Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician who has been the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders is the longest serving independent in U.S. congressional history. Since his election to the House of Representatives in 1990, he has caucused with the Democratic Party, which has entitled him to congressional committee assignments and at times given Democrats a majority. Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously been chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for two years.
Since January 2017, he has been Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee. Sanders's campaign against Hillary Clinton for the party's 2016 U.S. presidential nomination raised more money in small, individual contributions than any other in American history, and helped him rise to international recognition. A self-described democratic socialist and a New Deal-era American progressive, Sanders is pro-labor and emphasizes reversing economic inequality. Many scholars consider his views to be more in line with social democracy.
