Robert Reich on his Bernie Sanders endorsement:
“What worries me about other candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, is that the message seems to be we cannot aim high, or we must not be ambitious, we must not try to be bold, because we can’t get there. That, to me, is exactly the wrong message,” Reich says. “In terms of mobilizing Americans and organizing and getting the kind of response we need from Americans to push Congress, to change Congress, to get a government that is responsible for us, the message should be we must and can aim high. We can do it. And we’ve done it before in this country.” This comes as four top economists and former advisers for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have issued an open letter to Senator Sanders criticizing his economic platform.
Comments:
The American people are mobilized to change with Bernie together with the young students, independents, working women and men who believe that the USA economy and government policies should support all not only the few Americans.
The public should focus on what is important, aim high because we can mobilize Americans to push Congress to change and get a government that is responsible for us.
Get money out of politics.
Poverty is an issue we must address. In 2011, the American Journal of Public Health found that 130,000 people died in just one year alone as a result of poverty.
This is not an issue we can just sweep under the rug and hope it will go away. Because it won’t.
And when I talk about it being too late for establishment politics and economics, this is what I mean. When I talk about thinking big and outside the box, about rejecting incremental change, I am talking about the millions of Americans who live in poverty who have been tossed out, left behind, and abandoned by the rich and powerful. We need to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.
Here’s what we need to do:
- Rebuild our country’s crumbling infrastructure. A $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure will create at least 13 million jobs all over America – jobs that cannot be outsourced.
- We must rewrite our disastrous trade policies that enable corporate America to shut down plans in places like West Virginia and move them to Mexico, China, and other low-wage countries.
- We can create 1 million jobs for disadvantaged youths through legislation I introduced with Rep. John Conyers of Michigan.
- We need to increase the wages of at least 53 million American workers by raising the minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour.
- At a time when women workers earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns, we need to sign the Paycheck Fairness Act into law. Equal pay for equal work.
- We need to make health care a right for every man, woman, and child through a Medicare for All single-payer system.
- We need to treat drug addiction like a mental health issue, not a criminal issue.
- We need to ensure every worker in this country has at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, two weeks of paid vacation, and one week of paid sick days.
- We need to impose a tax on Wall Street to make public colleges and universities tuition free while substantially reducing student debt.
- At a time when half of older workers have no retirement savings, we’re not going to cut Social Security, we’re going to expand it so people can retire with dignity and respect.
No president can do all of these things alone. We need millions of Americans to begin to stand up and fight back and demand a government that represents all of us. That is the political revolution.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
