Bernie Sanders probably isn’t going to be president. But he might be about to get one last chance to define his legacy in Washington.
The Vermont independent is poised to lead the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee if Democrats can flip the Senate next month — giving the 85-year-old leftist icon a powerful perch he could use to promote his political movement and shape a 2028 presidential contest in which he has indicated he’s unlikely to be a candidate.
He will also have to balance his colleagues’ strong desire to hold President Donald Trump’s administration to account, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But he is making clear he plans to use his power to highlight systemic issues that go beyond the workings of any one agency.
“If I have anything to say about it … the agenda of the Democratic Party is going to be extremely bold. It is going to take on high costs,” Sanders said when asked about how he plans to use his prospective gavel. “The super PACs are not going to run the agenda anymore. We’re going to do what the American people want.”
Sanders’ term runs through 2030, and with Trump in the White House for at least two more years, it’s unlikely many of his sweeping legislative dreams will be fulfilled anytime soon. But he has long been comfortable using his power in the Senate to push Democrats — with whom he caucuses — further to the left.
During Joe Biden’s presidency, Sanders led the Budget Committee as Democrats pursued major party-line domestic policy bills. As part of a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package he helped shepherd, he tried unsuccessfully to include a $15 minimum wage hike.
He pushed the party to go bigger in what ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act by backing a $6 trillion plan that would have beefed up the social safety net by adding, among other things, vision, hearing and dental coverage to Medicare. That vision was curtailed significantly as Biden and Democratic leaders struggled to secure the needed votes.
All the while, Sanders called hearing after hearing on big national issues that touched only indirectly on the federal budget — including climate change, income inequality and Amazon’s labor practices.
He also promoted a “Medicare for All” universal health plan. And now, with the possibility of gaining direct oversight of health matters, Sanders is signaling he intends to make it a signature push.
“The current system is broken, dysfunctional, and wildly expensive,” he told reporters last month. He followed up this month with a social media post warning Democrats that if they win back power there can be “no more failed establishment status quo policies.”
“If the Democratic Party thinks that they can just tinker around the edges once they take control of Congress, guess again,” he said.
The Senate Democratic Caucus and the party writ large have moved closer toward Sanders since his earlier tussles under the Biden administration. The moderates who forced Sanders and fellow progressives to scale back their ambitions have departed, and several of the Senate’s 2028 White House hopefuls are from the left.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who is flirting with a 2028 presidential bid and has been floated by some progressives as a future Senate leader, said “Medicare for All” is something a Democrat-controlled Senate should pursue.
“The reality is people are facing huge increases in premiums and copays. … So we need a Medicare-for-All-type solution,” Van Hollen said. “This is the kind of debate we need to have.”
In addition to health care — the oversight of which HELP shares with the Finance Committee — Sanders would have a big role to play in labor matters. He has said he would try to raise the minimum wage, advance legislation that would expand employees' ability to unionize and also protect workers from artificial-intelligence-driven job loss.
“If I have anything to say about it, we’ve got to slow it down big time, “ Sanders said of AI. “The American people want us to pause.”
On education, Sanders has called to make four-year public college tuition-free and to raise teacher pay. But many Democrats are also eager to delve into Trump’s ongoing effort to downsize and ultimately eliminate the Education Department.
Sanders’ office produced an often-cited report showing that the department’s civil rights enforcement has plummeted. But some of the high-profile actions to rein in the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the department have been taken by other panel members.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) struck a deal with outgoing the committee chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), tovote on legislation to block the offloading of certain key programs to other federal agencies. And it was Kaine who publicly prodded Cassidy to call a hearing with Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
During Sanders’ first round with the HELP gavel, in 2023 and 2024, his legislative plans were stymied by a GOP-controlled House. But he put a spotlight on rising health care costs by bringing in health care company CEOs to testify. He and Cassidy, then the top Republican on the panel, also led an effort to hold the CEO of a large hospital network that had declared bankruptcy in contempt of Congress after declining to testify.
Cassidy is leaving the Senate at the end of the year, and it’s not yet clear who will be his replacement as HELP’s top Republican. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is next in line, but he could choose to continue leading the GOP on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel instead, in which case the job could fall to Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Murkowski has raised pointed concerns with Kennedy’s leadership at HHS, which could generate some promising bipartisan oversight opportunities. Sanders could also find overlap with some committee Republicans who are AI-skeptical, like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
But Sanders’ supporters of the left see his potential ascension to HELP chair as an opportunity to push a progressive vision that could frame the future of American politics — not to pare down ambitions and cooperate with Republicans.
“He's worked his entire life … on getting everybody health care as a human right and winning everybody a living wage,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said in an interview, adding that Sanders is “going to make a huge difference next year.”
Joseph Geevarghese — the executive director of Our Revolution, which Sanders founded but is now an independent organization — added that a Chair Sanders “would put the affordability crisis at the center of what an opposition party should be doing” while using Trump administration oversight “to extract concessions and secure concrete gains for working families.”
“In that sense, he could become the party’s de facto leader,” Geevarghese added, “helping define Democrats as a party prepared to fight for working people while taking on Trump.”
Mackenzie Wilkes and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
