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Bernie Proudly Releases Taxes, Immediately Gets Called Out for 1 Glaring Issue

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Bernie Sanders has a consistency problem, and he seems to be hoping that nobody notices.

The 77-year-old socialist, the Vermont senator who rocketed to the national stage in 2016 after nearly defeating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, has tried desperately to paint himself as an anti-establishment outsider.

Yet a brief glance shows that he’s very much a political insider: Bernie has been in government for nearly 40 years, beginning in 1981. In 1990, he went from mayor of Burlington, Vermont, to a seat in the United States Congress. He entered the Senate in 2007.

So he’s been getting paychecks from Congress for decades, all while railing against the “establishment.”

It’s a neat bait-and-switch, but so is his “socialist” shtick. Despite years of decrying capitalism and claiming to oppose the top 1 percent, Sanders is now firmly situated among the country’s rich himself.

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While the median income for Americans is about $56,000 a year, ol’ Bernie has raked in many, many times that over the last decade. In 2016 alone, for instance, he made a cool million dollars, or about 18 times what the average citizen earns.

According to The Daily Wire, tax documents released by Sanders show that the next year — 2017 — the “socialist” again made $1,131,925.

But there’s an even bigger consistency problem: While complaining constantly about “millionaires and billionaires” not paying their fair share, it looks like Bernie gave an extremely small amount of his millionaire income to charity.

“Bernie Sanders donated only $10,600 to charity in 2016 after earning $1,062,626,” Daily Caller reporter Andrew Kerr pointed out on Twitter on Monday.

“That’s not even ONE PERCENT of his income!” chimed in commentator Andrew Follett in a Twitter post. “He wants to jack up your taxes for welfare, but didn’t kick in anything to help the folks he allegedly cares SO much for.”

It’s a very good point, and one that is especially relevant considering Sanders’ vocal support for taking other people’s money through sky-high taxes and using it for social programs, all while attacking the rich.

How the lawmaker spends his lawfully earned money is his choice, of course, but hypocrisy should be called out — especially among elected officials.

“[W]e must ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes … Every segment of our society, including those who have money and power, must contribute and must sacrifice,” Sanders declared in a commentary piece in the Burlington Free Press in 2011.

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And there are numerous clips of him attacking millionaires as the root of America’s problems. It’s one of his main talking points, really.

He wasn’t talking about himself, of course. Perish the thought.

Remember, many of the millionaires in our country made their money by starting businesses and creating jobs.

Sanders, in contrast, has been on the government dole for decades, isn’t a job creator, and made millions — ironically — through books and speeches where he advocates for socialism over the free market.

“[W]hy didn’t he give it away…if he thinks its not really his money…but community property?” wondered conservative Twitter personality Pradheep J. Shanker‏. “It does show he is more charitable with other people’s money than he is with his own.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the real problem with Bernie Sanders and every other leftist like him. They seem to believe in always having other people doing the important things in life.

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It’s about pretending to care, while doing little or nothing to actually help people. That’s why studies have shown that it’s conservatives, not liberals, who tend to be more charitable with their money.

Bernie wants other people to work hard, while he sits in an office in Washington. When other people earn money, he wants the government to take it.

Spending other people’s money must make him feel better about himself, which means he won’t have to give more than a drop from his own bucket to help people.

But don’t worry, all that seized money will be spent wisely by people like him, you see, because the government has a perfect track record of avoiding abuse or getting over its head in debt. Pay up, citizen, it’s for a good cause.

If Bernie Sanders is truly one of the top candidates from the left in 2020, then this should be a wake-up call for all Americans.

Socialism has no place in our country, and neither does blatant hypocrisy.

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Benjamin Arie is an independent journalist and writer. He has personally covered everything ranging from local crime to the U.S. president as a reporter in Michigan before focusing on national politics. Ben frequently travels to Latin America and has spent years living in Mexico.




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