Bernie Sanders's Viewpoints
Bernie Sanders is currently a Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election. He was the main congressman for Vermont in the House of Representatives for 16 years. Sanders is now serving his second term in the U.S Senate after winning a 71 percent vote to be re-elected. Bernie was once the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He has focused on the shrinking middle class and the gap between the rich and others in society. Some of Sanders’ main issues that he plans on focusing on during this presidential election are tuition free colleges, immigration policies, and women’s rights.
Tuition-Free College
One of Sanders issues that he plans to focus on if he becomes president is free public colleges. Bernie has six steps to making college education happen without living with debt. His first step to making college tuition free is making public colleges and universities tuition free. This is not impossible as many other countries have already made this change, such as Germany, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. He then plans to stop the federal government from making profits off of student loans. It is said that about $110 billion dollars will be made from student loan programs in the next decade. Sanders plans on using this money to lower student interest rates which is his next step in making college tuition free. Sanders would drop the interest rate back to what it was in 2006. It would drop from 4.29% to 2.37%. He would then let students refinance their student loans to the new interest rate. One of his final steps is to completely cover all low-income students needs with financial aid and triple the federal work program which could increase career experience for their future.
Income and Wealth Inequality
He also is focusing on income and wealth inequality. We currently have the largest gap since the 1920s. It is clear that something is wrong when the top tenth of 1% has more wealth than the bottom 90% of people. Sanders plans on putting a stop to this by stopping businesses from making their products across seas to avoid US income taxes. He plans to create an estate tax to tax the top Americans who inherit millions of dollars. Sanders also plans on taxing Wall Street speculators who caused many to lose their jobs and money. Another step he would take to decrease the gap is raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2020. Everyone that works 40 hour weeks by then should no longer live in poverty. He would also put millions of Americans in the workforce by creating jobs to repair roads, bridges and many other infrastructure needs. He would also create youth work programs so teenagers and young adults have a job to start them up the working ladder and to help pay for education. Another issue that is happening is pay inequality between men and women. Sanders would sign in the Paycheck Fairness Act to create equality between everyone. And with elder poverty increasing he would increase Social Security so everyone can retire with no worries. He would make it so everyone could also have health care. Sanders would also require employers to allow for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave and 2 weeks of vacation time off while still being paid. They would also be required to provide 7 days of paid sick days. Sanders believes in family values and being there to create memories and take care of your family when they’re sick or need help. He also wants to enact a universal childcare program to start kids off on the right foot and to give all children the same opportunities. Sanders plans on taking these many steps to narrowing the gap between middle classes and the wealthy.
Women’s Rights
Another significant issue that Sanders plans on taking a step towards fixing if he is president is women’s rights. There is a big issue with the pay gap between women and men. Women only make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes and is even worse for different races of women. He plans to also increase funding for Planned Parenthood and other programs for women’s health and many other things such as contraception and abortion. He would also increase funding for the WIC program to provide this program to all low-income mothers to provide meals and other necessities for their children. Sanders would also only nominate supreme court justices who support Roe v. Wade and the reproductive rights of women. He also plans on making childcare available for all since a lot of Americans can not afford the extreme cost of childcare. Most of the time women or families can’t afford these types of childcare and miss out on opportunities for their future. Sanders also wants to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour because two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women. Also him giving the paid time off to help with income and wealth inequality that would also help with women’s rights. This is part of Sanders believing in family values and believing women should have bonding time with your their children. And just like he proposes social security and make healthcare available for all to decrease the wealth gap it would also help with women’s rights by providing healthcare to the people who benefit from it the most, women.
Sanders has many more issues he plans to work on if he becomes president such as creating decent paying jobs, climate change, immigration policy, and many more. He also has four events coming up soon in the US. Too learn more information about these issues, about him, and events coming up visit his website, https://berniesanders.com/?nosplash=true/.
