Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist-Vt.) has built his entire political career around attacking successful American companies. Sanders believes businesses exist to serve politicians and unelected bureaucrats, not customers.
Time and time again, Sanders has wasted taxpayer resources to paint companies he dislikes in a bad light. Instead of following the facts, Sanders pursues predetermined political narratives.
Sanders, an avowed socialist who owns three homes, ran for president on replacing free market capitalism with a command-and-control economy controlled by politicians and unelected bureaucrats. Crushing tax hikes on American individuals and businesses, forcing all workers into labor unions, government price controls on prescription drugs, and breaking up big companies were just a few of the many radical ideas Sanders ran on.
Even though Sanders failed to win the Democratic nomination in both 2016 and 2020, his role in dragging the Democratic party leftward on economic policy is undeniable.
The Sanders view of business is bleak: if politicians believe a company makes “too much” profit, they should pay more in taxes to fund further government expansion. If unelected bureaucrats believe a company is “too big,” they should be able to break the company up into as many pieces as they see fit. And if the government accuses a company of something, the company is guilty until proven innocent. The idea that a company can grow without government permission or assistance is deeply offensive to a career politician like Sanders.
Sanders routinely treats America’s largest companies as political punching bags, with Amazon at the top of the heap. Sanders has routinely slammed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for making “too much” money and not paying his “fair share” in taxes. Sanders has falsely smeared Amazon as a tax cheat for using lawful deductions and credits extended by Barack Obama.
Sanders has regularly accused Amazon of treating its workers “shamefully,” ignoring that the company has invested over $1 billion in safety-related technology and programs since 2019 and has allocated an additional $750 million for safety-related investment in 2024. Amazon employs over 1 million Americans with an average hourly wage of $20.50, higher than the $15 federal minimum wage that Sanders supports. These facts get in the way of Sanders’ predetermined narrative, so he ignores them.
Since Vermont made the mistake of sending him to the Senate in 2007, Sanders has weaponized taxpayer resources to torment his political targets. A prime example of this came in the 117th Congress, when then-Budget Committee Chairman Sanders held a hearing entitled “Should Taxpayer Dollars Go to Companies that Violate Labor Laws?”
The hearing was designed to provide political cover for a Sanders idea for an executive order that prevents companies with even an alleged violation of federal labor law from contracting with the government. In a letter to Biden endorsing the idea, Sanders singled out Amazon as the “poster child” for why an “anti-union busting Executive Order” is necessary, laying out all sorts of alleged labor violations. If you doubted that this was political, consider that the letter’s only citation is the Biden campaign website.
Today, Sanders chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and has continued to abuse taxpayer resources to attack Amazon. In June 2023, Sanders announced a wide-ranging investigation into Amazon’s warehouses. Notably, Sanders conducted this investigation completely on his own. None of his Senate colleagues joined.
The Sanders report accuses Amazon of operating unsafe warehouses, citing manipulated Occupational Health and Safety Administration data. A closer look at the data reveals that Sanders is once again pointing the finger at the private sector to paper over government failures.
From January 1, 2020 to October 22, 2023, OSHA conducted nearly 4,000 inspections in the warehousing and distribution industry. OSHA conducted a whopping 791 investigations into the United States Postal Service – more than Amazon, Costco, Fedex, Target, UPS, and Walmart combined. 234 (or 35 percent) of OSHA’s investigations into USPS resulted in a citation for a violation. You read that correctly: USPS, which the federal government owns and operates, commits more OSHA violations than any of the companies Sanders targets for political gain.
Paraphrasing Mark Twain, Sanders will never let the truth get in the way of a good lie. The least he can do is stop wasting taxpayer resources to hammer his political targets.
