In his two unsuccessful runs for the presidency of the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders has made no secret of his disdain for billionaires. Now, in what could be his final act in Washington, he has the power to call them to testify before Congress — and he has some executives in his sights.
One of them is Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, who Sanders accuses of having “become a multibillionaire” by developing a vaccine against the coronavirus using government money. “Bancel would do well to talk to his aides about what he can say to the US Senate,” Sanders said.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Howard Schultz, the on-and-off CEO of Starbucks, are also on the list. Sanders sees them as opponents of the union movement whose companies have adopted “really perverse and illegal” tactics to prevent employees from joining unions. He has already demanded that Schultz testify at a hearing in March.
An independent senator from the state of Vermont, Sanders may complicate these executives’ lives because he is the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Retirement. This position gives him wide jurisdiction over issues that are the basis of his rise in politics, such as access to health, the high cost of medicines and workers’ rights.
Sanders, 81, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, said he would not seek the presidential candidacy again if Democrat Joe Biden runs for re-election. His term as senator will end in two years, and he has not said whether he will run for re-election in 2024, raising the prospect that his next two years in Congress could be his last.
It is clear that Sanders operates on two fronts. Last week, in a move that may surprise critics who see him as adamant, he teamed up with a Republican, Senator Mike Braun, to urge railroad companies to offer employees seven days of paid sick leave. The measure was rejected by the Senate last year, when lawmakers enacted legislation to prevent a railroad strike.
But Sanders also sent a short, pithy letter to Howard Schultz, giving him until Tuesday to respond and RSVP to the hearing. Earlier, the senator had already urged the head of Starbucks to “immediately end his aggressive and illegal campaign against the unionization of his employees”. A Starbucks spokesman said the company is reviewing Schultz’s request to testify and working to “provide clarifying information” about its labor practices.
Former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, a Democrat who served as majority leader, said Sanders can “bring a balance between the progressive and the pragmatic record.”
“He will be progressive; he will be ambitious; he will continue to drive the fight forward,” Daschle said. “At the same time, though, I think Bernie Sanders wants to accomplish concrete goals.”
The chairmanship of the committee is the latest addition to Bernie Sanders’ long political career. After three decades in Washington, he still manages to position himself as an outsider. There is no doubt that the senator marked national politics, resurrecting and strengthening the American left.
However, Sanders’ support base both benefits and harms him. He is beloved by progressive voters and, at the same time, gives ammunition to conservatives, who take pleasure in portraying him in a caricature light.
“Medicare for all, baby,” cackled Republican strategist Whit Ayres, alluding to Bernie Sanders’ famous legislative initiative, a public health care program for all Americans. “I assure you that Sanders will be a wonderful target for Republicans to attack.”
This has already happened. Sanders’ rise has added him to the ranks of the very wealthy Americans he criticizes, thanks in part to a book he wrote in the wake of his first presidential run, “Our Revolution.” “If you write a bestselling book, you too can become a millionaire,” he said in 2019.
With Republicans commanding the House and 60 votes needed to pass most bills in the Senate, Sanders has little hope of pushing any major legislation through Congress. He plans to introduce a Medicare for All bill, as he has in previous Congresses, because he thinks “it’s important to keep this issue visible and present,” in his words. But he is fully aware that she will not go forward on Capitol Hill.
“We don’t have the necessary votes,” he said pragmatically. “We don’t have any Republican support for the legislation. And I would say maybe only half of Democrats would support it.”
Sanders’s activism has deep roots, but after arriving in Washington in 1991 as the only representative from Vermont, he discovered that being an outsider wouldn’t get him very far; if he wanted any power he would have to work with Democrats. In the Senate, which he entered in 2007, Sanders made his way up the ladder. In addition to chairing the Veterans Affairs Committee, he also chaired the Budget Committee.
No one, perhaps not even Sanders himself, could have predicted that he would run two credible campaigns to become the Democratic presidential nominee. In the interview, Sanders declined to answer questions about politics. He wanted to talk about public policy.
“We spend twice as much per capita on health as other industrialized countries, but we have 85 million people without or underinsured,” he said. “So we have a system that is not working.”
“The system is underpinned by the power of insurance companies and some pharmaceutical companies,” he continued, “and I will do what I can to change that situation.”
Sanders said he wants to hear from Moderna about the company’s plan to raise the price of its Covid vaccine. In a recent letter to Bancel, he criticized the executive for “unacceptable corporate greed” and urged the company to reconsider its position.
A spokesperson for Moderna said the company had always “been willing to engage with government stakeholders” and said it would continue to do so.
At the March hearing, Sanders wants Schultz to explain why Starbucks is being investigated by the National Council on Labor Relations. The board has been investigating the company over several allegations of misconduct, including the allegation that it illegally denied pay increases to unionized employees and that it fired seven employees at a Memphis, Tennessee, branch for their union organizing activity. Subsequently, a court ordered these employees to be reinstated by Starbucks.
With the recent retirement of Democratic Senator Patrick J. Leahy after 48 years in office, Bernie Sanders is finally Vermont’s senior senator. Asked how that is, he said, “pretty good”.
Sanders said people speculating about his running again – and when he said people, he meant journalists – should “continue to speculate”.
Why? “Because I just told you, and that’s pretty serious,” he replied with his characteristic frown. “If you think about my background, I take this job seriously. The purpose of elections is to elect people to work, not to talk about elections.”
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