Bernie Sanders: Poverty is a death sentence

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During the “Brunch with Bernie” segment of The Thom Hartmann Show Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) discussed a recent congressional hearing he held on poverty in the United States.

“We now have some 46 million Americans living in poverty,” he said. “And what a lot of people think about poverty is that, well, that’s unfortunate, that’s too bad, people living in not good housing, they don’t have a good car, they don’t go to the movies on Saturday night, their kids don’t have good clothing — but here is the point of that hearing, the title of that hearing… was that poverty is a death sentence.”

“It’s a death sentence. If you are in the bottom 20 percent of income earners, you are going to die six and a half years earlier than if you are in the top 20 percent.”

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube on September 15, 2011, below: