Senator Bernie Sanders wants to fix a broken political system controlled by money.
Sanders, who is the longest serving Independent in the history of the U.S. Congress, visited LSC Tuesday to discuss the state of U.S. politics as well as answer questions from students.
“We are living in an extraordinarily important political moment in the history of our country,” said Sanders. “I can’t predict to you the direction in which we’ll go, but the ideological debate taking place in Washington right now is, perhaps, unprecedented, certainly in the modern history of this country.”
The biggest issue facing the country economically, from Sanders’ point of view, is the decline of the middle class. He says this and the outsourcing of jobs have led to a weaker U.S. infrastructure.
“The last 10 years, for example, we have lost some 50,000 factories in America that produce the products that we purchase and that supply millions of jobs in our country,” said Sanders. “Median family income down by $2,500 in the last 10 years, millions of people working longer hours for lower wages, childhood poverty going up. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth.”
The wealth disparity between the richest citizens and the rest of the country is one reason Sanders gave for the decline of the middle class.
“The top one percent today earn more income than the bottom 50 percent,” Sanders said. “The top 400 individuals in this country own as much wealth as the bottom 150 million Americans.”
He listed off ways to fix this problem and pay for universal health care, as well as investing in education so that students do not leave college with a large debt, by taxing that top one percent more, eliminating tax breaks for big corporations, who pay little or no federal income tax, and cutting military spending.
He was asked about the possibility of not raising the debt ceiling, causing the U.S. to default on some of its outstanding loans, something Republicans have said they would allow to happen if cuts are not made to entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Sanders thinks it should be raised in order to avert a global crisis, but is willing to call Republicans out and not give in to their demands.
“It would say that the most powerful nation on Earth is no longer able to pay its debt,” said Sanders of not raising the debt ceiling. “This would be a huge international financial consequence. Republicans will tell you ‘We’re prepared to do that Mr. President unless you make major, major cuts in a whole lot of programs.’ I think you got to call the republicans bluff. Otherwise we’ll go down that path of seeing devastating cuts on programs that many people depend upon. It’s like a bully in the room that says ‘Give me everything or I’m going to set fire to the room.’ Well sometimes you have to say ‘I’m sorry you’re not going to do that.'”