, and a variety of other green industrial policy measures through spending and tax credits totaling between $369 billion and $1.2 trillion, as well as expand subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and negotiations for drug prices to Medicare, in exchange for a new minimum corporate income tax and improved IRS funding.^[65]^[66]^[67] He voted in favor of the bill.^[68]

Trade

In 1993 Sanders spoke out against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).^[69] According to PolitiFact, Sanders has "consistently argued for protectionist trade policies as opposed to free trade."^[70] Sanders opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which he has called "a continuation of other disastrous trade agreements, like NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China." He believes that free trade agreements have caused a loss of American jobs and have depressed American wages. Sanders has said that America needs to rebuild its own manufacturing base by using American factories and supporting well-paying jobs for American labor rather than outsourcing to China and other countries.^[71]^[72]^[73]^[74]

According to Sanders, TPP undermines United States sovereignty: TPP grants multinational corporations power to sue a national government in UN and World Bank tribunals over lost profits (including those yet to be made) due to the regulations about labor, health and environment that the government imposed. The tribunals can require US taxpayers to pay compensation.^[75] In September 2016, Sanders was one of twelve senators to sign a letter to President Obama asserting that the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership "in its current form will perpetuate a trade policy that advantages corporations at the expense of American workers" and there would be an "erosion of U.S. manufacturing and middle class jobs, and accelerate the corporate race to the bottom" if provisions were not fixed.^[76]

Sanders opposed the Panama Free Trade Agreement, which he characterized as making worse the tax evasion exposed in leaked Panama Papers.^[77]

In May 2011, Sanders was one of seventeen senators to sign a letter to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler requesting a regulatory crackdown on what they described as speculative Wall Street trading in oil contracts, asserting that they had entered "a time of economic emergency for many American families" while noting that the average retail price of regular grade gasoline was $3.95 nationwide. The senators requested that the CFTC adopt speculation limits in regard to markets where contracts for future delivery of oil are traded.^[78]

On November 30, 2018, Sanders announced his opposition to the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, saying "a re-negotiated NAFTA must stop the outsourcing of U.S. jobs, end the destructive race to the bottom, protect the environment, and lower the outrageously high price of prescription drugs" and that corporations would persist in shipping "U.S. jobs to Mexico where workers are paid as little as $2 an hour" until the agreement's text was revised to include "strong enforcement mechanisms".^[79]

Position on charities

In 1981, when Sanders was Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, The New York Times quoted his position on private charitable organizations:

"I don't believe in charities," said Mayor Sanders, bringing a shocked silence to a packed hotel banquet room. The Mayor, who is a Socialist, went on to question the "fundamental concepts on which charities are based" and contended that government, rather than charity organizations, should take over responsibility for social programs.^[80]

Jobs

Sanders was committed to creating job growth through infrastructure development and manufacturing, saying, "America once led the world in building and maintaining a nationwide network of safe and reliable bridges and roads. Today, nearly a quarter of the nation's 600,000 bridges have been designated as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete ... Almost one-third of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition ..." Sanders has introduced amendments to Senate bills (S.Amendt.323) promoting the creation of millions of middle-class jobs by investing in infrastructure, paid for by closing what he characterizes as loopholes in the corporate and international tax system.^[81]^[82] He also supports legislation that would make it easier for workers to join or form a labor union.^[83] Sanders' campaign website also has focused on the concerns of both the long-term unemployed and the underemployed, contending that "the real unemployment rate is much higher than the 'official' figure typically reported in the newspapers. When you include workers who have given up looking for jobs, or those who are working part-time when they want to work full-time, the real number is much higher than official figures would suggest."^[84]

Sanders also supports a federal jobs guarantee.^[85]

Sanders has said that there is a very important role for free enterprise and economic growth, especially for small business and entrepreneurs, but that the competitive landscape in the US has become unfair, favoring large corporations. He has also said that economic growth needs to serve people and that growth for the sake of enriching the top 1% does not serve the country's interests. He has said that he would accept a reduction in economic growth in order to increase fairness and reduce economic inequality.^[73]^[86]^[87]

Employee ownership and workplace democracy

Sanders supports establishing worker-owned cooperatives and sponsored legislation numerous times from the 1990s to the 2020s that would aid workers who wanted to "form their own businesses or to set up worker-owned cooperatives."^[83]^[88]^[89]^[90] As early as 1976, Sanders proposed workplace democracy, saying, "I believe that, in the long run, major industries in this state and nation should be publicly owned and controlled by the workers themselves."^[91] Likewise, Sanders supports empowering and expanding labor unions to advance union democracy.^[92]

In 1987, Sanders defined democracy as public ownership and workers' self-management in the workplace, stating that "Democracy means public ownership of the major means of production, it means decentralization, it means involving people in their work. Rather than having bosses and workers it means having democratic control over the factories and shops to as great a degree as you can."^[93]

In his 2020 run for president, Sanders proposed that 20% of stocks in corporations with over $100 million in annual revenue be owned by the corporation's workers. In addition, he proposed that 45% of the board of directors of corporations with over $100 million in annual revenue be elected by the workers of that corporation.^[94]

Offshore tax heavens

Noting that American corporations are collectively holding more than $1 trillion in profits in offshore tax haven countries, Sanders has introduced legislation that would crack down on offshore tax havens by requiring companies to pay the top U.S. corporate tax rate on profits held abroad.^[95] On his website, Sanders offers examples of large American companies that paid no federal taxes and even received tax refunds, with many of them receiving large amounts in financial assistance during the recent financial crisis and continuing to receive billions in subsidies.^[96] Sanders feels that this is unfair and that it damages the nation's economy, believing the money used for refunds and subsidies should instead be invested in American small businesses and the working people.^[97]

Federal Reserve

Sanders is in favor of auditing the Federal Reserve, which would reduce the independence of the Federal Reserve in monetary policy deliberations; Federal Reserve officials say that 'Audit the Fed' legislation would expose the Federal Reserve to undue political pressure from lawmakers disliking its decisions.^[98]^[99]^[100] Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said that "such a bill would essentially empower the cranks — the gold-standard-loving, hyperinflation-is-coming types who dominate the modern G.O.P., and have spent the past five or six years trying to bully monetary policy makers into ceasing and desisting from their efforts to prevent economic disaster."^[101]

In a December 2015 op-ed, Sanders called for creating board positions on the Federal Reserve for "representatives from all walks of life — including labor, consumers, homeowners, urban residents, farmers and small businesses."^[102]^[103]

Debt relief

In June 2016, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced an agreement on a Puerto Rico debt relief bill, Sanders said the bill was a "terrible piece of legislation, setting horrific precedent and must not be passed" and stated his opposition to the US treating Puerto Rico "like a colony."^[104]

Minimum wage

In May 2017, Sanders and thirty Democratic senators introduced a bill increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2024 while also tying future increases to national median wage growth and gradually reducing the current exception to the minimum wage in regard to tipped workers. Sanders stated, "Just a few short years ago, we were told that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was 'radical'. Our job in the wealthiest country in the history of the world is to make sure that every worker has at least a modest and decent standard of living."^[105]

In January 2019, Sanders sponsored the Senate version of a bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024, saying, "We are living today in an American economy that is doing very well for the people on top. Not so well for working families."^[106]

In 2023, Sanders called for a $17 minimum wage, citing inflation.^[39]^[40]

Labor

In May 2018, Sanders was one of twelve senators to sign a letter to Chairman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority Colleen Kiko urging the FLRA to end efforts to close its Boston regional office until Congress debated the matter, furthering that the FLRA closing down its seven regional offices would cause staff to be placed farther away from the federal employees they protect the rights of.^[107]

Sanders was a cosponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act.^[108]

In July 2019, Sanders signed a letter to United States Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta that advocated for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to initiate a full investigation into a complaint filed on May 20 by a group of Chicago-area employees of McDonald's, which detailed workplace violence incidents that included interactions with customers such as customers throwing hot coffee and threatening employees with firearms and more. The senators argued that McDonald's could and needed to "do more to protect its employees, but employers will not take seriously their obligations to provide a safe workplace if OSHA does not enforce workers rights to a hazard-free workplace."^[109]

In 2023, Sanders wrote an op-ed for The Guardian in support of a potential strike of United Auto Workers members against General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Stellantis, saying that "their fight against corporate greed is our fight. Their victory will resonate all across the economy, impact millions of workers from coast to coast and help create a more just and equitable economy."^[110]

Anti-trust, competition, and corporate regulation

In July 2018, in response to Comcast's $65 billion bid to buy much of 21st Century Fox, Sanders was one of four senators to sign a letter to the head of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, Makan Delrahim, requesting a review on whether Comcast would be able to use Fox's entertainment offerings to suppress its competitors, noting "that the merger would provide a majority stake in the streaming service Hulu" and citing the "need to protect consumers from the harmful effects of the proposed merger, evident in the numerous settlements with Comcast regarding past anti-competitive practices, such as the use of channel listings to prioritize its content over that of outside competitors and over-billing of customers".^[111]

In February 2019, Sanders was one of eight senators to sign a letter to the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice, advocating for regulators to renounce a proposed $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, writing that American enforcers have understood for the last thirty years "that fostering robust competition in telecommunications markets is the best way to provide every American with access to high-quality, cutting-edge communications at a reasonable price", and the merger would result in a return for "Americans to the dark days of heavily consolidated markets and less competition, with all of the resulting harms".^[112]

In May 2019, Sanders and Representative Barbara Lee introduced the Inclusive Prosperity Act, imposing a "fraction of a percent" tax on stock, bond, and derivatives trading, estimated to generate 2.4 trillion from Wall Street investors over a 10-year period. Sanders stated the effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 on Americans of varying classes, and asserted that it was "long past time for Congress to rein in the recklessness of Wall Street billionaires and build an economy that works for all Americans".^[113]

In June 2019, Sanders was one of twenty-one senators to sign a letter, led by Bob Menendez and Sherrod Brown, to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in response to a proposed update to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act that would authorize debt collectors to send unlimited texts and e-mails to consumers, along with calling them up to seven times a day. The senators wrote that the proposed update "permits collectors to overwhelm consumers with intrusive communications", and that the CFPB was "placing the cost burden of these text messages on the consumer", due to not enforcing the debt collectors to use free-to-end-user text messaging.^[114]

In June 2019, along with fellow senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, Sanders sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Justice, requesting an investigation into the acquisition of 21 regional sports networks by Sinclair Broadcast Group, as the senators found Sinclair to have "an explicit interest in, and commitment to, relaying partisan political messages to its viewers — making its recent anti-competitive expansion attempts into millions of additional households all the more concerning".^[115]

In a June 2019 speech, Sanders accused Trump of loving "corporate socialism".^[116]^[117]

Price controls

In April 2013, Sanders was one of nineteen senators to sign a brief led by Carl Levin requesting the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturn a 2012 federal district court ruling effectively invalidates proposed federal regulations setting speculation limits on 28 commodities, arguing rampant speculation on the aforementioned commodities had led to higher prices for both consumers and businesses.^[118]

Housing

In April 2019, Sanders was one of forty-one senators to sign a bipartisan letter to the housing subcommittee praising the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 4 Capacity Building program as authorizing "HUD to partner with national nonprofit community development organizations to provide education, training, and financial support to local community development corporations (CDCs) across the country" and expressing disappointment that President Trump's budget "has slated this program for elimination after decades of successful economic and community development." The senators wrote of their hope that the subcommittee would support continued funding for Section 4 in Fiscal Year 2020.^[119]

Sanders' 2020 campaign platform included calls to spend $2.5 trillion on building nearly 10 million affordable housing units and $70 billion for repairing existing public housing units, fully fund the Section 8 voucher program, implement national rent control forbidding increases of more than 3 percent or 1.5 times inflation, increase enforcement of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, reform tenant protections against eviction in the United States, end exclusionary zoning, speed up home energy upgrades from public utilities, end homelessness in the United States, and create an expansive relief program for homeowners still suffering from the financial crisis of 2007–2008, among other provisions.^[120]

Government shutdown

In March 2019, Sanders and thirty-eight other senators signed a letter to the Appropriations Committee opining that contractor workers and by extension their families "should not be penalized for a government shutdown that they did nothing to cause" while noting that there were bills in both chambers of Congress that if enacted would provide back pay to compensate contractor employees for lost wages before urging the Appropriations Committee "to include back pay for contractor employees in a supplemental appropriations bill for FY2019 or as part of the regular appropriations process for FY2020."^[121]

Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023

Sanders joined four Democrats in voting against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the Senate.^[122]