From: 10514w@coos.dartmouth.edu (John Lamperti)
Subject: BERNIE SANDERS: FIRST INDEP IN CONGRESS IN 40 YEARS (II)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 20:47:06 GMT

		 ************************************
	    BERNIE SANDERS INTERVIEWED BY DAVID BARSAMIAN
		   CREATING A NEW POLITICAL AGENDA
		 ************************************
		    Transcribed by Joseph Woodard
		     From Z magazine, March 1992
		 ************************************

IN 1990 Bernie Sanders became the first independent elected to
Congress in 40 years. He was a four-time Mayor of Burlington,
Vermont's largest city.

==================================================================

BARSAMIAN: 

	What are your thoughts on Congressional term limits?

SANDERS:

	I am opposed to it, with this caveat: term limits is a very
	bad solution to the problem. What's the problem? The problem
	is that rightfully people are outraged that 96 percent of
	incumbents get reelected. That's bad. There's no defense for
	that. We used to joke years and years ago, the Soviet Union
	in the good old days used to have elections where 99.4
	percent of the People's Parliament was reelected
	overwhelmingly. Everyone laughed, Walter Cronkite used to
	laugh about that. And now you've got 96 percent of our
	people's deputies getting reelected, many without
	opposition. That is not democracy. People look at that and
	see quite correctly that the Congress becomes more and more
	isolated from the people. They're there for 20 years. They
	don't have any opposition. They're getting huge sums of
	money. They go to the fine dinners with wealthy people. They
	forget the folks back home. What's the solution? The problem
	with term limitations is that it says carte blanche that
	everybody is out of here in six or eight years. You're doing
	a great job. You're doing a terrible job. Everybody is out.
	I think that that's not particularly democratic because if I
	wanted to vote for you if you were doing a good job, I'm
	obligated not to vote for you. The second problem is, just
	cleaning house doesn't mean to say that the next crop coming
	in is going to be any better. Some of you may know that
	most, not all of the money behind this effort is right wing
	Republican money.

	So from a narrow point of view their feeling is that for a
	variety of reasons they can't beat the Democrats in
	Congress, so the way to do it is term limitations. I don't
	think that's the right way to go. The answer basically is to
	come up with serious campaign finance reform which does not
	give the incumbents the tremendous financial advantage they
	now have. Bradley, for example, ran in New Jersey. He beat
	the Republican by a point or two. He outspent her by ten
	times or whatever. You see this all over the place. What
	you've got to do, and what exists in Canada, in most
	industrialized democracies, is if you want to run for office
	and I'm the incumbent, you should have a fair shot at taking
	me on. I should not be able to spend any more money than
	you. There are various schemes we can develop on how to do
	that. But ultimately, the solution is: You want to throw me
	out? You've got a fair shot to do it and I can't raise more
	money than you. I think if you did that you'd probably throw
	out several hundred of the people down there. If you simply
	throw out everybody, I think rich people would end up having
	even more power. The rich like the idea of term limitations,
	because then people who have some power trying to represent
	working people will never become entrenched, will never have
	real power within the Congress.





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