Bernie Sanders: Now is the time for bold action
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Special to the Register
Published 11:45 a.m. CT July 11, 2017
We need a bold progressive agenda
Excerpts:
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked out into America during the Great Depression, he saw a third of our nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. And he acted. He imposed the toughest banking regulations our nation has ever seen. He radically transformed our country by signing into law Social Security, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, programs that put millions of Americans back to work and a dramatic increase in taxes on the wealthy. The top 1 percent despised him for it. Instead of cowering, he took them on. Three days before his first re-election, FDR stood on stage at Madison Square Garden and proudly proclaimed that the big money interests were unanimous in their hatred for him and he welcomed their hatred. He knew which side he was on.
When I look out into our country today, I see our great middle class, once the envy of the world, in a 40-year decline, with millions of Americans working longer hours for lower wages. I see 43 million people living in poverty, and the United States having, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of nearly any major country. I see the United States experiencing more income and wealth inequality than at any time since 1928, with the top 0.1 percent owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent and with 52 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent. I see a political system in which billionaires are able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect candidates who represent the rich and the powerful, while ignoring the needs of the working families of this country.
I see all of these problems and more.
The only way to confront these and the other very serious challenges we face as a country is to put forward a bold progressive agenda, like FDR did in his day — one that represents the interests of all Americans, not just the wealthy and the powerful.
The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world in recognizing health care as right of all people, not a privilege. Instead of throwing 22 million Americans off of health insurance, which is what the extreme right wing wants to do, we should establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system to make sure that all Americans have quality health care.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/07/11/bernie-sanders-now-time-bold-action/468023001/
= new reply since forum marked as read
