'I don't think it's productive': Sanders dodges question on 'wage cap' he once championed

Washington Examiner ^ | February 9, 2019 | Tim Pearce

[karpov]

2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders refused to say whether he still backs capping the wages of the top earners in the United States.

The senator from Vermont appeared on CNN on Sunday to discuss his campaign for president with State of the Union host Jake Tapper, who questioned the self-identified democratic socialist about a wage cap policy he championed in the 1970s and remained interested in until at least the early 1990s.

"Early in your political career, way back in 1974, you said that it should be illegal to earn more money than someone could spend in his or her lifetime," Tapper said. "You proposed a maximum wage cap on the highest earners."

Sanders dismissed Tapper, asking if the host had also gone "back to my third-grade essay when I was in PS197 about what I said?"

"We can go back to things that I said in the '70s. I don’t think it's productive," Sanders said, later continuing, "This is what I do believe. When you have three people that own more wealth than the bottom half of America, when half of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, when 500,000 Americans are sleeping out in the streets, yes, the rich have got to pay."

He added, "We will raise taxes very substantially on billionaires. No apologies for that."

In 1974, Sanders was 32 years old and several years into trying to launch his political career. He ran for governor of Vermont in 1972 and 1976 and ran to represent Vermont in the U.S. Senate in 1972 and 1974. During his second Senate campaign, Sanders told the Burlington Free Press that "nobody should earn more than $1 million."

[karpov]

The Atlantic in a 2015 article Bernie Sanders's Long-Lost Hope of Establishing a Maximum Wage says 'Sanders was apparently still batting the idea around until at least the early ‘90s, when he submitted a Los Angeles Times op-ed by the journalist Sam Pizzigati titled “How About a Maximum Wage?” to the congressional record.'

[cdcdawg]

“We can go back to things that I said in the ‘70s. I don’t think it’s productive,” Sanders said, later continuing, “This is what I do believe. When you have three people that own more wealth than the bottom half of America, when half of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, when 500,000 Americans are sleeping out in the streets, yes, the rich have got to pay.”

He’s a politician. He can’t just say “I was operating on bad theories back then that have since been disproved. I was wrong.” That last part is what NONE of them can say. Good to see Jake Tapper carrying water for The Establishment like a good boy.

[Dilbert San Diego]

So it’s ok for the liberals to dismiss as irrelevant positions or statements made decades ago, for them. But in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, the only thing that mattered was what allegedly happened when he was 17, and allegedly rolled around on a bed for 30 seconds with Christine Ford. Allegedly.

So if you are a conservative Republican, we are absolutely supposed to talk about what happened when he was 17, and decipher his high school yearbook, but with Bernie Sanders, we aren’t supposed to ask about any public political views he endorsed previously in his political career.

I never understand the liberal logic.

[gibsonguy]

It’s get Bernie time, this like the third or fourth hit piece in last several days the WE has ran. The DNC has sent out the orders and they are right there with everyone else. The worst part is they are helping with the BS narrative that Bernie is the outlier in this pack of leftist rats.

[plain talk]

“We can go back to things that I said in the ‘70s. I don’t think it’s productive,” Sanders said.

I do.

[karpov]

You call it a “hit piece”, but what part of the article is untrue or misleading?

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, as if he's an expert on being productive.

[M-cubed]

I never understand the liberal logic.<<<

lol...”liberal logic”,,,,,,,that's akin to “true fiction”....

[gibsonguy]

Oh l have no doubt that it’s true. My point is the DNC is taking Bernie out and they probably fed the info to the examiner. I suppose using the term “hit piece” is not exactly the term that applies. Theses damaging stories are popping up all over now and it is no secret as to why.

[Bon mots]

[Secret Agent Man]

That’s because they are allowed to be hypocrites and hold diametrically opposed views.