Bernie Sanders

And today we are going to be discussing a very important issue that gets much too little attention here in the halls of Congress or in the corporate media.

Let me tell you, you do not take a beating from a bully, then fill his pockets with money and expect fewer beatings.

Another major factor is that labor has had less and less bargaining leverage.

The incredible power now held by corporate America, not only over the economic life of this country but the political life of this country and the media life of this country.

We have more income and wealth inequality than we have had, I think, in a hundred years.

A windfall profits tax is exactly what is needed right now when oil companies, for example, are showing, as they are, historical profits.

One of the great successes going through this pandemic was that so many Americans did not fall into poverty

We have half of our people living paycheck to paycheck.

The challenge that we are facing right now is whether we are going to live in a government--live with a government that works for all of us or is dominated by big money and trusts and works for the very few.

We are seeing record-breaking profits, we are seeing record-breaking levels of stock buybacks, we are seeing high dividends.

We have concentration of ownership in sector after sector that we have not seen in a long, long time.

I am a proud co-sponsor of the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, which would establish a per-barrel tax to capture the windfall profits of the largest oil companies and return that money to consumers in the form of a quarterly rebate.

Inflation is intimately connected to record corporate profits and widening inequality. Average working people in America are being shafted.

During World War II, our country, the people of our country, understood that it was unacceptable for companies to make obscene profits when young men and women were dying in Europe and in Asia.

Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near record high of $4.17 a gallon, guess what? We have seen yesterday ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a…

The truth is that corporate greed is nothing new.

They want us to represent them, not the corporate world.

CEOs in large corporations now make 350 times more than their average workers.

The problem is that corporations are making record-breaking profits and over 700 billionaires in American became nearly $2 trillion wealthier during the pandemic while engaging in obscene levels of price gouging.

We have an oligarchy in this country, and we might want to be focusing on that as well.

If we are serious about combating inflation and lowering prices, we must aggressively use the antitrust laws that are on the books and introduce new ones as necessary to break up behemoth corporations and increase competition.

The rich get richer, and working families struggle. The wealthy buy political campaigns.

There is no reason we should not be doing it now. In fact, there is every reason we should be doing it.

They want Congress to address corporate greed and make sure that the wealthiest people in our country and the most profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

The American people, based on the polling that I have seen, have had enough. They are outraged at the unprecedented level of corporate greed that is taking place all around them.