Sanders rips GOP tax plan as 'massive transfer of wealth'
"It's the Robin Hood principle in reverse," Sanders said of the GOP plan.
— -- Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ripped the GOP's tax plan as a "massive transfer of wealth."
The senator and former Democratic presidential contender told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday that the tax proposal "is just really bad policy."
"What this is, is a massive transfer of wealth. It's the Robin Hood principle in reverse," Sanders said. "He's taking from working families and low-income people and giving to it the super-rich and creating a $1.5 trillion deficit.
Sanders said he hopes Democrats across the country unite in fighting the GOP's proposal.
"This is not politics, George, this is just really bad policy. And I'm not clear why anybody would support a proposal, which gives massive amounts of tax breaks to the people who don't need it at a time of incredible income and wealth inequality in America."
Sanders scoffed at the contention by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in an earlier interview on "This Week" that the administration's goal is to benefit the middle class, not the wealthy.
“They are repealing the estate tax,” the Vermont independent said. “The estate tax only applies to the top two-tenths of 1 percent, millionaires and billionaires like the Walton family of Walmart, like the Koch brothers' family, like the Trump family ... This is not a tax break for the rich? Well I don’t know what a tax break for the rich is.”
Sanders said he supported one aspect of the Republican tax plan.
“I think you can raise the standard deduction, what Trump is talking about is right,” the senator said.
But Sanders qualified his support for even that one change, saying of Trump, "He gives with one hand and takes away with the other by repealing the personal exemption.”
Sanders also responded to accusations that his Medicare-for-all plan is pulling the Democratic Party too far to the left.
“Well, let me just say that the idea of a Medicare for all, the idea that the United States of America should join every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing health care to every man, woman, and child, this is not a radical idea.”