On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Velshi,” Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that housing is “human infrastructure” and that for him, infrastructure includes having an educated workforce, which means “all of our kids should have the ability to get a higher education, not leave school deeply in debt.” And means having a healthy society, and America’s life expectancy suffers “because we are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people.”
Sanders said, “[W]e’ve got to take a broad look at what infrastructure means, human infrastructure for ordinary people. Human infrastructure means housing. You’ve got a half a million people in this country who are homeless. You’ve got 19 million households who are spending 50% of their limited incomes on housing. We need to build housing. And by the way, when you deal with housing, you create jobs. … When I talk about infrastructure, it means if a worker, a mom and dad are going to work, they have the right to know that their kids are in decent childcare. That’s infrastructure. Infrastructure is having the best-educated workforce in the world. That means all of our kids should have the ability to get a higher education, not leave school deeply in debt. It means that we need a healthy society. Our life expectancy is 40th in the world because we are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people. And so, I think as a nation we’ve got to take a very broad look at what we mean by infrastructure, it’s physical infrastructure, obviously, bricks and mortar. It is human infrastructure. And now is the time to create millions of jobs addressing all of the needs impacting the middle class and working families of this country.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.