OPINION:
ANALYSIS
Bernie Sanders, the Socialist senator running against Hillary Rodham Clinton, says her penchant for raising millions by giving speeches leaves her unable to understand the plight of the middle class.
“When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this,” Mr. Sanders said during an interview while sitting in a small restaurant in Washington, D.C. “You’re sitting in restaurants where you’re spending — I don’t know what they spend, hundreds of dollars for dinner.”
“That’s the world that you’re accustomed to, and that’s the worldview that you adopt,” Sanders said. “That kind of wealth can — has the potential to isolate you from the reality of the world. … You’re not worrying about a kid three blocks away from here whose mom can’t afford to feed him.”
Hillary and husband Bill have made $30 million in the last 16 months giving speeches. She flies on private jets from gig to gig and admits that she hasn’t driven herself anywhere since 1992.
“There’s something wrong when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Oh, this is Hitlerism? What a disgusting remark. If you have seen a massive transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent, you know what? We’ve got to transfer that back.
[When] Radical Socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal income tax rate was something like 90 percent.”
Asked by CNBC’s John Harwood if he didn’t think that tax rate was “obviously too high,” Sanders said, “No. What I think is obscene is when you have the top one-tenth of 1 percent owning almost ass much wealth as the bottom 99 percent. Does anybody think that is the kind of economy this country should have? Do we think it’s moral?”
“You have people, they’re not working one job, they’re working two jobs, three jobs, people scared to death about what happens tomorrow. Half the people in America have less than $10,000 in savings.”
Of the wealth, Sanders says, “These people are so greedy, they’re so out of touch with reality…. You know what? Sorry, you’re all going to have to pay your fair share of taxes.”
Sanders holds his first rally for his 2016 presidential bid, in Burlington, VT, on Tuesday. He said he got into the race because, “There is more discontent and more anger at the Establishment — that is, the corporate Establishment, the political Establishment, the media Establishment if you like.”
“Is Hillary Clinton the Establishment?” Harwood asked.
“I think it’s hard not to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton is part of the Establishment.”
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