Bernard Sanders

Today, our Committee is going to focus on two extremely important health care issues that must be addressed.

I think it's time to ask the people who caused that problem or lied about that situation to pick up the bill.

The result of that is that countries all over the world were very slow moving in attempting to deal with climate change.

Big Oil is frankly the new Big Tobacco.

They have been consistently misleading the public about the realities and implications of their products.

If a large corporation knowingly, knowingly--produces a product that gets me sick or kills me, I would assume that we have an abundance of laws to prosecute that company and to hold them accountable and to demand punitive damages.

If you were Attorney General of the United States, would you proceed in that direction?

I believe the economic danger is deadly real.

What is protecting the massive fossil fuel subsidies and what is preventing policies to reduce the danger is the same thing, the fossil fuel industry itself.

The obvious way to fend off these economic shocks is to head off the cause of those shocks, fossil fuel emissions.

The system is completely broken.

Given the dysfunctionality of the U.S. Congress, these are not insignificant steps forward.

I am very happy to mention today that one of those manufacturers, Boehringer Ingelheim, announced that it is substantially lowering the cost of their inhalers in America.

This Committee has spent a lot of time on the high cost of prescription drugs in America.

These issues this Committee has worked hard on.

I just wanted to say a few words on--briefly on some of the subjects.

We ought to change that to 18. We ought to have workplace retirement plans pick up 18, 19, and 20 year olds that are working.

Saving the Affordable Care Act happened by one vote. The American Rescue Plan, 2 million workers' pensions happened by one vote.

There are some days where you wonder why you are here. On the days where something happens by one vote, you think, wow, I am really glad that I decided to seek office.

We must expand Social Security, not cut Social Security as many of my colleagues in Congress would have us do.

We have the radical idea that maybe the people on top should start paying their fair share of taxes.

I would hope that we would agree that is simply unacceptable and that has got to change.

Incredibly, and this really is quite incredible, one out of every four senior citizens in America are trying to live on an income of less than $15,000 a year.

We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation.

As a Nation, we have more income and wealth inequality today than we ever had in the history of America.