U.S. Senator of Vermont Bernie Sanders was appointed last March as the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. In this new position, Sanders has expressed a desire to increase budgets for healthcare, education and workers.

Sanders is now able to hold healthcare panels and bring large business owners to Congress, according to an article by the New York Times. Specifically, he is criticizing the owners of large corporations for stopping their workers from organizing unions.

In a video from his YouTube channel from January this year, Sanders explained many problems with America's healthcare system, including how drug companies are profiting while many citizens struggle to pay for their prescription drugs.

“We have worse health care outcomes than most other countries,” Sanders said in the video. “What we have in this country is really disgraceful, and that is an issue (that) together we are going to have to work on.”

According to the United States Census Bureau, although the rates of uninsured people have dropped in past years, 8.3% of people did not have health insurance throughout the entirety of 2021.

To remedy this problem, Sanders plans to make medical drugs more accessible to the public. 

“We have to substantially lower the cost of prescription drugs, and we have got to work to guarantee healthcare as a human right for all of our people,” Sanders said.

Raymond Sfeir, the director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University, told The Panther that if Sanders expands the Affordable Care Act — also known as “Obamacare” — it may negatively impact national finances. 

“He will favor more subsidized health care leading to higher expenditures by the government,” Sfeir said. “This will worsen government deficits and will lead to more borrowing by the federal government and a higher debt level.”

Along with easier access to healthcare, Sanders expressed plans to stop billionaires, specifically major company owners, from getting tax breaks and mistreating their employees.  

“The gap between workers and their bosses is now wider than it (has) ever been,” Sanders said. “The bosses now earn about 400 times more than their workers make.”

To Sanders, a way to fix this is by raising the minimum wage and supporting labor unions. 

“Millions of workers are trying to exist on starvation wages,” he said. “Corporate America: Starbucks, Amazon and many other powerful entities are doing everything they can to deny working people the right to form a union, and we've got to deal with that issue.”

However, according to Sfeir, Sanders' ambitions to increase the minimum wage could backfire. 

“Depending on how high the increase will be, it may hurt states with a lower income level, while it will have no impact on states with (an) already high minimum wage, such as California,” Sfeir said. 

According to Sfeir, labor unions and what they fight for could create government pensions. 

“Unfortunately, many labor unions end up bargaining for very high salaries and pensions that, at times, allow members to get the same or even higher payments in retirement than the salaries they receive while working,” Sfeir said. “In the case of government unions, this leads to the states having to subsidize pensions since members do not contribute enough for their retirement to cover the high pension levels. In other words the taxpayers are forced to foot the bill.”

Sanders' third main goal in his new position is to redistribute money toward public education. 

“Somehow or another, we can afford to give massive tax breaks to the billionaire class, but meanwhile, our teachers and our children exist in classrooms with broken chairs, flooded buildings and inadequate staff support,” Sanders said. 

When asked how Sanders should redistribute the money away from billionaires, Sfeir told the Panther that increasing tax rates is not the answer. 

“It is better to close loopholes that allow very rich people to shield their income,” Sfeir said. “If additional taxes are voted by the Senate, the bills will fail in the House where Republicans have a majority.”

Sanders has expressed many goals as he settles into his new role as chair. Although he has been a long-time senator of Vermont since 2007, his new position allows him to put these goals even further into action. 

“I look forward to your support as we stand up and fight to make sure that working families in this country can live with the kind of dignity and security that they are entitled to,” Sanders said.