Bernie Sanders

Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician who has been the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders is the longest serving independent in U.S. congressional history. Since his election to the House of Representatives in 1991, he has caucused with the Democratic Party, which has entitled him to congressional committee assignments and at times given Democrats a majority. Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously been chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for two years. Since January 2017, he has been Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee. Sanders's campaign against Hillary Clinton for the party's 2016 U.S. presidential nomination raised more money in small, individual contributions than any other in American history, and helped him rise to international recognition. A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders is pro-labor and emphasizes reversing economic inequality. Many scholars consider his views to be more in line with social democracy and New Deal-era American progressivism than democratic socialism. Sanders was born and raised in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. While a student he was an active protest organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movemen