Bernie Sanders has a new role. It could be his final act in Washington

In two unsuccessful bids for the White House, Senator Bernie Sanders made no secret of his disdain for billionaires. Now, in what could be his final act in Washington, he has the power to summon them to testify before Congress — and he has a few corporate executives in his sights.

One is Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, who Sanders complains “has become a multibillionaire” by developing a coronavirus vaccine with government money. “I think Mr. Bancel should be talking to his advisers about what he might say to the United States Senate,” Sanders warned in an interview.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Howard Schultz, the on-and-off CEO of Starbucks, are also on his list. He views them as union busters whose companies have resorted to “really vicious and illegal” tactics to keep workers from organising. He has already demanded that Schultz testify at a hearing in March.

Sanders can put these men on the spot because he is the new chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions. The job gives him sweeping jurisdiction over issues that have animated his rise in politics, such as access to health care, the high cost of prescription drugs and workers’ rights.

Sanders, 81, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has said he will not seek the Democratic nomination for president again if President Joe Biden runs for reelection — a position he reiterated in a recent interview in his Senate office. He is himself up for reelection in 2024 and would not say whether he would run again, which raises the prospect that the next two years in Congress could be his last.

Sanders is clearly operating on two tracks. Last week, in a move that might surprise critics who view him as unbending, he partnered with a Republican, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, to call on rail companies to offer seven days of paid sick leave to their workers — a provision that the Senate defeated last year when it passed legislation to avert a rail strike.

But he also sent a curt letter to Schultz, giving him until Tuesday to respond confirming his attendance at the hearing. That followed an earlier, angry letter in which Sanders urged the Starbucks chief to “immediately halt your aggressive and illegal union busting campaign.” A Starbucks spokesperson said the company was considering the request for Schultz to testify and was working to “offer clarifying information” about its labour practices.

Former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a Democrat who served as majority leader, said that Sanders could “bring a balance between the progressive and the pragmatic”. “He will be progressive; he will be aspirational; he will continue to fight the fight,” Daschle said. “But at the same time, I believe Bernie Sanders wants to get things done.”

The chairmanship is the latest turn in Sanders’ long career in politics, a coda to his rise from a left-wing socialist curiosity to a national figure with respect, power and a devoted fan base. After three decades in Washington, he still manages to cast himself as an outsider. And while he may never ascend to the presidency, there is no question that he has left his mark on national politics, reviving and strengthening the American left.

But Sanders’ national following cuts both ways. He is both a darling of the progressive movement and fodder for conservatives, who are already gleefully caricaturing him.

“Medicare for All, baby!” crowed Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, referring to Sanders’ signature legislative initiative, a government-run health care programme for all Americans. “I guarantee you Bernie Sanders will provide a wonderful target for Republicans to shoot at.”

He already has. Sanders’ rise has put him in the ranks of the very wealthy Americans he criticises, in part thanks to a book he wrote, “Our revolution,” in the wake of his first bid for the presidency. (“If you write a bestselling book, you can be a millionaire, too,” he said in 2019.)

He is about to go on tour to hawk a new book, “It’s OK to be angry about capitalism,” due out later this month and billed by its publisher as “a progressive takedown of the über-capitalist status quo.” Tickets for an upcoming book event at a concert venue in Washington are selling for up to $95 on Ticketmaster — a company that last month was accused of anti-competitive behaviour by some of Sanders’ Senate colleagues. His Republican critics are having a field day with that.

“Anyone else see the ‘irony’ in Bernie Sanders selling tickets for his ‘It’s okay to be angry about capitalism’ book tour on Ticketmaster?” Representative Bill Huizenga, a Republican from Michigan, wrote on Twitter. A spokesperson for Sanders said the senator was not involved in selecting the venue or setting ticket prices.

With Republicans running the House and 60 votes needed to pass most bills in the Senate, Sanders has little hope of pushing major legislation through Congress. He intends to introduce a Medicare for All bill, as he has done in past Congresses, because he feels “it’s important to keep that issue out there”, as he put it. But he is well aware that it is going nowhere on Capitol Hill.

“We don’t have the votes,” he said matter-of-factly. “We have no Republican support for it. And I would guess, you know, we have maybe half of Democrats who might support it.”

That is Sanders the realist speaking, in a tone far more practical than the one he has used during his campaign rallies and familiar rants against millionaires and billionaires. But those who watch Sanders closely know that, while he has never been a master legislator in the mold of former Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a predecessor of his as the health committee chair, he is able to work across the aisle.

In 2014, as chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Sanders partnered with Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, on a major overhaul of the veterans’ health care system — a measure that the Vermont senator described then as “not the bill that I would have written” but nonetheless “a significant step forward”.

A copy of the bill hangs on the wall of his office, alongside a photograph of President Barack Obama signing it, with Sanders looking over his shoulder and doing something he is not often seen doing in the Capitol: smiling.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.