Bernie Sanders wants to mandate a $15 minimum wage — but he only pays his interns $12

(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

published 24 July 2015

This week, Democratic presidential candidate and independent Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act, a bill designed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. The federal minimum wage "has got to be increased to a living wage!" Sanders said while announcing the bill. "That means raising the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour!"

But one group of workers who don't make the $15 an hour minimum Sanders supports are his own interns. As the Media Research Center noticed, Sanders' Senate website publicly states that interns are paid just $12 an hour. Here's a screenshot:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox