Issues

• Transform our energy system to 100 percent renewable energy and create 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis.
• Ensure a just transition for communities and workers, including fossil fuel workers.
• Ensure justice for frontline communities, especially under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly.
• Save American families money with investments in weatherization, public transportation, modern infrastructure and high-speed broadband.
• Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change.
• Invest in conservation and public lands to heal our soils, forests, and prairie lands.
• End the greed of the fossil fuel industry and hold them accountable.

• Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
• No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.
• Medicare coverage will be expanded and improved to include: include dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, and more.
• Stop the pharmaceutical industry from ripping off the American people by making sure that no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need by capping what Americans pay for prescription drugs under Medicare for All.

• Institute a moratorium on deportations until a thorough audit of past practices and policies is complete.
• Reinstate and expand DACA and develop a humane policy for those seeking asylum.
• Completely reshape and reform our immigration enforcement system, including breaking up ICE and CBP and redistributing their functions to their proper authorities.
• Dismantle cruel and inhumane deportation programs and detention centers and reunite families who have been separated.
• Live up to our ideals as a nation and welcome refugees and those seeking asylum, including those displaced by climate change.

• Guarantee tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities, HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions and trade-schools to all.
• Cancel all student loan debt for the some 45 million Americans who owe about $1.6 trillion and place a cap on student loan interest rates going forward at 1.88 percent.
• Invest $1.3 billion every year in private, non-profit historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions
• End equity gaps in higher education attainment. And ensure students are able to cover non-tuition costs of attending school by: expanding Pell Grants to cover non-tuition and fee costs, tripling funding for the Work-Study Program, and more.

• Double union membership within Bernie’s first term.
• Establish federal protections against the firing of workers for any reason other than “just cause.”
• Provide unions the ability to organize through a majority sign up process and enact “first contract” provisions to ensure companies cannot prevent a union from forming by denying a first contract.
• Deny federal contracts to companies that pay poverty wages, outsource jobs overseas, engage in union busting, deny good benefits, and pay CEOs outrageous compensation packages
• Eliminate “Right to Work for Less” laws and guarantees the right to unionize for workers historically excluded from labor protections, like farm workers and domestic workers.

• Expand Social Security benefits for all recipients and protect pensions.
• Guarantee home and community based long-term care services.
• Protect our most vulnerable seniors by quadrupling funding for the Older Americans Act and expanding other programs seniors rely on.
• Expand and train the direct care workforce we need.

• End the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly 10 million permanently affordable housing units.
• Protect tenants by implementing a national rent control standard, a “just-cause” requirement for evictions, and ensuring the right to counsel in housing disputes.
• Make rent affordable by making Section 8 vouchers available to all eligible families without a waitlist and strengthening the Fair Housing Act.
• Combat gentrification, exclusionary zoning, segregation, and speculation.
• End homelessness and ensure fair housing for all
• Revitalize public housing by investing $70 billion to repair, decarbonize, and build new public housing.

• Eliminate the VA benefits backlog, fully fund and resource the VA, and reverse the disastrous privatization of services for veterans.
• Fill the nearly 50,000 vacancies at the VA in Bernie’s first year.
• Provide at least $62 billion in new funding to repair, modernize and rebuild VA infrastructure.
• Expand the VA’s Caregivers Program as well as mental health services for veterans.
• Reform harmful VA regulations that restrict access to care and benefits based on character of discharge.

• End for-profit greed in our criminal justice system, top to bottom by: by banning for-profit prisons and detention centers, ending cash bail, and making prison and jail communications, re-entry, diversion and treatment programs fee-free.
• Ensure due process and right to counsel by vastly increasing funding for public defenders and creating a federal formula to ensure populations have a minimum number of public defenders to meet their needs.
• Cut the national prison population in half and end mass incarceration by abolishing the death penalty, three strikes laws, and mandatory minimum sentences, as well as expanding the use of alternatives to detention
• Transform the way we police communities by end the War on Drugs by legalizing marijuana and expunging past convictions, treating children who interact with the justice system as children, reversing the criminalization of addiction, and ending the reliance on police forces to handle mental health emergencies, homelessness, maintenance violations, and other low-level situations.
• Reform our decrepit prison system, guarantee a “Prisoners Bill of Rights,” and ensure a just transition for incarcerated individuals upon their release.
• Reverse the criminalization of communities, end cycles of violence, provide support to survivors of crime, and invest in our communities.
• Ensure law enforcement accountability and robust oversight, including banning the use of facial recognition software for policing.

• Eliminate all of the $81 billion in past-due medical debt held by 79 million Americans —one in every six Americans.
• Reform bankruptcy laws to use the existing bankruptcy court system to provide relief for those with burdensome medical debt.
• Create a secure public credit registry to replace for-profit credit reporting agencies.

• Combat racial discrimination and school segregation
• End the unaccountable profit-motive of charter schools
• Provide equitable funding for public schools
• Give teachers a much-deserved raise by setting a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000, expanding collective bargaining rights and teacher tenure, and funding out-of-pocket expenses for classroom materials.
• Strengthens the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by ensuring that the federal government provides at least 50 percent of the funding for special education and giving special education teachers the support they need.
• Provide year-round, free universal school meals, and incentivizes locally sourced food.
• Make schools safe and inclusive by protecting the rights of all students from harassment, discrimination, and violence and enacting comprehensive gun violence prevention laws.
• Rebuild, modernize, and green our nation’s schools.

• Cap consumer loans and credit cards rates at 15 percent across all financial institutions and allow states to go even further.
• Allow every post office to offer basic and affordable banking services and end lending discrimination.

• Make all public and private HBCUs, tribal colleges, and many MSIs tuition-free
• Invest $10 billion to create and expand HBCU medical, dental, and teacher training graduate programs 
• Invest $5 billion in HBCU infrastructure grants and cancel all institutional HBCU loan debt from the Capital Financing Program
• Double Title III and Title V funds to decrease the funding gap between HBCUs and MSIs and predominantly white institutions
• Issue an Executive Order that strengthens the White House Initiative on HBCUs to eliminate racial disparities in our college education system

• Establish an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1 percent of U.S. households.
• Only apply to net worth of over $32 million and anyone who has a net worth of less than $32 million, would not see their taxes go up at all under this plan.
• Will raise an estimated $4.35 trillion over the next decade and cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years, which would substantially break up the concentration of wealth and power of this small privileged class.
• Ensure that the wealthy are not able to evade the tax by implementing strong enforcement policies.

• Address the five central types of violence waged against black, brown and indigenous Americans: physical, political, legal, economic and environmental.
• Address a broken criminal justice system, massive disparities in the availability of financial services, health disparities, environmental disparities, and educational disparities.
• Create a nation in which all people are treated equally.

• Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks.

• Require that all internet service providers offer a Basic Internet Plan that provides quality broadband speeds at an affordable price.

• Break up internet service provider and cable monopolies, bar service providers from providing content, and unwind anticompetitive mergers.

• Ensure broadband infrastructure is resilient to the effects of climate change.

• Restore the Voting Rights Act and overturn Citizens United.
• End racist voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering.
• Make Election Day a national holiday, secure automatic voter registration, and guarantee the right to vote for every American over 18, including those Americans currently incarcerated and those disenfranchised by a felony conviction.
• Abolish super PACs and replace corporate funding with publicly funded elections that amplify small-doner donations.

• Level the playing field for farmers and farm workers.
• Empower farmers, foresteers and ranchers to address climate change and protect ecosystems.
• Foster investment to revitalize rural communities.

• Companies with large gaps between their CEO and median worker pay would see progressively higher corporate tax rates.
• Apply to all private and publicly held corporations with annual revenue of more than $100 million.

• Implement a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness.
• Allow Congress to reassert its Constitutional role in warmaking, so that no president can wage unauthorized and unconstitutional interventions overseas.
• Follow the American people, who do not want endless war.
• End U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which has created the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

• Adopt Equal Pay for Equal Work through the Paycheck Fairness Act.
• Guarantee health care through Medicare for All, repeal the Hyde Amendment and fully fund Planned Parenthood, Title X, and other initiatives that protect women’s health, access to contraception, and the availability of a safe and legal abortion.
• Oppose all efforts to undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade, and appoint federal judges who will uphold women’s most fundamental rights.
• Fight to end sexual harassment, discrimination, and violence in workplaces, the military, and other institutions.

• Ban all corporate contributions to the Democratic Party Convention and all related committees, and as President he would ban all corporate donations for inaugural events and cap individual donations at $500.
• Abolish the now-worthless FEC and replace it with the Federal Election Administration, a true law enforcement agency originally proposed by former Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold.
• Enacting mandatory public financing laws for all federal elections.
• Updating and strengthen the Federal Election Campaign Act to return to a system of mandatory public funding for National Party Conventions.
• Passing a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear that money is not speech and corporations are not people.

• Pass the Equality Act, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act and other bills to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.
• Ensure LGBTQ+ people have comprehensive health insurance without discrimination from providers.
• Advance policies to ensure students can attend school without fear of bullying, and work to substantially reduce suicides.

• Guaranteeing health care, including mental health care and home- and community-based services and supports without waitlists, asset or income restrictions, as a human right to everyone in America.
• Protecting and expanding the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs by reversing the Trump Administration’s attack on SSDI/SSI, ending the massive disability application backlog, putting a stop to SSI’s draconian asset test and marriage penalty, and raising the SSI benefit level to 125 percent of the poverty level, lifting millions out of poverty.
• Aggressively enforcing the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision, including for people with mental illness. As President, Sanders will work to enforce the Supreme Court’s landmark Olmstead decision protecting the rights of people with disabilities to get support in the community. The plan places particular priority on the humanitarian crisis in our country created by the incarceration of people with mental illness, leveraging Olmstead to ensure states fund the voluntary, community-based mental health services that can save lives and keep people in the community.
• Providing mandatory funding to ensure that the federal government provides at least 50 percent of the funding for serving students with disabilities, exceeding the federal government’s original commitment of 40 percent when IDEA was passed. The plan also provides schools with 100 percent of the additional costs of serving students with disabilities in the general education classroom above the cost of average per pupil expenditures.
• Using executive authority to reject both renewals of and new proposals from states to place disability and aging services under the control of for-profit managed care organizations, including reversing Iowa’s disastrous experiment with for-profit Medicaid privatization.
• Create a National Office of Disability Coordination, run by a person with a disability, focused on coordinating and making disability policy to advance the full inclusion of people with disabilities, including ensuring every aspect of our public resources are ADA compliant and that the civil rights of people with disabilities are protected and expanded.
• Ending subminimum wage for workers with disabilities while guaranteeing jobs and living wages in the community for all.
• Passing the Disability Integration Act, to establish a clear standard for the delivery of high-quality services.

• Repair the damage from Hurricanes Irma and Maria and rebuild Puerto Rico
• Give the territory the debt relief it so desperately needs to rebuild with dignity.
• Ensure a strong social safety net for the people of Puerto Rico by ensuring access to health care, nutrition assistance, veterans benefits, and quality public schools.

• Pass the For the 99.8 Percent Act to establish a progressive estate tax on multi-millionaire and billionaire inheritances.
• End special tax breaks on capital gains and dividends for the top 1%.
• Tax Wall Street speculators through the Inclusive Prosperity Act Financial Transaction Tax.

• Take on the NRA and its corrupting effect on Washington.
• Expand background checks.
• End the gun show loophole. All gun purchases should be subject to the same background check standards.
• Ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons. Assault weapons are designed and sold as tools of war. There is absolutely no reason why these firearms should be sold to civilians.
• Prohibit high-capacity ammunition magazines.
• Implement a buyback program to get assault weapons off the streets.
• Regulate assault weapons in the same way that we currently regulate fully automatic weapons — a system that essentially makes them unlawful to own.
• Crack down on “straw purchases” where people buy guns for criminals.
• Support “red flag” laws and legislation to ensure we keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and stalkers
• Ban the 3-D printing of firearms and bump stocks

• Legalize marijuana in the first 100 days with executive action
• Vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions
• Ensure that revenue from legal marijuana is reinvested in communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs
• Ensure legalized marijuana does not turn into big tobacco

• Stand with Native Americans in the struggle to protect their treaty and sovereign rights, advance traditional ways of life, and improve the quality of life for Native Americans by upholding the trust responsibility.
• Honor Native American tribal treaty rights and sovereignty, moving away from a relationship of paternalism and control toward one of deference and support.
• Reauthorize and expand the Violence Against Women Act to provide critical resources to women in Indian country and allow all tribes to prosecute non-Native criminals.

• Break up too-big-to-fail banks and end the too-big-to-jail doctrine.
• Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
• Cap interest rates and ATM fees and allow every post office to offer basic and affordable banking services.
• Audit the Federal Reserve and make it a more democratic institution so that it becomes responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans, not just the billionaires on Wall Street.
• Restrict rapid-fire financial speculation with a financial transactions tax.

• Fundamentally rewrite all of our trade deals to deals to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs and raise wages.
• Ensure that strong and binding labor, environmental, and human rights standards are written into the core text of all trade agreements.
• Eliminate the incentives baked into our current trade and tax agreements that make it easier for multinational corporations to ship jobs overseas.
• Undo the harm that trade agreements have done to family farmers.
• Sign an executive order ending federal contracts to corporations that outsource American jobs

• Enact a federal jobs guarantee, to ensure that everyone is guaranteed a stable job that pays a living wage.
• Create 20 million jobs as part of the Green New Deal, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and creating a 100% sustainable energy system.
• Create millions of healthcare jobs to support our seniors and people with disabilities in their homes and communities.
• Create new jobs in early childhood education.

• Fundamentally shift the wealth of the economy back into the hands of the workers who create it.
• Give workers an ownership stake in the companies they work for.
• Break up corrupt corporate mergers and monopolies, including reviewing all mergers that have taken place during the Trump administration and institute new merger guidelines
• Finally make corporations pay their fair share of taxes by reversing Trump’s corporate tax breaks and closing corporate tax loopholes to raise up to $3 trillion over 10-years.