Bernie Sanders Spars with Fox’s Hillary Vaughn Over Proposed 32-Hour Work Week: ‘Excuse Me!’

[Clip starts]
VAUGHN: “Can I talk to you about the 32-hour work week?”
Sanders: “Sure. You’re with whom?”
VAUGHN: “Fox Business.”
Sanders: “Yeah.”
VAUGHN: “It seems like Democrats want businesses to be taxed more, pay — “
Sanders: “Really? Is that what you think?”
VAUGHN: “Pay their — “
Sanders: “Excuse me! Excuse me!”
VAUGHN: “I didn’t get to ask you a question.”
Sanders: “Okay, thank you.”
VAUGHN: “Senator — “
Sanders: “You want to — hold it. Okay. We held a hearing on a 32-hour work week, because what we have seen is that over the last 50 years, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, almost all of the wealth has gone to the top 1% while 60% of the people are living paycheck to paycheck. Many of our people are exhausted. We work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world. I think it is time for a shortened work week.”
VAUGHN: “Let me ask you a question about that. It seems like Democrats want businesses to be taxed more, pay — “
Sanders: “Really? That’s not my assumption. I don’t think so.”
VAUGHN: “ — pay their workers more, lower prices, and now pay people not to work.”
Sanders: “You know, what I would like to see — “
VAUGHN: “How are businesses going to survive that? That’s the question. How can businesses survive all of those proposals?”
Sanders: “When Mr. Bezos pays an effective tax rate lower than the average worker, I think we have a real problem in our tax system. I think that billionaires have to start paying their fair share of taxes. Thank you.”
[Clip ends]

DeANGELIS: “That was Senator Bernie Sanders’ response when Fox Business’s Hilary Vaughn pressed him about his latest proposal, pushing new legislation to establish a standard 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay. I don’t really want to speak to the work week, actually. I want to speak to the comments that he made about the richest people not paying their fair share, because we keep hearing this over and over again. The great Larry Kudlow was on yesterday talking about how the top 1% pays, in fact, the bulk of the taxes as it stands right now. So if you want to take more from them, if you want to change the tax code, if you want, to a certain degree, confiscate that wealth and redistribute it to the lower classes in this country or bring their tax rates down, then do that through Congress. It will never happen. So they will just stand there on the soapbox and keep saying Jeff Bezos is not paying enough while the firefighter is paying more and so on.”
RIGGS: “And to your point, and to Larry’s point yesterday, revenue has never been greater than it is today in this country. It is a spending problem. You can raise taxes all you want. That has never been the problem. We’re pulling in record revenue and it is the problem with our record spending that goes and couples that. He is very angry, but I don’t know. You want to do 32-hour work week? Or do you want to weigh in on that?”
BRENBERG: “Well, you reminded me that Bernie Sanders is a multimillionaire. And I just wonder, did he work 32 hours a week to become a multimillionaire? You know, he got —
RIGGS: “No. You gotta work hard for your success. Work for your success.”
BRENBERG: “I won’t even judge him on that, but there are actually some people who like their jobs and they want to get ahead and they want — I love my job.”