17 Things You Might Not Know About Bernie Sanders

His Background

1. Sanders, 74, was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, NY. These biographical details made Larry David (born in Brooklyn in 1947) the perfect person to play him on SNL.

1. Despite his age, Sanders is the junior senator from Vermont. His fellow Vermont senator, Patrick Leahy, has been in office since 1975. Sanders spent a long time in the US House of Representatives (1991 to 2007) and only became a senator in 2007. He won his second term in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote.
2. He was a longtime mayor of the so-called People's Republic of Burlington, Vermont's largest and very progressive city. Sanders was elected in 1981 after a career as a carpenter and documentary filmmaker. His outspoken socialist and independent views made him a prominent figure on the left, even as a local politician.
3. He married his wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, in 1988. He previously was married to college sweetheart Deborah Shilling (from 1964 to 1966) and has a son, Levi, with a woman named Susan Mott. He also has three stepchildren and four grandchildren. Despite accusations from Republican opponents, Bernie and Jane did not honeymoon in the Soviet Union in 1988, although he did make a trip there as part of a sister-city delegation soon after they wed. Today, Jane is a close adviser to Bernie, and she previously served as president of Burlington College, before she was asked to leave following turmoil.

1. He wasn't a Democrat until 2015. Previously, Bernie was an independent, although he caucused with the Democrats in the Senate.
2. Sanders is one of the few senators who is not a millionaire. He ranks 86 out of 100 on the Senate's net-worth list. The Center For Responsive Politics puts his net worth at $436,013. Compare that to the $30 million Bill and Hillary Clinton earned in just the last 16 months.

His Platform

7. The Bern proudly describes himself as a democratic socialist. During the October 2015 Democratic debate, he defended the maligned label, saying Americans would support democratic socialism once they were more informed about its principles, which include an aggressive stance against income inequality, which he calls immoral.
8. He feels strongly about family leave. With him as president, he says, America will "have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth."

9. He wants us to be like Sweeden. That country, along with its Nordic neighbors, enjoys generous public safety nets, and Sanders offers them as a proof of concept for democratic socialism.
10. He is not a capitalist. "I believe in a society where all people do well, not just a handful of billionaires," Bernie said in the October debate. "Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street's greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don't."
11. He wants to expand health care under his Medicare For All plan. It would provide insurance for everyone, paid for by taxes. While Hillary Clinton says she doesn't "want to see us start over again with a contentious debate" about health care, Bernie Sanders wants to go all in with a single-payer healthcare system. Similar to our current Medicare system, which is available to Americans over 65, Sanders's plan would likely have the government pay medical bills for services provided by private medical providers. Note that he hasn't advocated for "socialized medicine," in which doctors actually work for the government. But unlike our current Medicare system, Sanders wants to include dental, vision, hearing, mental health, and long-term care, without copays or deductibles.
12. Sanders wants a right to free college tuition. Under his proposed College For All Act, state colleges would be free. That's right. Free. The bill proposes $47 billion in federal funding for colleges, while the states would pick up the remaining estimated $23 billion. Sanders doesn't see this as charity, but rather in the national interest, explaining: "We live in a highly competitive global economy and, if our economy is to be strong, we need the best educated workforce in the world."

9. He favors the raising of the minimum wage to $15. Those making the current $7.25 per hour would see a nice bump if Sanders got his way, although critics say it could lead to job loss.
10. He has a strong record on climate change. One super PAC ranked Sanders as the No. 1 climate leader in the Senate. He has plans to promote clean energy like solar and stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. He also wants to ban fossil fuel lobbyists from working in Washington and investigate oil companies for spreading climate change denial myths.
11. Sanders would raise taxes. For example, he would pay for universal health care with a 2.2 percent increase on income tax and 6.2 percent payroll tax paid for by employers. But that could lead to more money in your pocket, since health costs would be lowered. He also wants to tax capital gains as regular income and increase the effective tax rate for those making more than $1 million a year from 30 percent to 36 percent.
12. Black Lives Matter takes issue with him. While he has been a longtime supporter of civil rights, he clashed with the BLM movement in July 2015. The group felt Sanders downplayed issues like mass incarceration and racial injustice and confronted him at a campaign rally. In response, Sanders dismissed their concerns at the event. Since the incident, Sanders has made an effort to expand his platform to give more attention to such issues.
13. He's been considered soft on gun control. Sanders has voted against the Brady Bill and supported firearm sellers against lawsuits. While he might be to the right of Hillary Clinton on this one, he does note that the NRA gives him a D-.