Bernie Sanders’ campaign may have ended, but his platform seems to live on in Jill Stein.
The Green Party candidate outlined what she would want to accomplish as president in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box saying, “As the only candidate that is not poisoned by corporate money, lobbyists, or Super PACs, I can actually stand up for what it is that we need.”
That sentiment—and several of Stein’s proposals—were recurring themes during Sanders’ run. In the SquawkBox interview, Stein promised free higher education, universal health care, and an aggressive push against climate change.
Stein also proposed a New Deal-like emergency jobs program as well as a “Green New Deal that also solves the emergency of climate change.” She argued that abolishing the use of fossil fuels and developing a healthier food supply would make people healthier, thereby reducing health care costs. Additionally, she says she wants to implement a Medicare-for-all system saying, as Sanders has, that health care is a right rather than a privilege.
Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Courts Bernie Sanders’ Backers
Stein showed some policy differences with Sanders, however. While Sanders had planned to refinance student debt, Stein wants to cancel it. She says she’d do this through quantitative easing—similar to the process the government used to bail out Wall Street—by asking the Federal Reserve to buy the debt and agree not to collect on it.
As CNBC notes, the Fed is an independent government agency, and therefore the president does not have the authority to direct its asset-buying programs. But in Stein’s view, student loan asset buying would fulfill one of the Fed’s stated objectives: maximizing employment. Stein says she believes that canceling student debt would unleash enormous productivity and be “the stimulus package of our dreams.”
The Green Party candidate also wants to move the U.S. Military away from wars that she says are bankrupting the country and “arguably making us less secure,” and instead focus on increasing domestic security. She proposes cutting military spending, which she says currently takes up more than 50% of our discretionary budget.
Though Hillary Clinton has adopted some of Sanders’ platform into her own, Stein’s beliefs seem to line up closer with those of the Vermont senator, and she has been courting his supporters.
Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson: Corporate America’s Best Bet for President?
In recent poll data collected by RealClearPolitics, about 4% of voters said that they plan to support Stein in the upcoming election. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received about 9% of the vote.
