Vermont’s senior U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t any stranger to the limelight and, by the use of two presidential runs and 32 years in Congress, he has elevated his progressive politics — which date again to his early years as mayor of Burlington — to the forefront of American political discourse.
However this yr, Sanders will occupy a brand new, immensely influential function — not on the election debate stage, however holding the gavel. With the swearing-in of a brand new Congress in January and the group of Senate committees made closing on Thursday, Sanders has now develop into chair of the physique’s Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions Committee, or the HELP Committee, for brief.
The panel is arguably among the many strongest committees within the higher chamber, and at its helm, Sanders holds his finest probability but of constructing headway on his longtime targets of decreasing well being care prices, chipping away at scholar mortgage debt, beefing up labor union protections and extra.
“What’s fascinating about this committee is, it has monumental jurisdiction over lots of the points that impression the lives of individuals in Vermont and all through this nation,” Sanders instructed VTDigger in an interview Wednesday.
His energy has limits, significantly in a divided Congress. As chair, he units the committee’s schedule and drives the dialog, however can’t power members to OK his chosen payments, a lot much less get hold of a 60-vote supermajority for main laws on the Senate flooring. As he rattled off his precedence gadgets to VTDigger, Sanders usually couched his proposals: “Now, I face the truth that we have now a Republican Home… Democrats have a one-vote majority within the Senate, and there are a few fairly conservative Democrats. So what will we do?”
Vitally, as chair, Sanders can set the agenda for main hearings, and holds the ability to subpoena high-profile witnesses, forcing them to testify. On the high of his checklist seems to be the pharmaceutical trade, or, as he dubs them, Large Pharma.
Requested if he plans to carry main accountability hearings on the pharmaceutical trade harking back to the Large Tobacco hearings of the ’90s, or extra lately, the Large Oil hearings of 2021, Sanders answered slyly, “Keep tuned.”
The senator has already begun laying the groundwork. As Moderna’s plans to quadruple the value of its Covid-19 vaccine got here to mild in January, Sanders penned a letter to CEO Stéphane Bancel decrying the pharmaceutical producer’s “unacceptable company greed.”
“Within the midst of a lethal pandemic, limiting entry to this a lot wanted vaccine is unconscionable,” Sanders wrote in January.
Sanders on Wednesday acknowledged that Congress’s partisan breakdown is just not in his favor, and attaining his dream of Medicare for All “is just not going to occur tomorrow.” However, he stated, “I feel on this nation proper now, whether or not you are a progressive as I’m otherwise you’re a conservative, you perceive that the price of prescribed drugs is completely outrageous.”
“We have made some incremental, minor adjustments, good adjustments. However actually, I feel the time is lengthy overdue — and the American individuals need us to do it — to tackle the greed and infrequently unlawful conduct of the pharmaceutical trade, and I intend to try this,” Sanders stated. “We’ll transfer very aggressively in that space.”
One other space through which he hopes to search out bipartisan settlement: addressing the well being care sector’s workforce scarcity. Due to a scarcity of in-state workers nurses, Annie Mackin, a spokesperson for the College of Vermont Medical Middle, instructed VTDigger that the hospital system spent greater than $100 million in Fiscal 12 months 2022 on measures to assist fill a essential nursing scarcity, resembling hiring costly journey nurses and providing incentives to staffers.
On Wednesday, Sanders instructed VTDigger that UVM’s journey nurse invoice quantities to “an unbelievable sum of cash” that may very well be averted with the assistance of the feds by investing closely into educating potential workers nurses, in addition to docs, dentists and extra. The senator additionally stated he needs to place a particular give attention to recruiting extra individuals of colour into the medical occupation.
It’s not simply the medical area feeling the workforce crunch. Sanders famous that in Vermont and throughout the nation, there’s a considerable scarcity of academics.
“Everywhere in the nation, academics are fleeing the occupation due to low pay, due to actually unhealthy working circumstances, due to not getting the form of classroom assist that they want — to not point out some rightwing assaults,” Sanders stated.
He vowed that he has laws coming quickly dedicated to recruiting and retaining educators “in order that, as soon as once more, younger, vibrant school college students wish to go into training.” Requested for particulars on what that invoice would seem like, he stated, “Effectively, it is difficult and we’re engaged on it proper now.”
Additionally high of the senator’s thoughts for the second letter of the HELP Committee’s acronym is college infrastructure. Vitally for Vermont, he stated he sees a task for the federal authorities to play in cleansing up polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in colleges.
“It goes with out saying that we wish younger individuals on this nation to be attending colleges that, in fact, are wholesome,” Sanders stated. “There are colleges in America the place, actually, individuals cannot drink the water within the colleges as a result of there’s lead within the water. You could have crumbling school rooms. So the difficulty of faculty infrastructure, together with PCBs, is one thing that have to be addressed.”
Additionally on the training entrance is Sanders’ oft-repeated precedence merchandise of addressing the nation’s scholar debt balloon. “We’ll see how the Supreme Court docket guidelines on (President Joe) Biden’s proposal” to cancel as much as $20,000 in scholar mortgage debt for sure debtors, Sanders stated. “In the event that they reject it, in the event that they overturn it, we are going to take that situation up.”
Relating each training and labor, Sanders stated he’s desirous to sort out the “disaster” of early childhood training and little one care, calling it “a horrible scenario in Vermont, equally horrible everywhere in the nation,” through which “working dad and mom can not discover top quality, inexpensive little one care and the employees that work in childcare are terribly paid.” (Vermont state lawmakers, too, are poised to take motion on little one care.)
And on labor, Sanders stated a high precedence is to lift the federal minimal wage from $7.25 per hour, the place it has lingered since 2009, to a “residing wage.” Sanders has in years previous pushed to lift the federal minimal wage to $15 per hour, and in a Sunday look on MSNBC, he stated that with inflation, that quantity needs to be nearer to $17 per hour immediately. Sanders additionally needs to move the PRO Act, which might defend staff’ rights to arrange labor unions. He pointed to companies like Starbucks and Amazon, which he alleged have “engaged in unlawful union busting actions.”
“I wish to take care of that,” Sanders stated Wednesday. It was shortly after his Moderna missive that Sanders despatched a equally heated letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, calling on him to stop a “ruthless union-busting marketing campaign.”
Sanders’ laundry checklist of priorities probably sounds acquainted to those that have adopted his political profession over the course of greater than 4 many years. Requested how he feels now occupying a chairmanship which arguably holds essentially the most affect over these points, he answered succinctly.
“The quick reply is, it feels very, excellent. I’m very excited,” Sanders stated. “We’ve got put collectively a wonderful workers. They’re working 24/7 proper now and we sit up for a really productive two years.”
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