‘Not a registered Democrat’: Biden attacks Bernie Sanders on party loyalty

The Vermont senator has been elected as an independent since first joining the House in 1991, though he caucuses with his Democratic colleagues. Last year, Sanders signed a loyalty pledge to the party that read, “I am a member of the Democratic Party.”

Biden then criticized the liberal Vermont senator’s plan to create a Medicare for All healthcare system.

“Bernie has a different view. I mean, everything I’ve suggested to you that I want to do, I’ve figured how to pay for it. He’s acknowledged he doesn’t even know what his Medicare for All — how he’s going to do it. How do you get something done that way? ”

Sanders, 78, said in an interview on Saturday that it is “impossible to predict” the total price tag for his sweeping policy proposals.

Biden declined, however, to criticize Sanders’s evolution on gun control. For much of his career, Sanders tiptoed around firearm issues and did not take as strong as a stance as some Democrats.

“I think Bernie has made his verbal amends for his record on guns,” Biden said, mentioning that he thinks Sanders regrets voting in favor of a measure that shielded gun manufacturers from lawsuits. “He was in a campaign in Vermont for a tough race for the Senate,” Biden said, discussing Sanders’s “voting against the Brady Bill five times. I think he regretted that and has changed his mind.”

Sanders’s 2016 Democratic primary rival Hillary Clinton also criticized Sanders for voting five times against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which requires a waiting period and background checks on the federal level for handgun purchases. Sanders’s votes took place before the act was signed into law in 1994.