Bernie Sanders: Where He Stands
The Vermont senator hopes his progressive stances appeal to Democratic primary voters.
(Matt Rourke/AP)
Bernie Sanders
Born: September 8, 1941
Political Party: Democratic Party (Sanders is an independent in the U.S. Senate but caucuses with the Democratic Party.)
Current Position: U.S. Senator from Vermont (2007-present)
Past Positions: U.S. Representative from Vermont (1991-2007), Mayor of Burlington, Vermont (1981-1989)
Education: Bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Chicago
He's a millionaire socialist. At age 77, he's the oldest candidate in the Democratic presidential primary but the favorite among young voters. His mission is called "our revolution," yet he is, for the second time, seeking the power to make change through the ultra-establishment job of president of the United States.
Bernie Sanders is hardly a typical presidential candidate, starting with his quest for the nomination by a Democratic Party he only joins when he's running for president. And yet, despite his proud history as the political thorn in the side of both major parties, the independent senator from Vermont has arguably had more influence on the direction of the Democratic Party in the past few years than any Democratic stalwart.
"He's got these big ideas. From a practical perspective, most of them probably can't happen," says Massachusetts-based political consultant Spencer Kimball, who is also director of the Emerson Poll at Emerson College. But Sanders has touched the increasingly exposed progressive nerve in the Democratic Party, and "it's more than fair to say Bernie's had an influence" on where Democrats as an institution are headed, he says.
Personal History
The Brooklyn-born Sanders has been a long-time reliable progressive, buttressing his collectivist credentials by living on an Israeli kibbutz in the '60s and spending his 1988 honeymoon with wife, Jane, in the then-communist Soviet Union. Born Sept. 8, 1941, to two Jewish immigrants from Poland, Sanders found activism early on. As a student (Sanders attended Brooklyn College and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964), Sanders was a civil rights activist, organizing on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality, an African American group, and the anti-Vietnam War Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Political Career
Settling in Vermont, Sanders worked at a number of jobs – filmmaker, freelance writer, psychiatric aide and Head Start teacher of low-income students – and pursued several unsuccessful third-party bids for office. In 1981, Sanders, describing himself as a democratic socialist, won the mayor's race in Burlington by a mere 10 votes. He was re-elected three times and ran for the House of Representatives as an independent in 1990, serving in the body until his successful first run for the U.S. Senate in 2006. He was re-elected overwhelming in 2012 (with 71% of the vote) and 2018 (with 67% of the vote). Sanders ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, losing the bid but giving a scare to the favorite, former Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Sanders' Legislative History
In Congress, Sanders has walked a sometimes-lonely line. Caucusing with the Democrats despite not being a member of the party, Sanders has never been a party loyalist or reliable vote. His record of legislative achievements lacks the big-ticket items other senior members have – sometimes because Sanders' more ambitious plans have been rejected and sometimes because he has succeeded in less-obvious ways, such as by getting amendments passed or moving some of his colleagues to the left on some issues.
In cases where Sanders went what was considered rogue at the time, he now is benefiting by not having to explain or apologize for his vote to a Democratic electorate that is becoming more progressive. Sanders, for example, was one of a minority of lawmakers who voted against the original PATRIOT Act in 2001, when a post-9/11 Congress speedily gave vast surveillance authority to American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He voted against renewing the law in 2006, in the House, and again as a senator, in 2011.
Sanders voted against the first Gulf War in 1991 and against the Iraq War in 2002 (a war his 2016 presidential primary foe, Hillary Clinton, later said she regretted voting to authorize).
Sanders has not always been there for Democrats when they needed him on controversial legislation. Sanders voted against a sweeping immigration reform bill in 2007, the last year the issue had a serious chance of passing on Capitol Hill. Most Democrats approved of the measure because it provided a path to citizenship for what was then approximately 12 million immigrants living without legal status in the United States. Sanders didn't like a guest worker provision in the bill he said was "akin to slavery" because it allowed a limited number of foreigners to work legally in the U.S. for two years, after which they would have to go home.
Sanders also voted against the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program to bail out the financial services industry and the auto industry. It passed without his support. Sanders did offer a separate measure to help the auto industry alone, but it failed.
In a primary debate with Clinton, Sanders defended his position. "When billionaires on Wall Street destroyed this economy, they went to Congress and they said, 'Please, we'll be good boys, bail us out,'" Sanders said in a debate in Flint, Michigan. "You know what I said? I said let the billionaires themselves bail out Wall Street. It shouldn't be the middle class of this country."
Sanders did come through for the Democrats by voting for both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial services reform bill, securing in the ACA $12.5 billion to expand access to community health centers. But he also made it clear he thought neither measure went far enough to solve the problems they were written to solve.
In the 2016 campaign, Sanders' progressive ideas went from an edge-of-the-spectrum wish list into the realm of serious political discussion, as a frustrated Democratic electorate looked for bigger solutions and change. He touted "Medicare for All," free public college, public financing of political campaigns and a rise in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. He was the first 2016 major presidential candidate to endorse legalizing recreational marijuana.
Sanders hammered away at income inequality, calling for expanding the social safety net while raising taxes on the very wealthy and closing tax loopholes that reward companies that move jobs overseas and park their profits there. "I don't believe it is a terribly radical idea to say if somebody works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty," Sanders said on the campaign trail in 2015.
It was a message that not too many years previous would have been dismissed by party strategists as too far left to form the basis of a winning argument at the polls. But Sanders, benefiting as well from an anti-establishment skepticism of Clinton, gave the former first lady, U.S. Senate colleague and secretary of state a scare in what many (including Clinton) presumed would be an easy glide to the nomination.
Sanders scored an early primary win in New Hampshire and went on to win in an upset in Michigan, as well as in other states (Wisconsin and Minnesota) that have become more competitive in the general election. Clinton got the nomination with a comfortable margin (2,811 delegates to Sanders' 1,879), but the longer-term impact was made: The Sanders wing of the party was demanding a stronger voice in the party platform and direction.
Even as he ceded the nomination to Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, Sanders racked up his successes. Under pressure from the second-place finisher, The DNC culled back the role of so-called "superdelegates," party bigwigs who have a say in who becomes the nominee. The Democratic Party platform had some Sanders elements as well, such as the $15 federal minimum wage (Clinton on the campaign trail had called for it to be raised to $12 an hour from the current level of $7.25). The platform also called for the abolition of the death penalty, also a break with the 2016 nominee's position.
"Sanders has had a significant impact on what's happening in the Democratic Party. He's shaping policy more than any losing presidential candidate I can recall," says John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The most important part of this – beyond Medicare for All – is (his) calling attention to the structural reforms that are necessary across our political and economic systems," Della Volpe adds.
As Sanders makes a second run at the presidency, it's clear his agenda has become more normative. When Sanders held a press conference in the fall of 2017 to announce his Medicare for All bill, he was joined at the platform by two colleagues now running against him for the nomination: Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey. And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who dropped out of the presidential race, also joined him.
The Democratic-led House of Representatives' list of bills passed this Congress reads like a Sanders call to arms, with items like the $15 minimum wage, the For the People Act to reform elections, the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Climate Action Now Act.
Despite the elevated profile of his agenda, however, Sanders is facing challenges he did not have in 2016. Unlike the last election, when Sanders could cast himself as the only progressive in the race and the alternative to Clinton, Sanders must now compete with several other progressives in the crowded field.
Sanders continues to poll well among the group that made him such a formidable competitor in 2016: young people. But some of that voter demographic is drifting towards Warren as well, says Della Volpe, who directs a semi-annual poll of 18-29-year-old voters.
The Sanders revolution, meanwhile, appears likely to continue even if he does not get the nomination. "I have been criticized a lot for thinking big, for believing we can do great things as a nation," Sanders said in a primary debate against Clinton. That "big" thinking is shaping the Democratic primary and may define the general election as well.
Where Bernie Sanders Stands on the Issues:
Abortion
Budget and Taxes
Criminal Justice
Education
Energy and Climate Change
Foreign Policy
Guns
Health Care
Immigration
LGBTQ Rights
Race and Civil Rights
Retirement/Older Americans
Rural America
Sanders said he would oppose any efforts to undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade. He would fully fund Planned Parenthood “and other initiatives that protect womens’ health, access to contraception, and the availability of a safe and legal abortion,” according to his campaign website. In 1993, Sanders co-sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act, aimed at preventing states from banning abortion before fetal liability or at any time the pregnant female’s life is in danger from the pregnancy. He has voted against defining a fetus as a person eligible for SCHIP, a children’s health program, and against barring Health and Human Services grants to organizations that perform abortions.
Sanders wants to implement a progressive tax system based on the ability to pay. “If we are serious about reforming the tax code and rebuilding the middle class, we have got to demand that the wealthiest Americans, large corporations, and Wall Street pay their fair share in taxes,” he said on his website.
- End special tax breaks on capital gains and dividends for the top 1%.
- Increase the marginal tax rate on incomes higher than $10 million.
- Pass the “For the 99.8 Pecent Act” to establish progressive estate tax on multimillionaire and billionaire inheritances.
According to his campaign website, Sanders would:
- Ban for-profit prisons.
- End cash bail.
- Abolish the death penalty.
- Ban “three strikes” laws.
- End solitary confinement.
- Create a federal agency in charge of monitoring people returning home from jail or prison.
- Allow people who have been convicted of felony charges to vote.
- Legalize marijuana and vacate and expunge past marijuana convictions.
Sanders would cancel all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and make public colleges and universities tuition free. He would also:
- Place a cap on student loan interest.
- Provide $1.3 billion to private, nonprofit, historically black colleges and universities annually to reduce tuition and fees for low-income students.
- Allow low-income students to use Pell Grants to cover the costs of school not related to tuition, like housing and books.
- Invest $1 billion to integrate K-12 public schools.
- Triple Title I funding for poor students and invest more in students with disabilities.
- Ban for-profit charter schools and cap federal funding for public charters.
- Guarantee childcare and universal pre-Kindergarten for every child.
- Increase pay for public school teachers.
- Reduce high-stakes testing in K-12 schools.
Climate change is the single greatest challenge facing our country, according to Sanders. The senator wants to implement the Green New Deal, a plan to mobilize the nation to fight climate change. The plan includes:
- Reaching 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030.
- Fully decarbonize the economy by 2050.
- Creating 20 million jobs to solve the climate crisis across several sectors, including construction, agriculture and engineering.
- Declaring climate change a national emergency.
Sanders pledges to encourage Congress to responsibly end interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, according to his campaign. He would also end support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen and rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement. Generally, Sanders said he wants to work with pro-democracy forces to protect human rights and diplomacy.
The senator promises to expand background checks, end the gun show loophole, ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons and prohibit high-capacity ammunition magazines. He also plans to “take on” the NRA, which his campaign calls a “full-fledged, right-wing political organization.”
Sanders said he wants to implement a Medicare for All, single-payer program for health care. In April, he introduced a Medicare for All bill, which would guarantee every American coverage for primary and preventive care, prescription drugs, dental and vision care, mental health and substance abuse treatment. It would create a government-run plan for maternity, newborn and long-term care. The plan would also:
- Effectively end the private health insurance market.
- Allow people to see any doctor without deductibles or copays.
- Potentially be financed by income-based premiums paid by employees and employers, a marginal tax rate hike on people making $10 million or more, raising the estate tax and collecting fees from large financial institutions.
The senator has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s immigration policies. He wants to pass immigation reform and develop a new border policy for those seeking asylum.
- Expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA.
- Restructure Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The U.S. has made strides on equality but more work needs to be done, according to the Sanders campaign. Sanders has said he wants to pass the Equality Act, the Every Child Deserve a Family Act and other bills to protect the LGBTQ+ community.
Sanders supports a commission to investigate reparations for slavery and said in a February 2019 CNN town hall that he backs investments in economically “distressed” communities as a way of providing federal reparations. In an April, 2019 speech to the National Action Network Convention, Sanders called for ending longtime racial disparities in health care. As a student at the University of Chicago, Sanders was a member of the Congress on Racial Equality and participated in activities to end racial segregation in Chicago housing.
The senator wants to expand Social Security and broaden the Older Americans Act. He plans to:
- Expand Social Security benefits to include a $1,300 a year benefit increase to seniors with incomes of $16,000 a year or less.
- Increase the minimum benefits paid to low-income workers when they retire.
- Create a new office within the Administration for Community Living to address social isolation among seniors.
- Sign an executive order to impose a moratorium on future pension cuts.
Sanders’ policies related to rural America focus on agriculture. He promises to:
- Pass Roosevelt-style trust-busting laws to stop monopolization of markets and end massive agribusinesses.
- Classify food supply security as a national security issue.
- Provide grants, technical assistance and debt relief to farmers to support their transition to move sustainable farming practices.
- Establish a program to set aside ecologically fragile farm and ranch land.
Susan Milligan, Senior Writer
Susan Milligan is a political and foreign affairs writer and contributed to a biography of the ... Read more