Sanders: We need affordable healthcare, wealth distribution, and Trump is a ‘pathological liar’
By Brandi Makuski
Stevens Point — U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited Stevens Point on a rainy Friday, drawing a crowd of about 500 people at Pfiffner Pioneer Park.
The Portage County Democratic Party sponsored the event. Co-chair Gary Hawley said the rally, advertised as a town hall, was held in partnership with the Wisconsin Democratic Seniors Council and the WisDems Rural Caucus. Representatives from all three groups spoke briefly before Sanders took the stage.
Backyard Burgers catered the event.
Sanders addressed several topics, including protecting Roe v. Wade and Social Security for seniors. He argued that lifting the Social Security cap tax would expand benefits and increase solvency.
He also commented on the June 27 debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. “I think the vast majority of the American people were distressed by what they saw in Donald Trump,” Sanders said. “They saw a pathological liar. Lied and lied and lied last night. Donald Trump said that the majority, almost everybody, wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Well, actually, the vast majority of the people wanted to keep Roe v. Wade, because the vast majority of the people in Wisconsin and in Vermont understand that when we talk about freedom, what freedom is about is the right of a woman to control her own body and make these most personal decisions herself, not the government.”
Sanders also discussed economic inequality, corporate greed, and the need for change.
“Today we have an economy in which the very, very rich are becoming much richer, proliferation of billionaires, while 60 percent of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck,” he said. “Today in America, we have more concentration of ownership than we have ever had in the history of discussion. What does that mean? It means that in sector after sector, whether it’s the airline industry, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s financial services, whether it’s media, whatever it may be, you have a handful of giant corporations determining what is being produced and the price that is being charged. And the result of that is that, to a very significant degree, the inflation that we are experiencing has everything to do with corporate greed.”
Sanders praised Biden’s record on energy transformation and infrastructure development and called for unity among workers to challenge the billionaire class over wage stagnation and job outsourcing.
Hawley said attendees were from Portage, Waukesha, Wood, Walworth, Clark, Lincoln, and other counties, but he did not immediately know how many attendees were local.
Listen to the full audio here (Sanders begins speaking at about 3:45 min):