This week I am giving you all a detailed primer on Bernie's suggested policies for his presidency. His plans are so extensive, I decided to split up the primer over two weeks! So this week, I will cover income equality, education and immigration. Next week, look out for Social justice issues (on topics like race, gender and sexual orientation), war and healthcare.
Income inequality:
- Stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes (Panama papers anyone?).
- Fun fact: Bernie opposed the Panama Free Trade Agreement, telling the Senate in 2011 that Panama was “a world leader when it comes to allowing large corporations and wealthy Americans to evade US taxes.” Bernie says he would terminate the agreement within his first six months in office and “conduct an immediate investigation into US banks, corporations, and wealthy individuals who have been stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes.”
- Create a progressive estate tax on the top 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million.
- Enact a tax on Wall Street speculators who caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings.
- Raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2020.
- Putting 13 million+ Americans to work by investing $1 trillion over five years towards rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, railways, airports, public transit systems, ports, dams, waste water plants and other infrastructure needs.
- Reversing trade policies like NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with China that have driven down wages and caused the loss of millions of jobs.
- Fighting for pay equity by signing the Paycheck Fairness Act into law (equal pay for all Americans, ya know like women who get paid 78 cents for every dollar a man makes).
- Expanding Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable income above $250,000.
- Making it easier for workers to join unions by fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act (a bill that would protect workers' right to join together in unions and make it harder for management to threaten workers seeking to organize a union).
- Breaking up huge financial institutions so that they are no longer too big to fail.
Education:
- Make tuition free at public colleges and universities.
- Fun Fact: Many people think this is not possible because America is larger than the many other countries that have enacted this, but keep in mind that The University of California system offered free tuition at its schools until the 1980s. In 1965, average tuition at a four-year public university was just $243 and many of the best colleges – including the City University of New York – did not charge any tuition at all. The current state of college tuition is not necessary and oppresses the many who cannot afford college—limiting their options for careers.
- Stop the federal government from making a profit on student loans (Over the next decade, it is estimated that the federal government will make a profit of over $110 billion on student loan programs).
- Cut student loan interest rates back to the where they were in 2006; this would drop the current rate of 4.29% to 2.37%.
- Allow Americans to refinance student loans at today’s rates.
- Fun Fact: you can get a car loan with an interest rate of 2.5%, but college students are expected to pay interest rates of 5-7% for decades.
- Allow students to use need-based financial aid and work study programs to make college debt free, which includes paying for room and board (which usually is not covered by aid). Bernie would require colleges to meet 100% of the financial needs of the lowest income students and would triple the federal work study program to help students pay for college and gain work experience.
- Bernie would fully pay for this $75 billion a year college reform plan by “imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago.”
- Enacting a universal childcare and prekindergarten program.
- Fun Fact: a child’s most formative years are between ages 0-3 years, so having high quality childcare and pre-K makes an impact.
Environment:
- Convene a climate summit with the world’s best engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists and indigenous communities in his first 100 days.
- Ban fossil fuel lobbyists from working in the White House.
- End the huge subsidies that benefit fossil fuel companies.
- In return for all the money fossil fuel companies give to lobbying and campaigns, they get politicians on their side who help them keep $135 billion in tax subsidies and corporate welfare for the next decade, legislation to build the Keystone XL Pipeline, and politicians who block efforts at sustainable energy in order to keep oil profitable.
- Create a national environmental and climate justice plan that recognizes the heightened public health risks faced by low-income and minority communities.
- Fight to overturn Citizens United.
- Fun fact: In a 5-4 decision in 2010, the Supreme Court essentially declared that corporations have the same rights as people, allowing them spend unlimited and undisclosed money on political campaigns—essentially companies, like fossil fuel companies, can buy our elected officials in what amounts to legalized bribery.
- Decrease carbon pollution emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050, as recommended by scientists. One proposed way of doing this, which is supported by economists as being the most cost effective, is taxing carbon.
- Create clean, domestic energy alternatives to power our cars and trucks.
- Fun fact: The transportation sector accounts for about 26% of carbon pollution emissions.
- Build electric vehicle charging stations to allow for driving cleanly and sustainably.
- Build high-speed passenger and cargo rail. Having a state of the art rail system will allow us to move passengers and cargo more efficiently, as well as making cuts in carbon emissions and create more jobs.
- Fun fact: Amtrak’s average speed is 65 mph, while Europe, Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea have trains that run up to 200 mph.
- Make our cities more walkable and take more cars off the road.
- Update and modernize the energy grid.
- Fun fact: Some of our grid infrastructure hasn’t been updated since the 20’s and 30’s when they were built, which causes power failures that cost the economy $164 billion annually.
- Introduced the Rebuild America Act, which would invest $10 billion a year for power transmission, distribution and modernization projects that will improve the reliability and resiliency of our ever more complex electrical grid. The bill will also help increase access to broadband internet, which can also enable better, safer and more reliable electrical service.
- Ban Arctic oil and offshore drilling (2010 BP oil spill disaster anyone?)
- Stop dirty pipeline projects like the Keystone XL
- Fun fact: Bernie was the first national politician to publicly oppose Keystone XL because he saw that it would move us toward greater dependence on fossil fuels, specifically tar sands oil, but also on one of the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuels imaginable. He was also the first presidential candidate to oppose the Bakken oil pipeline.
- Stop exports of liquefied natural gas and crude oil.
- The Department of Energy has found that exporting even half of the natural gas already approved for export could raise U.S. prices by up to 54 percent. Oil and natural gas exports must be in the interest of consumers, the economy, our manufacturing sector and national security – not merely the interest of fossil fuel companies’ bottom line.
- Ban fracking for natural gas
- Fun fact: Fracking threatens our air and water. Disposal of wastewater from fracking causes earthquakes. Oklahoma became the number one place for earthquakes on Earth this year because gas companies inject fracking fluid back into the ground.
- Fun fact: Vermont already banned fracking which their Senator, Bernie Sanders, supported of course.
- Ban mountaintop removal coal mining and invest in Appalachian communities.
- Coal companies are blowing up entire mountaintops to get at the thin coal seams below. The communities in the region are paying for this destructive practice in their health, their culture, and their natural heritage.
- Close the loopholes that allow the chemical, oil and gas industries to pollute our air and water.
- Increase fuel economy standards to 65 miles per gallon by 2025 in order to save consumers money, cut carbon emissions, and create more jobs.
- Recent fuel economy standards put us on track to reach 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025, but other countries are way ahead of us; Japan will reach 54.5 mpg by 2020, and Europe is set to reach 65 mpg by 2020.
- Protect public lands by promoting natural resource conservation and habitat preservation.
Immigration:
- Allow immigrants to purchase health coverage under the Affordable Care Act
- Protect Immigrant Workers Exercising Their Rights.
- Issue whistle blower visas for workers who report abuse and employer violations.
- Fun fact: Many employers regularly abuse immigrant workers knowing employees will not hold them accountable for fear of deportation.
- Decouple Local Law Enforcement from Immigration Enforcement
- Deportation programs like the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), the 287(g) program, and the Criminal Alien Program have unjustly turned local law enforcement officials into immigration officers, which has resulted in racial profiling and the criminalization of communities of color.
- Expand access to legal counsel for detained immigrants based on the constitutionally enshrined principle of habeus corpus; ensure that immigrants have their day in court, including bond hearings and access to due process protections.
- Fun fact: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) coerced a large number of immigrants to sign “voluntary return” forms, depriving them of their right to see a judge and have their day in court.
- Provide additional funding and immigration judges to the Executive Office for Immigration Review and restore discretion to judges and allow them to consider the unique circumstances of an individual’s case.
- Close loopholes that allow racial profiling by federal authorities.
- Fun fact: Under the current guidance, the Department of Justice carved out significant exceptions for federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI, TSA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to profile racial, religious, and other minorities at or in the vicinity of the border.
- Fight to end federal, state and municipal contracts with for-profit private prisons within two years.
- Due to the incentive to private prisons to support punitive, over-inclusive laws, 34,000 are in detention on any given day.
- Enact the Justice is Not for Sale Act
- The federal government would have three years to end its practice of using private companies to keep people behind bars. The ban would also apply to state and local governments, which have increasingly turned to private contractors in a bid to save money. It also includes several provisions intended to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants who are held in detention facilities while awaiting court hearings on their legal status.
- End family detention. He will work to ensure that detention centers do not hold families and adhere to the letter and spirit of the Flores Order.
- The Flores agreement requires government officials to release children from custody “without unnecessary delay” and to a parent or legal guardian, if possible. If a minor cannot be released because of a significant public safety or flight risk concern, he or she must be held in the least restrictive setting, typically a non-secure facility licensed by a child welfare organization. The judge found that today’s detention centers fail to meet these minimum standards when the plaintiff’s provided evidence of extremely cold temperatures, overcrowding, and inadequate nutrition and hygiene at facilities operated by Customers and Border Protection.
- Demand that Congress defund the detention bed quota; detention should be based on actual need and not arbitrary numbers set by Congress.
- Promote alternatives to detention, which can cost as little as 70 cents a day. The use of these substitutes to detention would allow thousands of non-violent immigrant detainees to reunite with their families as they wait for their day in court.
- “In the narrow, rare circumstances where detention may continue," Bernie will significantly improve conditions inside detention facilities, especially for vulnerable populations including pregnant women, LGBT individuals and detainees with disabilities.
- Work to ensure that the road map to citizenship is inclusive, particularly for women, and does not contain arbitrary cut off eligibility dates and application periods.
- The road map to citizenship must allow non-violent individuals with prior contacts with our criminal justice system to apply for relief.
- For example, non-violent immigration-related offenses should not automatically disqualify a worker or their family from obtaining immigration relief.
- Future legislation must contain a road map to citizenship that allows aspiring Americans to become lawful permanent residents and become citizens within five years.
- Minimize financial penalties and fees.
- Monetary costs often are the greatest obstacle for eligible individuals to apply for immigration relief; they have to pay thousands of dollars in administrative fees to apply. Immigration reform should not add onerous fines on top of these administrative fees.
- Work with Congress to end the lengthy, forced and prolonged exit from the country that many immigrants endure when trying to leave the country to adjust their status by rescinding the three-year, ten-year and permanent bars.
- Basically if you marry a U.S. citizen you are entitled to apply for a green card, but the provisions of this law include “three- and ten-year bars” which prohibit applicants from returning to the United States if they were previously in the U.S. illegally. Thousands of people who qualify for green cards are caught in a Catch-22—under the current law they must leave the country to apply for their green card abroad, but as soon as they leave they are immediately barred from re-entering the U.S. for three or ten years.
- Future legislation must immediately declare DREAMers eligible to serve in the uniformed services, receive financial aid, and become eligible for in-state tuition if they meet a state’s residency requirements.
- Reduce the unacceptable and inhumane number of deaths on the border.
- End remote deportations; dumping someone in an unfamiliar location can be lethal.
- End Operation Streamline and remove the barriers established in 1996 that prevent those removed under Expedited Removal from applying for asylum.
- Employ humanitarian parole to ensure the return of unjustly deported immigrants and unify broken families.
- Regulate future flows via a reformed visa system and reworked trade agreements.
- Expand President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) to provide broad administrative relief to the parents of DREAMers, the parents of citizens, the parents of legal permanent residents, and other immigrants who would have been given legal protections by the 2013 Senate-passed immigration bill.
- Continue to welcome refugees to the US and meet our international responsibilities, whether it be Syrians in the Middle East or young children in Latin America.
- Reform the visa system to prevent employers from abusing and exploiting guest workers, especially in the context of H-2B, H1-B, and J-1 workers. Binding workers to a specific employer or not allowing their family members to work creates a situation rife for abuse and exacerbates an already unequal relationship between the employer and the employee.
- Work toward requiring employers to reimburse guest workers for housing, transportation expenses, and workers’ compensation.
- Defend the Diversity Visa from being ended by Congress. (The Diversity Visa program is an enormous and inexpensive source of goodwill, affords potential immigrants with no family ties an opportunity to join our great nation, and is particularly important to African immigrants.)
- Replicate former Attorney General Janet Reno’s efforts to help extend asylum to victims of domestic violence and by classifying unaccompanied minors coming from Latin American and victims of criminal gang activity as distinct groups of people fleeing persecution. This classification will reduce the barriers for these groups to successfully apply for and receive asylum.
- Establish fair and equitable trade policies; our trade policies with Mexico, Central America, and China led to the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs and thousands of factories, as well as destitution for local communities around the world resulting from horrific work conditions and low wages established to cut costs.
- Expand access to naturalization.
- Fun fact: There are approximately nine million lawful permanent residents who are eligible to naturalize and become citizens but do not due to financial obstacles.
Sources:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/bernie-sanders-panama-papers-told/
https://www.aclu.org/equal-pay-equal-work-pass-paycheck-fairness-act
https://www.aclu.org/news/families-separated-coercive-immigration-practices-may-be-reunited-us
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/flores-ruling-and-possible-end-family-detention
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/so-close-and-yet-so-far-how-three-and-ten-year-bars-keep-families-apart
