Bernie Sanders

Democrat

• Age at Inauguration: 79
• Experience: U.S. House of Representatives - Vermont (1991-2007); U.S. Senate - Vermont (2007-present)
• Education: University of Chicago (BA)
• Interesting Fact: Sanders recorded a folk album called "We Shall Overcome" in Vermont

Key Platform Points

• Medicare for All, free public college, and reducing the influence of the wealthy

Economy and Taxes

• Wealth tax proposal: 1 percent tax on net worth above $32 million for a married couple
• Tax rate would increase to 2% on net worth from $50 to $250 million, 3% from $250 to $500 million, 4% from $500 million to $1 billion, 5% from $1 to $2.5 billion, 6% from $2.5 to $5 billion, 7% from $5 to $10 billion, and 8% on wealth over $10 billion
• These brackets are halved for singles
• The wealth of billionaires would be cut in half over 15 years

• Increase the marginal tax rate to 70% for income above $10 million
• Institute a 77% tax rate on inheritances above $1 billion
• Cap itemized deductions at 28% for households making over $250,000
• End the capital gains break for those with household income above $250,000
• Create a 1% tax on household net worth over $21 million
• Establish a federal jobs guarantee to ensure that everyone is guaranteed a stable job
• Raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour
• Deliver access to high-speed broadband internet to everyone in the United States by providing $150 billion in grants to build publicly owned broadband networks
• Supports renegotiating NAFTA and changing USMCA
• Opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership
• Cap credit card interest rates
• Restrict rapid-fire financial speculation with a financial transactions tax
• Rethink our trade policies and move toward fair trade rather than just free trade
• Supports using tariffs as a method to crack down on certain countries like China and Russia, but critical of Trump's approach
• Supports passing a modern Glass-Steagall Act
• Supports increase in infrastructure spending
• Provide unions the ability to organize once a majority of workers sign-up
• Ensure companies cannot prevent a union from forming by denying a first contract
• Repeal "right-to-work" laws
• Ban the permanent replacement of striking workers

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Corporations

• Place an extra tax on companies that pay their top executives over 50 times more than their typical workers
• Target offshore tax havens and other methods used by corporations to reduce their U.S. tax liabilities
• End subsidies to large corporations
• In favor of breaking up big banks and big tech
• Close tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and large corporations
• Support small and medium American businesses by providing them with the low-interest loans
• Will not accept corporate PAC or fossil fuel industry donations for his campaign
• Break up big agriculture monopolies

Criminal Justice and Drugs

• End the War on Drugs
• Legalize marijuana in the first 100 days with executive action
• Vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions
• Ensure that revenue from legal marijuana is reinvested in communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs
• Prohibit marijuana products and labels that target young people
• End the federal crack and powder cocaine disparity
• Abolish cash bail
• Eliminate private prisons
• Abolish the death penalty
• End all mandatory minimums and reinstate the federal system of parole
• Ensure people leaving incarceration or participating in diversion, community supervision, or treatment programs can do so free of charge
• Supports "Ban the Box" laws
• Supports voting rights for felons currently in jail and for felons who've been released
• Address the lack of criminal liability for civil rights violations resulting from police misconduct

Education

• Make public two- and four-year institutions tuition-free for everyone, including undocumented immigrants
• Cancel all student loan debt held by Americans using funds from a proposed tax on Wall Street transactions
• Establish a universal pre-K program
• Make all public and private HBCUs tuition-free
• Invest billions in after-school and summer programs, making school meals free, and rebuilding decaying school infrastructure
• Place a cap on student loan interest rates
• Increase teacher pay by setting a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000 tied to cost of living
• Create a grant program to provide teachers with funds explicitly meant for classroom materials
• Ensure schools in rural communities, indigenous communities, Puerto Rico and other U.S. Territories receive equitable funding
• Ban for-profit charter schools
• Triple spending on Title 1 schools
• Provide $5 billion annually for career and technical education
• Execute and enforce desegregation orders and appoint federal judges who will enforce civil rights legislation in school systems
• Increase access to English as a Second Language instruction
• Give schools the funding needed to support arts, foreign language, and music education
• Guarantee children with disabilities an equal right to high-quality education by enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act

Environment

• Supports the Green New Deal
• Reach 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050
• Calls for a $16.3 trillion public investment towards these efforts, and include traditionally excluded minority communities
• Reduce carbon emissions from transportation by building out high-speed passenger rail, electric vehicles, and public transit
• Invest in infrastructure to build a modern electric grid, rebuild drinking water facilities, and retrofit buildings
• Invest in programs to protect the frontline communities most vulnerable to extreme climate events (fires, hurricanes, etc.)
• End unemployment by creating 20 million good paying, union jobs
• Regulate all dangerous greenhouse gases, including methane and hydroflourocarbons (HFCs)
• End exports of coal, natural gas, and crude oil
• Ban fracking and eliminate all subsidies for fossil fuel companies
• Prosecute the fossil feul industry for the damage they've caused
• End leasing for fossil fuel extraction on federal lands
• Guarantee five years of a worker's current salary and other worker's benefits for any displaced fossil fuel industry worker
• Supports closing down existing nuclear power reactors
• Make the federal government a large producer of renewable energy to sell, similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority
• Increase investment in research to decrease the cost of energy storage
• Open to setting a price on carbon to push companies to reduce their emissions
• Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and provide $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund
• Provide grants, technical assistance, and debt relief to support farmers' transition to more sustainable practices

Foreign Policy

• Implement a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, economic fairness, diplomacy and peace
• Responsibly end interventions and troop presence in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq
• Believes the U.S. shouldn't be the "policeman of the world"
• Supports the Iran nuclear deal
• End U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen
• Supports the US-Israel partnership
• Rebuild trust with the United Nations

Government Reform

• Overturn Citizens United v. FEC by passsing a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear that money is not speech and corporations are not people
• Establish disclosure requirements for all political contributions
• Abolish the Federal Elections Commission and replace it with a law enforcement agency, the Federal Election Administration
• Open to replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote
• Supports automatic voter registration and open to lowering the voting age from 18 to 16
• Make Election Day a national holiday
• Open to eliminating the Senate filibuster
• End gerrymandering
• Supports DC statehood and self-determination for Puerto Rico
• Reinforce the Voting Rights Act
• Supports 12-year term limits for Supreme Court Justices and rotating judges into appeals courts
• Against adding justices to the Supreme Court
• Mandate paper ballots
• Institute a lifetime lobbying ban for former members of Congress and senior staffers

Gun Control

• Supports universal background checks
• Ban military-style assault weapons
• Supports a federal buyback program for military-style assault weapons
• He has not specified whether the buybacks would be voluntary or mandatory
• Ban high-capacity ammunition magazines
• Close the "gun show loophole"

Health Care

• Supports creating Medicare for All immediately
• Eliminate private insurance and employer health care plans
• Let Americans see any doctor they want to with no deductibles or copays
• Fully cover every service and procedure, including dental, vision, long-term care, and abortion, at no charge to patients
• Pay for the plan in part with a 4% tax on household income over $29,000
• Cancel all past-due medical debt, totaling $81 billion
• Establish a universal child care program
• Create a universal, gender-neutral, national paid family and medical leave program allowing for up to 12 weeks of paid leave
• Allow undocumented immigrants to be covered under a government-run health plan
• Lower drug prices by 50%:
• Supports giving the federal government the ability to negotiate drug prices for Medicare
• Incentivize drug companies to charge prices that are comparable to those paid in other developed countries
• Supports importing drugs from other countries
• Supports having the federal government produce and sell generic drugs at lower prices
• Allow the government to break the patents of brand drug companies so that generic companies can produce cheaper knockoffs
• Cap co-pays for prescription drugs at $200 per year

Immigration

• Supports a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S., including Dreamers
• Give youth eligible for DACA immediate legal status and expand the program to cover their parents as well
• Supports work visa reform to stop misuse of workers for cheap labor
• U.S. should secure border the Southern border without adding any more wall
• Change crossing the border from a criminal offense to a civil offense
• Does not support detaining asylum-seeking families until their asylum claims can be processed
• Supports increasing funding for border security and for the immigration court system to better process asylum claims
• Meet target of 110,000 annual refugee admissions set during the Obama administration
• Restructure ICE

LGBTQ+ Rights

• Has been a longtime supporter of the LGBTQ+ community
• Opposes laws that prevent transgender people from using bathrooms of their choice
• Lift the ban preventing transgender people from serving in the military

National Security & Veterans Affairs

Social Security & Welfare

• Supports Social Security expansion
• Establish a universal child care program
• Invest $1.48 trillion over 10 years in the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund to build, rehabilitate, and preserve the 7.4 million housing units needed to eliminate the affordable housing gap and homelessness
• Invest an additional $400 billion to build 2 million mixed-income social housing units to help desegregate and integrate communities
• Enact a national cap on annual rent increases at no more than 3 percent or 1.5 times the inflation rate
• Funding cuts from pension programs must be repealed
• Everyone should have access to affordable housing and nutritious food
• Form a commission to consider reparations proposals for African Americans

Women's Rights

• Pro-choice stance
• Fully fund Planned Parenthood, Title X, and other initiatives that protect women's health, access to contraception, and the availability of a safe and legal abortion
• Opposes all efforts to undermine Roe v. Wade and will appoint federal judges who will uphold women's rights
• Pass the Equal Rights Amendment
• Repeal the Hyde Amendment
• Fight to end sexual harassment in the workplace, the military, and other institutions
• Immediately reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act

Children

Economic:
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit offered to lower-income families, particularly those with children
• Make the Child Tax Credit fully refundable, meaning families can receive the full credit for each child

Health:
• Pass Medicare For All plan to fully cover every service and procedure, including dental, vision, long-term care, and abortion, at no charge to patients
• Create a universal, gender-neutral, national paid family and medical leave program allowing for up to 12 weeks of paid leave

Education:
• Establish a universal child care program
• Establish a universal pre-K program
• Give schools the funding needed to support arts, foreign language and music education
• Invest billions in after-school and summer programs and rebuilding decaying school infrastructure
• Make public two- and four-year institutions tuition-free for everyone, including undocumented immigrants
• Provide $5 billion annually for career and technical education
• Cancel all student loan debt held by Americans, funded by a tax on Wall Street transactions
• Triple spending on Title 1 schools to eliminate the funding and achievement gap
• Guarantee children with disabilities a high-quality education by enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act

Child Welfare:
• Invest $1.48 trillion over 10 years to build, rehabilitate, and preserve the 7.4 million housing units need to eliminate family and child homelessness
• Make school meals free to lower child hunger
• Recognize Dreamers as US citizens and end child separation

Other:
• See Sanders's Environment and Gun Control stances for more related to children's policy