Posted on 05/03/2015 5:37:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said at a town hall meeting the minimum wage should be raised to $15 per hour and advocated for expanding Social Security benefits.
If one person is making $18 million and another person is making $118,000 a year, who pays more into Social Security? Neither, theyre paying the same because there is a cap upon which after you, at a certain level, you dont pay anything more and that level is about $118,000, Sanders said at the meeting in Washington.
If you lift that cap, and you dont have to start at $119,000, you can start at $250,000. If you just do that, Social Security will be solvent until the year 2065 and we can increase benefits thats part of the legislation Ive recently introduced, he added.
Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee and now a presidential candidate [2], said Social Security would be solvent for another 20 years if the U.S. had the same distribution of wealth today as it did 30 years ago.
Just because more people would be paying into the Social Security trust fund, he said. The major issue is how we deal with the multi-trillion dollar shift of wealth that has disappeared from working families and gone to the top one tenth of one percent, and if we can redistribute that down we will solve many problems.
Over the last 30 years, Sanders said, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction.
Our job is to turn that around, he said.
Addressing his support for a $15 minimum wage, Sanders said, Im not going to say thats a perfect solution but it is the direction we should go.
The White House supports a $10.10 per hour minimum wage.
Sanders [3] told the town hall meeting he expects President Obama to raise the income threshold for overtime pay in the next few months.
Heres the deal: you work at McDonalds, you make $28,000 per year, youre a supervisor of two people flipping hamburgers. Being that supervisor and making more than $23,500, you are not eligible for time and a half so what we have asked the president to do is to raise that number to somewhere around $55,000, he said. I believe the president will do something like that in the next couple of months and that would put a lot of money into the pockets of a lot of people.
Sanders also said his $1 trillion infrastructure bill could help lower the 17 percent youth unemployment rate.
How do you get jobs for those kids? Well, one way to do it is I introduced a $1 trillion infrastructure rebuilding bill, which would create about 13 million jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges and water systems and waste water plants and levees and dams and airports, he said. Think about how America would look when we have people giving us a first-class infrastructure thats what we should be thinking about.
Sanders said the budget introduced by Senate Republicans would not balance the federal budget over 10 years.
When they talk about deficit spending, these guys are very selective, he said. Throwing people off of Medicaid, thats one way you can do it, thats what they believe.
Senate Democrats have criticized the budget proposal for repealing the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under Obamacare.
hey is this not a photo of a government sponsored plan to remove urban graffiti?
Bernie’s math is really not up to par is it.
a trillion here...a trillion there
pretty soon were talking some real money.
Excellent summary of the utter and complete failure of Great Society Newthink.
As a business owner for near 30 years I can tell you with utter certainty that corporations do not pay taxes. Taxes are a cost of doing business and are passed on to their customers. Of course when costs get too high you lose customers but believe me taxes are paid by individuals. All taxes.
Good point, but I believe we know who/whom we are speaking.
The folks suckin the juice of life out of our country.
Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee and now a presidential candidate, said Social Security would be solvent for another 20 years if the U.S. had the same distribution of wealth today as it did 30 years ago... Sanders said, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction. "Our job is to turn that around," he said. Addressing his support for a $15 minimum wage, Sanders said, "I'm not going to say that's a perfect solution" but it is "the direction we should go."..."but it is the Final one."
It would lower foreign “youth” unemployment.
Dear Bernie.
Are you retarded or something?
Didn't we try that a few years ago with negative results and astronomic deficits?
Doesn't trying it again suggest insanity too?
Our local Gannett newsrag’s opinion page today featured a lead editorial suggesting that everyone listen to what Bernie has to say. That’s as much as a backdoor declaration that their editorial policy is to fully support communists in government.
All the money in the world notwithstanding, how are you going to MAKE them work, Bernie?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.