Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will soon introduce legislation that would require large employers like Amazon, Walmart and McDonald’s to fully cover the cost of food stamps, public housing, Medicaid and other federal assistance received by their employees. The goal, he says, is to force corporations to pay a living wage and curb roughly $150 billion in taxpayer dollars that currently go to funding federal assistance programs for low-wage workers each year.
The bill, which Sanders plans to introduce in the Senate on Sept. 5, would impose a 100 percent tax on government benefits received by workers at companies with 500 or more employees. For example, if an Amazon employee receives $300 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $300.
Public records obtained by the New Food Economy, a non-profit news organization, show that thousands of Amazon employees rely on the government’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program to make ends meet. As many as one in three Amazon employees in Arizona -- and about 1 in 10 in Pennsylvania and Ohio -- receive food stamps, according to an April report by the New Food Economy, based in New York.