The Bernie Sanders Plan: Pass It On!

One can only dream that we had a government that acted or the people instead of special and moneyed interests...

The following message was posted on the New Deal Information Service list-serv by Dr. Joseph Plaud. He is on the Board of Governors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

Subject: [NDIS]: The Bernie Sanders Plan: Pass It On!

My favorite little socialist, Bernie Sanders, from neighboring Vermont (one of only two states that NEVER voted for FDR in four presidential elections, and now 70 years later one of the most liberal, go figure) has a plan. Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the House, and he has a terrific plan for economic recovery, pass it on. Much better use of your little grey cells than watching that drama queen John McPain continue down the Rove/Bush path to utter chaos and destruction. Note how a cornerstone of Sanders' plan harkens back to the New Deal with a focus on repairing the American infrastructure (does CCC, WPA, PWA, CWA ring any bells?). Go Bernie...

1. Ensure that middle income and working families are not the ones who are paying for this bailout by
* Imposing a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue over five years;
* Ensuring that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and
* Requiring that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the taxpayers’ assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

Taken together these three provisions will substantially reduce the likelihood that this bailout will end up on the backs of average American taxpayers.

2. Include a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect our must vulnerable families from the very difficult times they are experiencing.

3. Repeal the disastrous de-regulatory legislation that facilitated this crisis.

4. End the danger posed by companies that are "too big to fail," that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.

___________________________________________________________________
The New Deal Information Service (NDIS), part of the nonprofit Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum (http://www.fdrheritage.org), is dedicated to monitoring inclusively, as well as analyzing and stimulating critical discussion of, news, informational, and opinion articles located in print and online that focus on or mention Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal. As an NDIS member, you may post your own comment, analysis, and discussion of this article. NDIS members will receive email notifications of all messages posted to the NDIS Listserv. The email address of NDIS is ndis@list.fdrheritage.org. To post to SACRPH-L, send e-mail to: SACRPH@asu.edu Logs for SACRPH-L: http://lists.asu.edu/archives/sacrph.html (Only SACRPH-L subscribers have access.) SACRPH Website:http://www.dcp.ufl.edu/sacrph/