April, 26 2022, 06:42pm EDT

Sanders Asks President Biden to Fulfill Campaign Promise and Cancel Amazon's Federal Contracts
During remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Tuesday called for President Joe Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to prevent companies that are engaged in illegal anti-union activities, like Amazon, from receiving lucrative contracts from the federal government on the taxpayers dime. Sanders urged President Biden to sign an Executive Order to implement this plan.
Sanders' remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below.
WASHINGTON
During remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Tuesday called for President Joe Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to prevent companies that are engaged in illegal anti-union activities, like Amazon, from receiving lucrative contracts from the federal government on the taxpayers dime. Sanders urged President Biden to sign an Executive Order to implement this plan.
Sanders' remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below.
M. President, the American people are increasingly disgusted with the level of corporate greed that we are seeing in this country.
As you know, while prices are rapidly increasing corporate profits are soaring - in the oil industry, in the food industry, in housing, and many other areas. Meanwhile, while the very rich get richer because of inflation many workers are seeing a decline in their real wages.
During this pandemic, unbelievably, while workers struggle, the billionaire class has seen a $2 trillion increase in their wealth - and the level of income and wealth inequality today is the highest it's been in over 100 years. Two people, Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos, now own more wealth than the bottom 42 percent - over 130 million Americans.
In the midst of all of this, working people have declared loudly and clearly that enough is enough. We must end this corporate greed.
Workers are now fighting back to improve their standard of living, to get the wages and benefits they need, and to get a seat at the negotiating table in a way that we have not seen in many years. They are organizing unions at a grassroots level and they are prepared to go out on strike when the greed of large corporations prevents them from receiving decent wages and decent benefits.
During the last couple of years I have personally been involved in a number of union organizing campaigns and strikes throughout the country - from the John Deere, Nabisco and Kellogg's strikes in the Midwest, to the Warrior Met strike in Alabama, to the Kroger's grocery store strike in Colorado. I have been enormously impressed by the courage and tenacity of these workers who are demanding nothing less than economic justice.
M. President, as you may know, an historic union victory was achieved nearly one month ago by Amazon workers in Staten Island.
Amazon, as you know, is one of the most profitable and one of the most powerful corporations in America. It is also one of the largest employers in America with close to a million employees.
We're talking about a company that made a record-breaking $36 billion profit last year - a 453% increase from where it was before the pandemic. In other words, Amazon is doing better today than it has ever done.
We're talking about a company that is owned by Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest person in America worth $170 billion.
Interestingly, given our regressive and unfair tax system, we're talking about a company that paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018 and paid a lower tax rate than a nurse or a firefighter last year after making billions in profits.
We're also talking about Mr. Bezos, who, in a given year, despite his extraordinary wealth, also pays nothing in federal income taxes. That's what you can do when you make campaign contributions and have an army of accountants and lawyers working for you.
M. President, during the pandemic, Mr. Bezos, like other billionaires, became much richer. In fact, since March of 2020 Mr. Bezos became $65 billion richer. M. President, do you know why people in this country are angry? During the pandemic, tens of thousands of essential workers had no choice but to go to work. And they died. That's what happens when you live paycheck to paycheck. And during that same period, Mr. Bezos became $65 billion richer.
Mr. Bezos has enough money to own a $500 million, 417-foot mega-yacht.
He has enough money to afford a $175 million estate in Beverly Hills that includes a 13,600 square-foot mansion.
He has enough money to afford a $78 million, 14-acre estate in Maui.
He has enough money to own a $23 million mansion in Washington, DC with 25 bathrooms.
He has enough money to buy a rocket ship to blast William Shatner to the edge of outer space.
And yet, even though Mr. Bezos can afford all of those mansions and all of those yachts and all of those rocket ships, Mr. Bezos refuses to pay his workers decent wages, decent benefits or provide decent working conditions. This is what excessive greed is all about. And the American people want action.
From the very beginning of the union organizing effort until today, Mr. Bezos and Amazon have done everything possible, legal and illegal, to defeat the union.
In fact, Amazon cannot even come to grips with the reality that the workers in Staten Island won their union election fair and square. In order to stall the process out, their lawyers have appealed that election result to the NLRB. Their strategy is obviously to use their incredible wealth to stall, stall and stall.
In every way possible, they are refusing to negotiate a fair first contract with the Amazon Labor Union.
In fact, Amazon has been engaged in a massive attempt to undermine the union organizing drive - in direct violation of labor laws and regulations.
Let's be clear: Amazon has already been penalized more than $75 million for breaking federal discrimination and labor laws.
Amazon is currently being sued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to reinstate a worker who was illegally fired for organizing a union.
To date, there are currently 59 unfair labor cases against Amazon pending at the NLRB.
Several current and former employees have alleged that Amazon has engaged in illegal harassment and discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Amazon misclassifies delivery drivers as independent contractors rather than employees to evade tax, wage, and benefit responsibilities.
Amazon's inadequate workplace safety policies also pose grave risks to workers. If you can believe it, according to a New York Times investigation, Amazon has a 150% percent turnover rate. Workers come into the warehouses, they are worked as hard as humanly possible, and they leave. And a whole set of new workers come in to replace them.
Further, in some locations, their workplace injury rates are more than 2.5 times the industry average.
Last December, six Amazon workers died after they were required to continue working during unsafe weather conditions in a warehouse that did not have appropriate safety facilities or policies.
It is abundantly clear that time and time again Amazon has engaged in illegal anti-union activity.
Amazon may be a large and profitable corporation, it may be owned by one of the wealthiest people in America, but it cannot be allowed to continue to violate the law and the rights of its employees. If working people are asked to obey the law they do it or they are punished by the law. That same principle must be upheld for a large and powerful corporation like Amazon.
And that is why, this morning, I sent a letter to President Biden urging him to sign an executive order to prohibit companies like Amazon that have violated labor laws from receiving federal contracts paid for by the taxpayers of America.
Let me quote from this letter:
"Dear President Biden:
Last September, I was delighted to hear you state that you 'intend to be the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history.'
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, where too many workers are falling behind, your sentiment is exactly right. We need to build the trade union movement in America and allow more workers to engage in collective bargaining.
One of the most effective ways for you [President Biden] to begin accomplishing this important goal would be to ensure that no corporation that is engaged in illegal anti-union activities receives a contract paid for by the taxpayers of the United States.
As you will recall, during the presidential campaign you [President Biden] promised to 'institute a multi-year federal debarment for all employers who illegally oppose unions' and to 'ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns.'
That campaign promise was exactly right. Today, I am asking you [President Biden] to fulfill that promise ... As you may know, Amazon, one of the largest and most profitable corporations in America, is the poster child as to why this anti-union busting Executive Order is needed now more than ever."
M. President: I ask unanimous consent to include the full text of my letter into the record.
President Biden, more than any other president in modern American history, has talked over and over again about being pro-union - and I appreciate the President's rhetoric and know him to be sincere on this issue.
Just this afternoon, in an article in Politico, in response to my letter, "A White House official said that the president 'has stated consistently and firmly that every worker in every state must have a free and fair choice to join a union and the right to bargain collectively with their employer.' The official, who declined to be named, added that Biden believes 'there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, and no anti-union propaganda from employers while workers are making that vitally important choice about a union.'"
But that is exactly what is happening at Amazon. There is intimidation. There is coercion. There are threats and anti-union propaganda. In fact, all of that is precisely what Amazon is doing.
In my view, the time for talk is over. The time for action is now.
Taxpayer dollars should not go to companies like Amazon and multi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos who repeatedly break the law.
No government - not the federal government, not the state government and not the city government - should be handing out corporate welfare to union busters and labor law violators.
So today I say to President Biden: You promised to prevent union busters like Amazon from receiving lucrative contracts from the federal government. Please keep that promise.
LATEST NEWS
At Least 95 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks Including Massacres at Beach Café, Aid Points
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," said one eyewitness to a strike on the popular al-Baqa Café.
Jun 30, 2025
Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
Medical sources said at least 33 civilians were killed and nearly 50 others wounded in the massacre, including footballer Mustafa Abu Amira, photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab—who survived an earlier Israeli airstrike and is reportedly the 227th journalists killed by Israel since October 2023—and prominent artist Frans Al-Salmi, whose final painting depicting a young Palestinian woman killed by Israeli forces resembles photographs of its slain creator posted on social media after her killing.
Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," he said. "It was a scene that made your skin crawl."
Witnesses and officials said Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on Palestinians seeking food and other humanitarian aid from a U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point in southern Gaza, killing 15 people amid near-daily massacres of aid-seekers.
"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
Israel's overall behavior in the war is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Cannot Be Silent': Tlaib Leads 19 US Lawmakers Demanding Israel Stop Starving Gaza
"This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help."
Jun 30, 2025
As the death toll from Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians continues to rise amid the ongoing U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege of the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led 18 congressional colleagues in a letter demanding that the Trump administration push for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the Israeli blockade, and a resumption of humanitarian aid into the embattled coastal enclave.
"We are outraged at the weaponization of humanitarian aid and escalating use of starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in Gaza," Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—and the other lawmakers wrote in their letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "For over three months, Israeli authorities have blocked nearly all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, fueling mass starvation and suffering among over 2 million people. This follows over 600 days of bombardment, destruction, and forced displacement, and nearly two decades of siege."
"According to experts, 100% of the population is now at risk of famine, and nearly half a million civilians, most of them children, are facing 'catastrophic' conditions of 'starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels,'" the legislators noted. "These actions are a direct violation of both U.S. and international humanitarian law, with devastating human consequences."
Gaza officials have reported that hundreds of Palestinians—including at least 66 children—have died in Gaza from malnutrition and lack of medicine since Israel ratcheted up its siege in early March. Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund warned that childhood malnutrition was "rising at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone. Of those treated children, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
Meanwhile, nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 others have been injured as Israeli occupation forces carry out near-daily massacres of desperate people seeking food and other humanitarian aid at or near distribution sites run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israel Defense Forces officers and troops have said that they were ordered to shoot and shell aid-seeking Gazans, even when they posed no threat.
"This is not aid," the lawmakers' letter argues. "UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has warned that, under the GHF, 'aid distribution has become a death trap.' We cannot allow this to continue."
"We strongly oppose any efforts to dismantle the existing U.N.-led humanitarian coordination system in Gaza, which is ready to resume operations immediately once the blockade is lifted," the legislators wrote. "Replacing this system with the GHF further restricts lifesaving aid and undermines the work of long-standing, trusted humanitarian organizations. The result of this policy will be continued starvation and famine."
"We cannot be silent. This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help," the lawmakers added. "We demand an immediate end to the blockade, an immediate resumption of unfettered humanitarian aid entry into Gaza, the restoration of U.S. funding to UNRWA, and an immediate and lasting cease-fire. Any other path forward is a path toward greater hunger, famine, and death."
Since launching the retaliatory annihilation of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 Palestinians and wounded more than 133,600 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which also says over 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Upward of 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated a call for a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining 22 living Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas.
In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden National Security Adviser Among Those Crafting 'Project 2029' Policy Agenda for Democrats
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
Jun 30, 2025
Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
"Jake Sullivan is shaping domestic policy for the next Democratic administration," he added. "Who is happy with the Biden foreign policy legacy?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular