Bernie Sanders singles out 'corporate greed' for inflation surge: 'I don't apologize' for government spending
Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is unapologetic about exorbitant government spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, telling Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that corporate greed, not relief spending, has been the culprit of inflation.
"If you look at Joe Biden's popularity record – when he was most popular – it's after we passed the American Rescue Plan," he said on this week's "Sunday Morning Futures."
"We saved child care. We saved hospitals. We saved colleges, so I don't apologize. But take a look at the kind of profits that are in the food industry, in the oil industry. They've been raising their prices exponentially and ripping off the American consumer, in my view."
Sanders continued his fervent critique of corporate behavior, suggesting that the profit margins swelled by opportunistic pricing during a national crisis are the real drivers of inflation, not government interventions aimed at saving American lives and livelihoods. He instead spotlighted allegedly unchecked corporate practices that, according to him, have exploited consumers when they are most vulnerable.
He additionally pointed to direct benefits COVID emergency measures brought to the public.
"Did we invest in helping working-class families during the COVID pandemic? We did. I was the chairman of the Budget Committee. I worked on that, so the folks out there who got that $1,400 check when people were losing their jobs and small businesses were going out [of business], yeah, we did that. We put money into hospitals so the people could get the health care they needed," he said.
"If you want to ask my view and many economists' [views], the reason that we saw a spike in inflation, which is now going down, was not because of that; [it was] because of corporate greed. Record-breaking profits on the part of [the] food industry, other corporations charging us off-the-wall prices... I think that had a lot to do with inflation."
The Vermont senator also discussed the urgent need for a fair trade policy that protects American jobs and opposes the outsourcing of labor to foreign markets, reinforcing his stance against previous trade deals he believes have harmed the U.S. manufacturing sector and its workers.
The talk later shifted to the environment, where Sanders slammed former President Trump for doubting climate change, a longstanding critique among Democrats focused on implementing green energy policies.
Pointing to droughts in Vermont, forest fires and hurricanes that recently slammed Florida and the remainder of the southeast, he spoke with a sense of urgency.
When asked whether he would feel betrayed if Vice President Harris were to approve the continuation of fracking after having previously indicated support for a ban, Sanders replied in part, "I wouldn't use the word betrayal. People's points of view change."