Twenty-six years ago, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) was critical of the national debt, which stood at $3 trillion, in an interview with C-SPAN.
Now the national debt stands at more than $19 trillion, and Sanders’ spending proposals he has announced on the campaign trail would total $18 trillion over the next decade.
Sanders had just been elected to the House of Representatives in 1990 and was asked by a caller on the program how he could report to Congress as a socialist and use flag words such as redistribution of wealth and say that those who work hard throughout their lives take from those who choose to work.
"I think we can talk about, if we going to broaden the discussion, we can look at how capitalism if you like, laissez faire capitalism, has done in this country," Sanders said.
"You could talk about a system in which we are now 3 trillion in debt, that’s our national debt," he said. "Throw another trillion dollars on top of it for the savings and loan fiasco so that every one of our kids now is deeply in debt. That’s not a particularly positive system."
According to a tally by the Wall Street Journal, Sanders would spend $15 trillion on a government-run, single-payer, health care plan for all Americans, $1.2 trillion on Social Security, $1 trillion to rebuild roads and bridges, $750 billion to make college more affordable, $319 billion for paid family and medical leave programs, $29 billion on private pension funds, $5.5 billion for a youth jobs initiative, and an unknown amount for a pre-K program.