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“If We Stand Together, We Will Win.” BERNIE SANDERS? Bernie Sanders is a candidate for President of the United States, vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Bernie’s campaign is about a progressive agenda that — among other things — will create jobs, raise wages, protect the environment, provide health care for all, increase access to higher education, reform our immigration and criminal justice systems, reaffirm our civil rights, promote a more sensible foreign policy, and reduce the influence of money in politics.
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Health Care as a Right For All The health insurance lobby and other opponents of single-payer care make it sound scary. It’s not. In fact, a largescale single-payer system already exists. It’s called Medicare. People enrolled in the system give it high marks. More importantly, it has succeeded in providing near-universal coverage to Americans over the age of 65. Establishing a single-payer system will mean peace of mind for all Americans. The goal of real health care reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way. We must ensure that the money we put into health coverage goes to the delivery of health care, not to paper-pushing, astronomical profits and lining CEOs’ pockets.
Taking on Wall Street Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product - over $ 9.8 trillion. These institutions underwrite more than half the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930 s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.
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Rebuilding Our Crumbling Infrastructure We are a great nation, but we cannot be a world leader when the physical infrastructure of our country is rotting and we are falling further and further behind other countries. We cannot be a world leader when real unemployment is more than 11 percent and millions of our people are unable to find decent-paying jobs. If we are serious about the future of our country and the needs of our middle class, it is imperative that we invest in infrastructure and rebuild America.
Raising the Minimum Wage Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.
Making College Affordable Bernie Sanders believes that all students deserve the opportunity to receive an affordable, quality education from the earliest stages of schooling to high-level degrees. He has sponsored bills to make public colleges and universities tuition-free, as well as to drastically reduce interest rates on student loan debt. In a highly competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country and our future, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That shortsighted path to the future must end. As President, Bernie Sanders will fight to make sure that every American who studies hard in school can go to college regardless of how much money their parents make and without going deeply into debt.
Addressing Climate Change The debate is over. The vast majority of the scientific community has spoken. Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating harm here in the United States, and to people all around the globe. So what are we going to do about it? We will act boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels, toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal because we have a moral responsibility to leave our kids a planet that is healthy and habitable.
Pay Equity for Women Workers Wage gaps affect workers based on a combination of factors including gender and race. Bernie Sanders believes workers deserve equal pay for equal work. He has fought for much of his political career to end discrimination and give working Americans the pay that they deserve. A pay gap exists between men and women which, while seemingly small, accrues and adds up over time. Bernie has supported and pushed efforts to strengthen claims for women against gender discrimination.
Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers Since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country, and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA , CAFTA , PNTR with China, etc.) which enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries. We need to end the race to the bottom and develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad.
Real Tax Reform At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries. We lose over $100 billion a year in revenue because the wealthy stash their cash in offshore tax havens around the world. The time is long overdue for real tax reform.
Protecting the Most Vulnerable Americans There is something profoundly wrong when we have a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages and we have the highest childhood poverty rate of nearly any developed country on earth.
Growing the Trade Union Movement Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form a union.
Creating Worker Co-ops We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other lowwage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in the businesses they work for, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs.
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