A Factual Comparison and Discussion of Hillary and Bernie

In this post I have included some important facts and some of my own opinions further down. I think it is important to draw as many opinions as possible from research and not popular hearsay. There are way too many dubious opinions parading around like facts. There is also flawed logic in many of the opinions I hear tossed about these days.

In eight years Hillary sponsored or co-sponsored 417 bills in the senate¹.

In 24 years Bernie sponsored or co-sponsored 362 bills in the House and the Senate².

With regard to leadership and ideology, here is how govtrack ranks Hillary and Bernie:

Hillary³

Clinton sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (23%) Economics and Public Finance (15%) Health (14%) Science, Technology, Communications (11%) Families (10%) Social Welfare (10%) Labor and Employment (9%) Education (8%)

Bernie⁴

Sanders sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Armed Forces and National Security (27%) Health (18%) Labor and Employment (11%) Energy (10%) Education (9%) Government Operations and Politics (9%) Taxation (8%) Finance and Financial Sector (7%)

Here are a few plans for Bernie⁵ and Hillary⁶ and how they plan to pay for them.

Hillary Plan:

Boost federal investment by $275 billion over the next five years.
Create a $25 billion infrastructure bank to support critical infrastructure improvements.
Harness public and private capital to fix and build new roads and bridges, expand public transportation, give every American access to broadband internet, and more.

Hillary How to Pay:

On her site Hillary simply states she would pay with “business tax reform” and not much detail. The Atlantic states⁷ that she would probably use the tax holiday proposal which gives large corporations tax breaks to move their profits back to the U.S. to generate tax revenue, to pay for several years of the plan. According to the Atlantic,

Bernie Plan:

Rebuild America Act: Sen. Sanders has proposed a$1 trillion plan to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure
and put 13 million Americans to work.

For too many years, we have dramatically underfunded the physical infrastructure that our economy depends on. That is why I have proposed the Rebuild America Act, to invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize our infrastructure. It would be paid for by closing loopholes that allow profitable corporations to avoid paying taxes by, among other things, shifting their profits to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.⁸

Bernie How to Pay:

Paid for by making corporations pay taxes on all of the “profits” they have shifted to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens, which the Congressional Research Services estimates may currently create losses that approach $100 billion annually, and other loopholes.

One thing to note with Bernie’s plan to pay if you check out the study he quotes in the “making corporations pay taxes” link is that the highest estimates for tax evasions (which are legal loopholes) of these offshore tax havens is $100 billion annually. The lowest estimate is $3 billion annually. The rest seem to come in around $60 to $80 billion annually. It is important to note that Bernie’s plan would require $200 billion annually for 5 years to reach 1 trillion dollars.

Here are some of my opinions concerning Hillary and Bernie:

I think both of them need to be much more specific about how they plan to pay for their plans. However, in light of the last eight years legislative stagnation, it is hard to see how any plan would have a chance of ever seeing the light of day. I do think any chance of success would depend not on a strategy of finger pointing and insults but working behind the scenes to get things done. I think the Democrats are quite different from Republicans in acknowledging that the “American public” is also comprised of Republicans with whom we disagree on many things but believe we can compromise to address pressing issues. The majority of the Republican candidates seem intent on denying that there are Democrats which comprise a large part of the “American public”. They talk in terms of the “American public” as if it were a homogeneous, right-wing group. If they cannot even acknowledge we exist how can any compromise ever happen. There are Republicans that are not so monolithic as Governor Kasich but you can plainly see how popular he is with his electorate.

I have heard both Republicans and Democrats talking about getting more revenue out of business. I think there are dynamics in the world economy that we need to be sensitive to. The bottom line for corporations is not patriotism, it is profit. If a corporation believes it can make a higher profit outside the country they will not hesitate to move their operations and profits wherever they can maximize their profit. When I worked as a manger and engineer in the nineties at U.S. Robotics, we moved our stable, mass marketed product manufacturing to the far east. We found that manufacturing overseas was not all it was cracked up to be. It was cheaper but the quality was harder to control and high tech modems had to work right out of the box. Our more advanced and quickly changing technology stayed in Skokie, Illinois.

As unions have started to form and cost have gone up overseas the natural cycle of cost control and profit have started to level out more and more. Eventually, when the rest of the world starts to catch up with the rampant consumptionism and worker expectations and regulations of the more industrialized countries, the mass exodus of jobs from the U.S. will wane. I do not know how long that will be but I do know that trade deals might be cannon fodder for both parties, but those deals will not expedite or delay the natural consequences of competing worldwide markets and the various cost of living inequalities in underdeveloped countries. This dynamic will not be changed by protectionism not matter what politicians tell us.

In the U.S. we need to learn to stop being so manic about acquiring more and more, latest and greatest commodities. We need to stop the debt-slavery network capitalism has made so easy for us. We will also have to have more large government programs to make up the increasing gap with necessities such as health care, poverty and educational degradation. The market will not provide these basic necessities at a lower cost as decades of believing it will, have amply demonstrated. There will always be the purist that try to make us believe that we simply do not have enough faith and too much government intervention for the ‘free market’ to do its magic. These snake oil salesmen are yet another systemic problem with capitalism where truth is all too often sacrificed for perception.

Additionally, capitalism does not lend itself to long term research and development. By systemic design and necessity it needs to realize maximum profit in the shortest time possible to survive. Capital expenditure is certainly a barrier for market entry in both time and dollars. This is why we need the government to fund science, technology and health care research. We have a proven track record when we let the government and universities take the lead in typically, immediately unprofitable research.

We also need the government to fund education in spite of what the Republicans tell us. We will have to change from a manufacturing economy to an educated and highly skilled market. We cannot compete at the level we need to and the level we have in the past with manufacturing environments where foreign workers are willing to work for pennies on the dollar to our costs. We need to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses. The privatization of education, prisons and retirement and pension plans has repeatedly demonstrated their weaknesses in terms of minimizing standards⁹, maximizing inmates¹⁰ and blowing up working folk’s retirement plans¹¹.

We need to ensure that we maximize private social services as much as possible while realizing that privatization is not a panacea for all social ills. There are many things the government does that no private corporation can compete with cost wise by economies of scale and quality wise by not reducing services to the lowest possible overhead with the maximum amount of marketing hyperbole.

Corporations have to compete and survive. They will not tolerate a high amount of penalties and taxation without pulling stakes and running. We need the positive things that corporations bring us like jobs and competitive pricing without mistaking that for some universal principal that always works in every situation. In short, we need to be smart, measure progress, incorporate end of life standards and requirements for social programs and privatization attempts. We need to understand and learn from history, facts and projections so we do not perpetuate fraud, waste and abuse in public or private ventures. I think that both the government and the private market have about the same batting average in this regard. The Deep South has been dominated for decades by Republicans but they tend to be poorer with less social safety nets and lower quality standards than the rest of the country. This is contrary to the popular rhetoric about Republican economics. I find it highly disingenuous for the party that gave us the Great Recession of 2008 to blame everyone but themselves for the failure and tells us now that the Democrats have screwed everything up under President Obama. The proof is in the pudding and I think most people will make the right call on these shenanigans.

Reportedly, 30% of Bernie Sanders supporters say they would not support Hillary in the general election if she were to win the nomination. How stupid can these folks be. This is tantamount to saying that they much prefer a fascist or religious fanatic to be our next president. Hillary supporters would be more than happy to support Bernie in a general election. We realize that under absolutely no circumstances can we allow the Republicans to jeopardize our country with what even many Republicans are telling us are horrible choices and even telling us that they would vote for Hillary over Trump and Cruz. We should never let our emotions become disengaged from our brain.

As I wrote in my previous article I love Bernie and wish the country were ready for him but the simple fact is that there is no revolution and there are way too may roadblocks in Congress and the real “American public” to make Bernie anything other than a poster child for the left. Folks, the Republicans have been working on Hillary for 25 years and all they have to show are emails and Benghazi, witch hunts at the tax payers expense. They have an extremely well-oiled media machine and have only come up these unfounded allegations to make the ‘Hillary is dishonest’ pitch. Sanders supporters which echo the right wing propaganda are doing favors for fascists and bigots at the expense of their own proposed cause.

Bernie has received a hall pass so far from the right’s voracious media teeth. Ask yourself why. It is because they know the real threat is from Hillary not Bernie with regard to the presidency. I know what the polls say but polls change radically with marketing and media big dollars. The right wing media know that they would make Bernie change from a nice, honest, harmless old guy to a radical communist dictator that would secretly be working with Putin and China to overthrow the United States. They would show no mercy with their rampant and ceaseless tirade of lies and distortion. They have a track record of making it stick with many folks and I would suspect the counter revolution would bring many new voters out on election day.

This bring me to another point. Are we really willing to take the chance against the major dollars of the right and corporations that a home spun and paid for hope for a revolution could match the barrage of big dollars. Folks, we need wake up and smell the coffee. It takes big dollars to win the presidency whether we like it or not. The stakes are too high to acts as if this reality was inconsequential. All of us on the left hate Citizens United and turning the clock back of voter rights but that is a fact and denying it will only lull us into a false sense of security while the war hawk right takes our kids back to war, kill our economy AGAIN and take us back to the good old days of Jim Crow laws. It takes big dollars to win national elections these days like it or not. To think that all politicians are on the take for accepting money is a gross fallacy. Big business prefers the Republicans not only because they get more perks from them than the Democrats but also because they know that Democrats are ideologically opposed to the idea of the rich getting richer while the Republicans say the pledge of allegiance every day to big business and unrestrained capitalism. Think to yourself, who is the more logical choice for receiving favors from big dollar contributions, the Democrats or the Republicans. Any equivocation from the left comes from unenlightened passion at the expense of their own stated ideals and the country. I am not suggesting all Democrats are blameless and all Republicans are on the take. I am simply suggesting that if you want to play the odds the Democrats are your best bet with regard to campaign finance reform, voter rights and social tolerance and diversity. As Democrats, the right depends on certain amount of us in Congress and the public to sabotage our own best interests and play the fools game with them.

This is why I believe we need to play odds and strategy to get where we want to end up. What is the practical choice for moving the country to the left? Think about Hillary and Bernie’s style and ask yourself who has a better chance of getting something done. Don’t buy into the government hater dogma. It is a cop out, a whine fest and only brings you down to a negative, bombastic, hate filled shell of a human being as you age in that psychic pig slop. I believe overall our government is good and has achieved historically great advances in human dignity and providing a more fair economic playing field. We still have a long way to go but bigotry and big money will only take us backwards. The stakes have never been so great for us individually and as a nation. We will only win if we apply an equal amount of idealism, strategy and practicality to our behavior and resist the abyss of cynicism and black and white, emotional judgements¹².

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¹Hillary results from govtrack.us

417 bills matched your search for sponsor: Clinton, Hillary (Sen.) [D-NY, 2001-2009]

Referred to Committee (355 bills)

Reported by Committee (24 bills)

Passed Senate (20 bills)

Agreed To (Simple Resolution) (14 bills)

Passed House with Changes (1 bill)

Enacted — Signed by the President (3 bills)

Enacted — Including via Companion Bills (11 bills)

² Bernie results from govtrack.us

362 bills matched your search for sponsor: Sanders, Bernard “Bernie” (Sen.) [I-VT]