<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div class=""><a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160703_Sanders__Party_platform_still_needs_work.html" class="">http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160703_Sanders__Party_platform_still_needs_work.html</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><h1 class="lead__headline" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0.625rem; padding: 0px; font-weight: 800; font-size: 3.4375rem; line-height: 1.05; max-width: 54.375rem; letter-spacing: -0.0625rem;">Sanders: Party platform still needs work </h1><h1 class="txttitle" style="margin: 30px 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; font-size: 22px; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><div class="h-group space-half--btm" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0.625rem; padding: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: 'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal;"></div><time class="date gray" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: 'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;" class="">Updated:</span> <span class="fw--500 no-wrap upper" datetime="July 3, 2016 — 3:01 AM EDT" itemprop="datePublished" pubdate="" style="box-sizing: border-box; white-space: nowrap; text-transform: uppercase;">JULY 3, 2016 — 3:01 AM EDT</span></time></h1><div style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;" class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;" class=""><img border="0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" apple-inline="yes" id="B89FDD74-0B28-4DAA-B8C6-A27ED8C2F959" height="25" width="22" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:FCEFD5BB-1539-4BA6-AF38-7152AD1E25D0@hsd1.pa.comcast.net." class="">he Democratic Party platform drafted in St. Louis is an excellent start in bringing forth policies that will help end the 40-year decline of the American middle class. These initiatives, if implemented, will create millions of good-paying jobs, significantly improve health care, and reverse the dangerous trend in this country toward an oligarchic form of society. But, let us be clear, this is a document that needs to be significantly improved by the full Platform Committee meeting in Orlando on July 8 and 9.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Here are some very positive provisions in the platform as it stands today:</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">At a time when huge Wall Street financial institutions are bigger now than they were before the taxpayers of this country bailed them out, the platform calls for enacting a 21st-century Glass-Steagall Act and for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">The platform calls for a historic expansion of Social Security, closes loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes, creates millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, makes it easier for workers to join unions, takes on the greed of the pharmaceutical companies, ends disastrous deportation raids, bans private prisons and detention centers, abolishes the death penalty, moves to automatic voter registration and the public financing of elections, eliminates super PACs, and urges passage of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, among many other initiatives.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">These are all major accomplishments that will begin to move this country in the right direction. I congratulate Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), chairman of the Platform Drafting Committee, and all 15 members of the panel for their hard work.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">But, unfortunately, there were a number of vitally important proposals brought forth by the delegates from our campaign that were not adopted. My hope is that a grassroots movement of working people, environmentalists, and human-rights advocates will work with us to demand that the Democratic Party include these initiatives in the platform to be adopted by the full committee in Orlando.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">We need to have very clear language that raises the minimum wage to $15 an hour, ensures that the promised pensions of millions of Americans will not be cut, establishes a tax on carbon, and creates a ban on fracking. These and other amendments will be offered in Florida.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Further, one of the most important amendments that we will offer is to make it clear that the Democratic Party is strongly opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">In my view, the Democratic Party must go on record in opposition to holding a vote on this disastrous, unfettered free-trade agreement during the lame-duck session of Congress and beyond.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Frankly, I do not understand why the amendment our delegates offered on this issue in St. Louis was defeated with all of Hillary Clinton's committee members voting against it. I don't understand that because Clinton, during the campaign, made it very clear that she did not want to see the TPP appear on the floor during the lame-duck session.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">If both Clinton and I agree that the TPP should not get to the floor of Congress this year, it's hard to understand why an amendment saying so would not be overwhelmingly passed.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Let's be clear: The trade agreement is opposed by virtually the entire grassroots base of the Democratic Party.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Every trade union in this country is strongly opposed to the pact. They understand that this agreement will make it easier for corporations to throw American workers out on the street and move factories to Vietnam, where workers are paid 65 cents an hour.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Virtually every major environmental group is opposed to the TPP because they understand that it will make it easier for the biggest polluters in the world to continue despoiling our planet.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Major religious groups are opposed because they understand that it will reward some of the biggest human-rights violators in the world.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Doctors Without Borders is strongly opposed to this agreement because its members understand that it would increase prescription-drug prices for some of the most desperate people in the world by making it harder to access generic drugs.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">This agreement also threatens our democracy. We cannot give multinational corporations the ability to challenge our nation's labor and environmental laws simply because they might reduce expected future profits through the very flawed Investor State Dispute Settlement system. That would undermine the democratic values that our country was founded on.</p><p class="indent" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 17px; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 30pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">During the coming days and weeks our campaign will be reaching out to grassroots America to do all that we can to oppose the TPP and make sure that it doesn't get passed.</p></div></body></html>