Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned voters Thursday that billionaire GOP donors, including casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and libertarians Charles and David Koch, are “literally” trying to buy the United States government.
“I worry that this country is moving every single day closer and closer to an oligarchic form of society. Not the kind of democracy that we need and that we love,” the failed presidential candidate Thursday said at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Dearborn, Mich.
“What we are seeing, right now, are the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and these other multibillionaires literally trying to buy the United States government. That’s what they’re doing. They’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars all over this country. Turn on your TV and you see an ad. Understand who is paying for that ad. It’s not some phony front group: Citizens for This, Citizens for That. It’s is the Koch brothers. It is Sheldon Adelson.”
The Vermont senator, who ran a surprisingly competitive campaign against Clinton during the Democratic primary, is scheduled Thursday to speak on the Democratic nominee’s behalf at four separate campaign events in Michigan.
In his first event, which was held at Dearborn, Sanders also railed against Wall Street and the big banks.
“We are seeing our economy controlled by smaller and smaller numbers of people, the incredible power of Wall Street and the large financial institutions whose business model, as we just learned again, and we’ve learned it again and again and again,” the senator said.
“Wells Fargo, fraud. Bank of America, fraud. Goldman Sachs, fraud,” he said. “The Democratic platform that we helped to write says that it is about time to break up these large financial institutions. And we’re going to see that platform implemented.”
Clinton explained recently that she would pay for her ambitious economic agenda by hitting up the wealthy.
“I’ll tell you how we’re going to pay for it,” she said at a rally in August. “We’re going where the money is. We are going after the super wealthy, we are going after corporations, we are going after Wall Street so they pay their fair share.”
Clinton’s vow to get tough on Wall Street has come under close scrutiny given the fact members of the financial industry, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have paid her handsomely for speaking engagements.
A review of the Clintons’ 2015 tax returns show the couple took in a combined $6.72 million from paid speeches. Their 2015 tax returns, which were released last week, also showed they paid an effective federal tax rate of 34.2 percent, and that they had an adjusted gross income of $10.6 million.
This is a notable decline from 2014, when Hillary Clinton alone took in $10.5 million in speaking fees, combining with Bill Clinton’s $9.7 million on the way to an adjusted gross income of nearly $28 million. In 2013, Hillary Clinton earned $9.6 million from speaking to various groups.
There’s a reason for the drop of more than $17.4 million between 2014 and 2015: Hillary Clinton stopped giving paid speeches after she announced her candidacy in April of last year.
