Subterms
Bernie SandersBernie in Trumpworld: Sanders visits ‘imperative if democracy is to survive’Vermont senator tells New York Times $2tn or $3tn will not be enough for new infrastructure package Martin Pengelly in Washington@ More
Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a resolution blocking a $735m US weapons sale to Israel on Thursday, mirroring a symbolic action by the House of Representatives in response to conflict between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas leaders.“I believe that the United States must help lead the way to a peaceful and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians,” the progressive senator said on Twitter.He added: “We need to take a hard look at whether the sale of these weapons is actually helping do that, or whether it is simply fueling conflict.”Sanders’ language mirrored that of a separate resolution he introduced on Wednesday, which emphasized the importance of Israeli and Palestinian lives. “Whereas every Palestinian life matters; and whereas every Israeli life matters:now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate … urges an immediate ceasefire,” Sanders’ resolution said.The resolution was in response to a separate measure from the Republican senator Rick Scott affirming US support for Israel.The current conflict in the Middle East has opened splits in the Democratic party between its progressive wing and its centrists, including the White House. Joe Biden’s administration has approved the potential sale of $735m in weapons to Israel this year, and sent it to Congress on 5 May for formal review.The Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate foreign relations and House foreign affairs committees all backed the sale during an informal review before 5 May. And lawmakers predicted efforts to stop the sale would fail, given traditionally strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate for arms sales to Israel.Senator Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of Senate foreign relations, said he would oppose the Sanders resolution. He also said he was not certain that Sanders had filed it within a required 15-day period.“I can’t imagine that passing,” Senator Jim Risch, the committee’s top Republican, told reporters.The clashes have prompted calls from some lawmakers for a more concerted US effort to stop the violence, including Israeli airstrikes that have killed dozens of civilians, most of them Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.Sanders’ resolution follows a measure introduced by the US Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan and Rashida Tlaib, which has at least six other co-sponsors, including some of the most left-leaning Democrats in the House. More
When Joe Biden, a 78-year-old white male moderate, was sworn in as US president, it was seen as only a matter of time before progressives became restive and “Democrats in disarray” headlines were dusted off.But two months in, the party remains uncharacteristically united. Biden is being hailed as an unlikely radical, drawing comparisons with transformative presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson – his very reputation as a steady centrist enabling him to move further and faster.How long can the Democratic honeymoon last?One key arbiter of this grace period is the influential figure of Nina Turner, a longtime backer of Senator Bernie Sanders, the self-declared democratic socialist beaten by Biden in last year’s party primary. She believes the signs are encouraging – so far.“He’s doing all right but we’re going to press on, we’re going to keep pressing,” says Turner, 53, currently campaigning for election to Congress in Ohio. “We haven’t got all that we need but this is a good start. The people are the north star, not those of us who are politicians, and their needs are great. You got 33 million people out there who need a $15-an-hour minimum wage. So, a good start but we got many more miles to go.”A former Ohio state senator, Turner was a national surrogate for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, led its spin-off grassroots organisation Our Revolution and served as national co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 run. Her own shot at national office in Ohio’s 11th congressional district has come about after Marcia Fudge resigned to become housing secretary under Biden.Turner was endorsed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Jamie Raskin of Maryland. If successful in the Democratic primary in August and the special election in November, she would cement her position as a leader of the left of the party.Ohio voted twice for Barack Obama but then twice for Donald Trump as Republicans made gains among blue-collar voters. Turner reflects: “When I ran for secretary of state in 2014, what I heard in the rural areas of the state was there is a need for Democrats to show that it’s not just two corporate parties that people are choosing between, that the Democratic party really does get it.“We got to go back to the roots of FDR and the roots of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm – that kind of service speaks to the people of the great state of Ohio, whether they’re urban, suburban or rural. I know that it does because I was out there on the stump for President Obama, especially in 2012.”Biden’s sweeping $1.9tn coronavirus relief package, including direct cash payments to millions of Americans and measures to cut child poverty nearly in half, was seen as a win for working families. But it was not an unalloyed victory: Sanders’ amendment to include increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour was struck down by Republicans and moderate Democrats.Turner says: “The Covid relief bill is certainly a good start. That $1.9tn is a big deal; I think it’s 10% of GDP. It’s strong and the reason why we’re there is because progressives were pushing. Now we need to get that $15-an-hour minimum wage over the finish line because it’s the floor and not the ceiling.“We got to address the systemic problems that were there before the pandemic with systemic solutions and I believe the Democratic party can do it. And I’m going to Congress to help them along the way.”Biden’s bold advance may soon stall, however, on Capitol Hill. Senate Republicans in the minority can use a procedural mechanism called the filibuster to block his legislative agenda on gun control, healthcare, voting rights and much else. Many on the left regard the filibuster as a relic of the Jim Crow era and are calling for it to be abolished so that Democrats could pass bills with a simple majority.But Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continue to support it. “They are on the wrong side of history,” Turner says. “Senator Joe Manchin needs to get a spine. People deserve to have robust debate in both chambers and not have it prohibited by people who want to play games with people’s lives.“While they collect their salary off the taxpayer’s dime, people like Manchin and Sinema have the pure and unadulterated gall to stand in the way of the people getting the resources that they need. There’s a moral contradiction there that must be addressed.”Manchin, from pro-Trump West Virginia, has defended the filibuster by articulating hopes of reviving bipartisanship. Biden promised to unify the nation but found Republicans unyielding in their opposition to the coronavirus relief bill. Turner warns the president against over-stretching to accommodate the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.“President Obama came in as the diplomat that he is – ‘I want bipartisanship’ – and tried to negotiate with these Republicans. Dr Maya Angelou said, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ They already showed us Democrats who they are and we ought to believe them and so I don’t want to see President Biden fall into that trap.“It was tried and tested under President Obama: the Republicans under Senator McConnell are just not going to do right and so Democrats are going to have to take the rein for these two years that we have and use the people’s power on the people’s behalf.“That is why the people gave us the presidency. That is why they answered the call in Georgia and that is why they allowed Democrats to keep control of the House. Now we’re going to have to show people something or we might be in for a rude awakening in 2022.”Turner, an assistant professor of history and podcast host, argues that opinion polls show a majority of Americans agree with progressives on issues ranging from the Green New Deal to canceling student debt, from increasing the minimum wage to reforming the legal system, especially for racial justice.“The thing that we are seeing coming from President Biden, even though it might not be all that progressives want, the progressives cast the die. The American people might not call themselves progressives, but when we drill down to talk to them about the issues, they are right where we are.“What we’re talking about is not radical. The people who are out of touch are people like Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Mitch McConnell because the last time I checked, there are poor people in Kentucky and there are poor people in West Virginia, just as there are poor people in Ohio who need their elected leaders to provide relief for them. That’s all we’re asking.”In the New York Times, Ezra Klein has noted that the $1.9tn stimulus package looks a lot like the proposals Sanders has fought for all his career. “Bernie Sanders didn’t win the 2020 election,” he wrote. “But he may have won its aftermath.”Does Turner believe that, after all these years, Sanders has been vindicated?“Sometimes visionaries are ahead of their time and, whether it was popular or not, he has stayed consistent and now the people have caught up with his vision,” she says. “The progressive movement – but America, by extension – is right where Senator Bernard Sanders is on these issues. We’re going to keep pushing.”An intrigue of the next four years is whether Biden will backslide – and whether Sanders will call him out on it. Turner adds: “You can both recognise somebody saying that President Biden’s on the right path and at the same time continue to push. Those things are not mutually exclusive. So I wouldn’t say the progressives are necessarily keeping their powder dry; they’re saying we are off to a good start but we got to make this thing better.” More
The United States cannot prosper and remain a vigorous democracy when so few have so much and so many have so little. While many of my congressional colleagues choose to ignore it, the issue of income and wealth inequality is one of the great moral, economic and political crises that we face – and it must be dealt with.The unfortunate reality is that we are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society, where a handful of billionaires have enormous wealth and power while working families have been struggling in a way we have not seen since the Great Depression. This situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic.Today, half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, 500,000 of the very poorest among us are homeless, millions are worried about evictions, 92 million are uninsured or underinsured, and families all across the country are worried about how they are going to feed their kids. Today, an entire generation of young people carry an outrageous level of student debt and face the reality that their standard of living will be lower than their parents’. And, most obscenely, low-income Americans now have a life expectancy that is about 15 years lower than the wealthy. Poverty in America has become a death sentence.Meanwhile, the people on top have never had it so good. The top 1% now own more wealth than the bottom 92%, and the 50 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 165 million people. While millions of Americans have lost their jobs and incomes during the pandemic, over the past year 650 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1.3tn.The growing gap between the very rich and everyone else is nothing new.Over the past 40 years there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and working families to the very wealthiest people in America.In 1978, the top 0.1% owned about 7% of the nation’s wealth. In 2019, the latest year of data available, they own nearly 20%.Unbelievably, the two richest people in America, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, now own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans combined.If income inequality had not skyrocketed over the past four decades and had simply stayed static, the average worker in America would be earning $42,000 more in income each year. Instead, as corporate chief executives now make over 300 times more than their average employees, the average American worker now earns $32 a week less than he or she did 48 years ago – after adjusting for inflation. In other words, despite huge increases in technology and productivity, ordinary workers are actually losing ground.Addressing income and wealth and inequality will not be easy, because we will be taking on some of the most powerful and well-financed entities in the country, including Wall Street, the health insurance industry, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial-complex. But it must be done. Here is some of what Congress and the president can do in the very near future.We must raise the minimum wage from the current starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of at least $15 an hour. A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.We need to make it easier, not harder, for workers to join unions. The massive increase in wealth and income inequality can be directly linked to the decline in union membership in America.A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in itWe need to create millions of good-paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, wastewater plants, sewers, culverts, dams, schools and affordable housing.We need to combat climate change by fundamentally transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels towards energy efficiency and renewable energy which will also create millions of good paying jobs.We need to do what virtually every other major country does by guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. Passing a Medicare for All program would end the absurdity of us paying twice as much per capita for healthcare as do the people of other countries, while tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or under-insured.We need to make certain that all of our young people, regardless of income, have the right to high quality education – including college. And that means making public colleges and universities tuition free and substantially reducing student debt for working families.And yes. We need to make the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America start paying their fair share of taxes.Growing income and wealth inequality is not just an economic issue. It touches the very foundation of American democracy. If the very rich become much richer while millions of working people see their standard of living continue to decline, faith in government and our democratic institutions will wither and support for authoritarianism will increase. We cannot let that happen. More
A fiery speech and last-ditch effort by Bernie Sanders to secure a place for a federal minimum wage hike in the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package appeared as good as doomed on Friday, following a day that saw the flagship legislation hit grinding delays in the Senate.Senate leaders and moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin struck a deal late on Friday over emergency jobless benefits, breaking a nine-hour logjam that had stalled the bill.The compromise, announced by the West Virginia lawmaker and a Democratic aide, seemed to clear the way for the Senate to begin a climactic, marathon series of votes and, eventually, approval of the sweeping legislation.The Senate next faced votes on a pile of amendments that were likely to last overnight, mostly on Republican proposals that are virtually certain to fail.More significantly, the jobless benefits agreement suggested it was just a matter of time until the Senate passes the bill. That would send it back to the House, which was expected to give it final congressional approval before whisking it to Biden for his signature.Progress on the bill slowed to a crawl on Friday afternoon, signaling that the legislation might not pass until the weekend, with Republicans still expected to introduce many amendments, all of which must see votes.Despite delays, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the chamber would finish its work.“The Senate is going to take a lot of votes. But we are going to power through and finish this bill, however long it takes,” Schumer said. “The American people are counting on us and our nation depends on it.”A job in the United States of America should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in itIf, as expected, the Senate passes the bill, it will then have to return to the Democratic-controlled House for final approval before being forwarded to Biden.Earlier on Friday, Sanders had, almost certainly in vain, implored Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour within this piece of legislation, calling it “disgraceful” that lawmakers have allowed tens of millions of American workers to live on “starvation wages”.“Nobody in America can survive on $7.25 an hour, $9 an hour or $12 an hour,” he said. “We need an economy in which all of our workers earn at least a living wage … A job in the United States of America should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it.”Last week, the Senate parliamentarian determined that a provision raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was inadmissible under the rules of a special budgetary procedure Democrats are using to pass the $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill on a party-line vote.Sanders, backed by many progressives in the House, has called on Democrats to “ignore” the decision.During his remarks, Sanders also made a forceful case for enacting the relief bill, which is expected to pass with only Democratic support.“This is a bill which will answer a profound question: are we living in a democratic society where the US Congress will respond to the needs of working families rather than just the wealthy and large corporations and their lobbyists?” he said.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) gives forceful speech on his proposed amendment to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour:“This is a bill which will answer a profound question: Are we living in a democratic society … ?” pic.twitter.com/qrz4LjQFWq— The Recount (@therecount) March 5, 2021
Debate, voting on amendments, and backroom horse-trading began in earnest on Friday, a day after the vice-president, Kamala Harris, broke a Senate tie to allow the chamber to take up the bill.Following Sanders’ speech, eight Democrats joined all Republicans to vote against the minimum wage proposal, suggesting that progressives vowing to continue the effort in coming months will face a difficult fight.The 8 senators:• Joe Manchin (West Va. )• Jon Tester (Mt.)• Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.)• Angus King (Maine)• Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)• Tom Carper (Del.)• Chris Coons (Del.)• Maggie Hassan (N.H.) https://t.co/uEd1famnIv— Axios (@axios) March 5, 2021
Though Sanders’ amendment was poised for defeat, the vote remained open as Democrats scrambled to hammer out a deal on unemployment benefits.The version of the relief bill passed by the House provides $400 weekly emergency unemployment benefits – on top of regular state payments – through August.But in a compromise with moderates revealed earlier on Friday, Senate Democrats said that would be reduced to $300 weekly but extended until early October. The plan, sponsored by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, would also reduce taxes on unemployment benefits by making $10,200 of individuals’ benefits tax exempt. The White House also said it supported the amendment.But by midday, lawmakers said Manchin was ready to support a less generous Republican version. That led to hours of talks involving White House aides, top Senate Democrats and Manchin as the party tried finding a way to salvage its unemployment aid package.The compromise announced Friday night would provide $300 weekly, with the final check paid on 6 September, and includes the tax break on benefits.The day’s lengthy standoff underscored the headaches confronting party leaders over the next two years and the tensions between progressives and centrists as they try moving their agenda through the Congress with their slender majorities.With power in the Senate split 50-50 between the two parties, just one Democratic defection is needed to block legislation or stall voting along the way if no Republicans cross the aisle.“I feel bad for Joe Manchin. I hope the Geneva Convention applies to him,” said the No 2 Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, to reporters.The overall bill, aimed at battling the killer virus and nursing the staggered economy back to health, will provide direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans.There is also money for Covid-19 vaccines and testing, aid to state and local governments, help for schools and the airline industry, tax breaks for lower-earners and families with children, and subsidies for health insurance.Despite deep political polarization and staunch Republican opposition, the legislation has garnered broad public appeal.Apoll by Monmouth University found that 62% of Americans approve of the stimulus package, including more than three in 10 Republicans.That is something Republicans hope to erode, by portraying the bill as too big and representing wasteful public spending for a pandemic that’s almost over. Biden and federal health experts this week, however, told states rushing to ditch mask mandates and reopen businesses completely that the move was premature and they risked creating a fourth deadly surge of disease. More
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterNeera Tanden’s decision to withdraw from consideration to serve as Joe Biden’s budget director marks the first major loss for the still young Biden administration, and sets off a scramble between various political factions to push through a new nominee.Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress thinktank, decided to withdraw her candidacy on Tuesday, in the face of a lack of support among senators needed to advance her through the confirmation process.“Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” Tanden wrote in a letter to Biden released by the White House. Tanden added that she appreciated “how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation”.Tanden was the first of Biden’s cabinet nominees to fail to make it through the confirmation process. New presidents don’t usually see all of their cabinet picks confirmed.But Tanden’s path was always more precarious than the rest. She is well known throughout the Democratic party as a combative figure who often engaged in Twitter fights and criticized both Republicans and Democrats. After her nomination she deleted over 1,000 tweets and in her hearings she said she regretted those criticisms, which included calling Senator Susan Collins of Maine “the worst” and tweeting that “vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz”, the Republican senator from Texas.But Tanden, a staunch Hillary Clinton ally, had also warred with prominent members of the progressive wing of the Democratic party and once allegedly punched Faiz Shakir, who would eventually become Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign manager. Tanden has said she “pushed” him.Sanders, the chairman of one of the committees charged with handling Tanden’s nomination, also questioned large corporate and foreign donations to the Center for American Progress.But the lion’s share of critical questioning by senators was about Tanden’s various attacks.“Of course, your attacks were not just made against Republicans. There were vicious attacks against progressives, people who I have worked with, me personally,” Sanders said during the hearings.Tanden did have her fair share of support. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, said the White House was “fighting our guts out” to get Tanden confirmed and the US Chamber of Commerce backed her as well. Behind the scenes, Democratic officials continued to lobby senators to support her, even after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, announced his opposition to Tanden, citing her tweets and past conduct.Manchin has emerged during the Biden administration as, at times, the deciding figure on matters before the Senate. Other conservative Democrats, like Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, held back from announcing how she would vote. That decision did not inspire confidence in Tanden’s chances and illustrated the influence any senator – especially a conservative one – has in a Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.Republicans at moments seemed to revel in highlighting Tanden’s past tweets. Tanden’s allies argued that they were motivated by a mix of extreme hypocritical partisanship (where were they, Tanden’s allies grumbled, when Trump was tweeting?) and racism. Tanden was born to immigrant parents from India.But those senators also expressed eagerness to support one of the potential replacements – Shalanda Young, a veteran Hill staffer who is Black.“You know I’m going to vote for you,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee, said on Tuesday during Young’s hearing to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. “You’re highly qualified and I’m going to support you,” Graham added before pressing her on immigration policy.Similarly John Kennedy of Louisiana, one of the Senate’s more bombastic members, said at one point “you may be more than deputy. You may be the sheriff. I don’t expect you to comment on that.”Democratic senators stuck to their support of Tanden during Young’s hearing but after her nomination was pulled lawmakers began lobbying for Young.“We have worked closely with her for several years and highly recommend her for her intellect, her deep expertise on the federal budget and her determination to ensure that our budget reflects our values as a nation,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, majority whip, Jim Clyburn, and majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Her leadership at the OMB would be historic and would send a strong message that this administration is eager to work in close coordination with members of Congress to craft budgets that meet the challenges of our time and can secure broad, bipartisan support.”Other names have been floated as possible OMB nominees and the Senate budget committee is now waiting for the White House to pick someone else. The names floated include Sarah Bianchi, a former director of policy for Biden; Gene Sperling, a former director of the council of economic advisers; Ann O’Leary, the former chief of staff to Governor Gavin Newsom of California.Whoever the White House nominates is poised to have an easier confirmation process than Tanden. More
US taxpayers should not be “forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America”, Bernie Sanders told a Senate hearing on Thursday.As Congress debates the first rise in the minimum wage in over a decade, the Vermont senator said he had “talked to too many workers in this country who, with tears in their eyes, tell me the struggles they have to provide for their kids on starvation wages” even as the chief executives of companies including McDonald’s, Walmart and others take home multi-million dollar pay packages.Executives from Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to the hearing, titled Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?They declined to appear.The senators heard from low-wage workers from McDonald’s and Walmart. Terence Wise, a McDonald’s employee from Kansas City, Missouri, said his low pay had led to his family becoming homeless.“My family has been homeless despite two incomes. We’ve endured freezing temperatures in our purple minivan. I’d see my daughter’s eyes wide open, tossing and turning, in the back seat. Try waking up in the morning and getting ready for work and school in a parking lot with your family of five,” said Wise.“That’s something a parent can never forget and a memory you can never take away from your children. You should never have multiple jobs in the United States and nowhere to sleep.”Sanders cited a government accountability office (GAO) report that found nearly half of workers who make less than $15 an hour rely on public assistance programs that cost taxpayers $107bn each year.Walmart spent $8.3bn on stock buybacks in 2017, the Walton family, the chain’s founders, are worth over $200bn and have increased their wealth by $50bn since the start of the pandemic, said Sanders. And yet the company “cannot afford to pay its workers at least $15 an hour”.“If Walmart thinks they’re going to avoid answering that question because they’re not here today, they’re deeply mistaken. The American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the wealthiest family in America,” said Sanders.The hearing comes at a tense moment for minimum wage advocates. Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour from its current level of $7.25. The proposal is part of his $1.9tn Covid stimulus package.But that package faces stiff opposition from in the Senate with the Republican minority set to vote against it and some Democrats opposing the wage rise.A recent Congressional Budget Office concluded 27 million Americans would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage to $15, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty. But the CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years. The Economic Policy Institute, and others, have called the report “wrong, and inappropriately inflated”.Republican Senator Mike Bruin told the hearing that an increase would be unfair on states with a lower cost of living and would hurt small businesses.“We need to slow it down,” he said. “The main result is you are going to hurt Main Street,” he said. More
