Wayne O'Leary

Idea Man

Sen. Bernie Sanders may or may not make it to the Democratic nomination for president — his prospects have been at least temporarily derailed by his recent cardiac event — but one thing remains certain: He’s the 2020 campaign’s premier source of progressive ideas for the future. This is notwithstanding Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s much celebrated flair for dramatizing her own competing ideas (“I have a plan for that,” etc.), which has captured the media’s fancy. The fact is that Sanders’ more elaborate list of proposals constitutes the most comprehensive catalogue of suggested left-leaning legislation this campaign (or perhaps any other) has yet set forth.

Here, a brief rundown of the Sanders agenda is in order. The Vermont senator’s Medicare for All health-care plan is, of course, well known, but it’s just the start. First, as regards the ongoing housing crisis, Sanders would establish a system of national rent controls, imposing a 3% cap on annual rent increases by landlords. He would also tax land speculation and house “flipping” by those who use properties as pure investment commodities rather than as sources of shelter. In addition, he would set aside $8 billion for federal programs to aid first-time home buyers, generating the money from a wealth tax aimed at billionaires.

The Sanders wealth tax is a concept he shares in common with Sen. Warren, although his is more of an upwardly graduated tax, incorporating eight brackets ranging from a 1% marginal rate on total accumulated household wealth (savings, investments, property) held by those with net worths between $32 and $50 million to 8% for those with net worths exceeding $10 billion. The smaller Warren tax would consist of a 2% levy on wealth of $50 million to $1 billion, with an additional 1% on assets over $1 billion.

These proposals, both designed by University of California (Berkeley) economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, would vary in impact. His would raise $4.35 trillion from 180,000 households over a decade, hers $2.6 trillion from 70,000 households. In each case, the richest 0.1%, the group commanding a fifth of all US assets, would be deliberately hit hardest.

For Sanders, a particular target is the burgeoning new class dubbed “decabillionaires” by Saez and Zucman, those with accumulated wealth of $10 billion or more, whose very existence the senator finds questionable on the grounds of extreme inequality leading to encroaching oligarchy. A second way he would limit their power and influence is through revising the federal estate tax, which has been trending steadily in the wrong direction (downward) since the 1980s and especially since Trump took office. Warren again shares Sanders’ perspective on estate (or inheritance) taxes, following his lead in most respects.

The Sanders plan, initially proposed in 2016, calls for a starting tax rate of 45% on inheritances worth from $3.5 to $10 million, rising gradually to 77% on those exceeding $1 billion. Sanders would thereby return the individual estate-tax exemption (tripled to over $11 million in 2017) to where it was prior to 2010, impeding in the process the creation of economic dynasties. His tax would affect barely 0.2% of the population, a few thousand families, but still raise $315 billion in the next 10 years and trillions of dollars over the long term.

The third leg of the Sanders tax-reform stool consists of a corporate levy aimed directly at the scandal of CEO pay, now averaging 300 times that of typical employees. Sanders would subject companies failing to limit excessive CEO salaries to no more than 50 times worker salaries to graduated income-tax increases ranging from 0.5% to 5%, depending on the scale of the outrage. Based on current pay patterns, the tax penalties would raise $150 billion over a decade, which would be applied to existing medical debt.

But there’s far more on the Sanders agenda than tax reform, crucial as it is to fund increased public spending. To address the elephant in the room, climate change, he proposes converting the electricity and transportation sectors completely to renewable energy (solar, wind, and geothermal) by 2030, eliminating fossil-fuel use and achieving “decarbonization” by 2050, and setting a moratorium on nuclear energy. This would be facilitated by replacing subsidies with new fees on the fossil-fuel industry. Internationally, a financial commitment would be made to assist poor countries in fighting climate change. The overall program would not be cheap; Sanders foresees a price tag of $16.3 trillion.

On education, the senator’s ambitious plans include long-overdue forgiveness of student debt; an end to tuition and fees at public colleges, universities, and trade schools; a cap on student-loan interest rates; expanded Pell grants (paid for by a “Wall Street speculation tax” on financial-investment transactions); a freeze on federal funding for new charter schools; and an outright ban on for-profit charter schools.

The problems of agriculture and rural life, usually neglected in any discussion of national priorities, receive the full Sanders treatment. He calls for the following structural changes — the biggest since the Great Depression — in the farm economy: a break up of agribusiness monopolies and a moratorium on future mergers, a ban on vertically integrated agribusinesses, and a shift to greater government involvement in pricing policy through creation of a parity system to replace the current subsidy program that disadvantages small family farms. Finally, he would establish a national grain and feed reserve for unforeseen shortfalls. And to aid America’s rural population, Sanders proposes increased investment in rural education, including higher teacher salaries, plus far-reaching improvements in rural infrastructure.

This leaves the nonfarm economy, and here Sanders commits to building a re-unionized work force by reviving the “card check” legislation allowed to die under the Obama administration and by reversing “right-to-work” laws. Further, he would create industry-wide, rather than company-based, bargaining for wages and benefits. And he would boost worker pay under federal contracts to $15 an hour. The goal, Sanders affirms, is a doubling of union membership within four years.

There are other, less publicized planks in the Sanders platform - - for example, enactment of universal child care (funded by his wealth tax) and mandatory public financing of all federal elections. What they amount to altogether is a national mobilization and investment on the order of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The emergency, Bernie Sanders believes, is that great.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2019

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