Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” refused to answer if he still supports a wage cape for high earners.

CNN’s Jake Tapper said, “Our investigative K-File team found out that early in your political career way back in 1974, you said it should be illegal to earn more money than someone could spend in his or her lifetime. You proposed a maximum wage cap on the highest earners–”

Sanders interrupted, “What year was that?”

Tapper replied, “It was 45 years ago.”

Sanders said, “Jake, in all due respect, that was seven years before I was elected. Did you go back to my third-grade essay when I was in PS 197?”

Tapper interjected, “Well, you were a grown man in your thirties.”

Sander continued, “That was 50 years ago. Let’s talk about my mayor’s record, where I was a transformative mayor re-elected three times. You know, we can go back to things that I said in the ’70s. I don’t think it’s productive. I’ve been a senator for 16 years — senator for 14 years, congressman for 16 years. Here’s the bottom line; when you have three people that own more wealth than the bottom half of America, when half of the people are living paycheck to paycheck, when 500,000 Americans are sleeping out on the street, yes, the rich have got to pay, and the large corporations have got to pay their fair share of taxes. We will raise taxes very substantially on billionaires — no apologies for that.’

Tapper said, “But you do not favor a wage cap as you once proposed? That’s the only question.”

Sanders said, “Fifty years ago, eh — look, what I just said is when you have massive levels of income and wealth inequality. By the way, in the last three years under Trump, the billionaire class has seen a hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars increase in their wealth. The average American worker has seen less than a 1% increase in real wages last year. That’s the issue that we’ve got to deal with right now. We need an economy that works for working people, not just for the billionaire class, which is what we have under Trump’s economy.”

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