Sanders: Time to tell ‘billionaire class’ enough

CEDAR RAPIDS — Like a person who isn't feeling well, Bernie Sanders says it's time for the nation to visit the doctor.

While he's no doctor, the Vermont senator who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, told a receptive Cedar Rapids labor audience Saturday night that he can diagnose the problems facing the nation.

The chief symptom is that wealth is concentrated in too few hands and is being redistributed from the middle class to the 1 percent, he told about 300 people at the Hawkeye Labor Council AFL-CIO annual steak fry.

'Their religion is greed,' Sanders said. 'They cannot control themselves, and they are prepared to step on the lives of millions to get what they want.'

He called on labor unions to join his movement for basic economic rights.

'I believe the time has come to say loudly and clearly: Enough is enough,' he said. 'This great nation and its government belong to all of the people, and not to a handful of billionaires, their super-PACs and their lobbyists.

He didn't need to persuade Mary Burke, a Lisbon health care worker and member of SEIU 199.

'I've loved Bernie for years,' she said. Although she was working to encourage Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run, Burke finds Sanders' agenda very similar. 'I appreciate that he speaks from his heart.'

Sanders' cure for what ails America is health care for everyone, affordable child care and tuition-free college for all, a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, the health care for veterans that they've earned, and where everyone, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, enjoys equal treatment.

It won't be easy, said Sanders, 73, a second-term independent senator who caucuses with Democrats.

'They have the money. They have the power,' he said. 'We have the people, and if we stand together, we're going to win this thing.'

Burke predicted that if Sanders 'can do for the left what the libertarians did for the right last election, he can succeed.'

Local labor councils don't endorse presidential candidates, but the South Carolina AFL-CIO executive board passed a resolution supporting his candidacy and encouraging the national organization to endorse him and help 'elect the president America's workers desperately need.'

There was some of that sentiment in the Cedar Rapids union hall as Hawkeye Labor Council President Kelly Steinke introduced Sanders as 'a true friend of the working class.'

Sanders returned the compliment, telling his audience the trade union movement 'is the last impediment, the one remaining force that brings millions of people around an agenda that meets the needs of working people.'