Fact-check: Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘fighting oligarchy tour’

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have drawn large crowds during their "fighting oligarchy" tour criticizing President Donald Trump and Democratic Party leaders as out of touch with Americans.

"We are witnessing an oligarchy in America," Ocasio-Cortez said March 20 before a crowd of 10,000 in an Arizona State University arena in Tempe, Arizona. "When those with the most economic, political and technological power destroy the public good in order to enrich themselves at the price of millions of Americans." 

Later, she said, "We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too."

Sanders repeated some of his familiar lines about wealth inequality and the U.S. working class. His tour stopped in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. 

Oligarchy, originally defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle as the "rule of the few," is a form of government in which power rests within a small group of people, usually individuals of extreme wealth. Sanders frequently referenced billionaire businessman Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and seeking to slash a trillion dollars from the federal budget. 

"I want to do something radical," Sanders said. "What I want to do is tell the truth." 

Is that what happened? We fact-checked some of their statements.  

We emailed the press office for each politician but received no reply.

Ocasio-Cortez: "Just a few weeks ago, every single House Republican voted to cut Medicaid in this country. ...They voted to cut $880 billion from the committee that governs Medicaid." 

This requires context.

The House Republican budget plan adopted Feb. 25 opens the door to slashing Medicaid, even though it doesn’t name the program. All House Republicans voted "yes" except for Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

The plan directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find ways to cut the federal deficit by at least $880 billion over a decade.

Lawmakers have taken Medicare off the table for cuts, which makes it impossible to reach $880 billion without cutting Medicaid. But large-scale cuts are not a done deal, because the House needs the Senate’s buy-in.

Sanders: "Despite a huge increase in worker productivity over the last 52 years, if you can believe it, real, inflation-accounted-for wages today are lower than they were 50 years ago."

False.

Two measures that economists most commonly use for inflation-adjusted wages show that wages are higher now than five decades ago.

Wages have not only kept pace with inflation over the last 46 years, the longest time frame available in the data, they’ve risen by a cumulative 11.9% beyond the inflation level.

When we previously checked this statement, Sanders’ office pointed to a different dataset showing that wages for a specific group of workers, called nonsupervisory, are lower now than in February 1973. However, that month represented an unusual high point in wages because of Nixon-era price controls. When price controls were lifted, wages plummeted.

Ocasio-Cortez: "Not paying a living wage is actually a form of corporate welfare, too, because these big companies like Walmart and Amazon often rely on food stamp programs and public coffers to cover the wages that they won't pay to people." 

Data supports this claim. 

A 2020 report from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress that examines federal spending, analyzed which companies employed the most recipients of Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly referred to as food stamps. 

Using data from six Medicaid and nine SNAP agencies across 11 states, researchers found that Walmart is one of the country’s top employers of Medicaid and SNAP recipients. In three states, Walmart is estimated to be the No. 1 employer of Medicaid recipients, and in five states, the company is the No. 1 employer of SNAP recipients. In the remaining states, it ranked in the top five. 

Amazon is also among the top 25 companies in most of the states analyzed, but ranks lower on the list than Walmart.  

We fact-checked a similar statement in 2012 by U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., and rated it True. 

Sanders: "Some of you may have heard Trump talking about all of these millions of people 200 years of age getting Social Security. It's a lie."

Sanders is accurate that Trump and Musk have made misleading comments about Social Security recipients, creating the false impression that millions could be getting benefits based on implausibly old ages.

When Trump signed executive orders Feb. 18, he said, "If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden, we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old."

Trump’s comments followed Musk’s posting on X a chart showing millions of people over the age of 110 in the Social Security database.

But Trump and Musk have not proven that millions of people in that age range or older have received benefits. Recent Social Security Administration data shows that about 89,000 people ages 99 and older receive Social Security payments.

The acting Social Security commissioner said in February that people older than 100 who do not have a date of death associated with their Social Security record "are not necessarily receiving benefits."

Sanders: "The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 90%."

We have rated various versions of Sanders’ claim over the years Mostly True. We do not have data after 2020. 

In 2016, Sanders said, "The top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent."  

He cited a finding from a study by two internationally respected economists, and others back up the study’s results. But the study has been criticized, for example, for not including Social Security benefits in the wealth calculations.

One of the economists, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, told PolitiFact on March 21 that the claim still holds true for 2019, the most recent year of data examined.

Sanders: "CEOs now make 300 times more than their average worker."

We rated a similar 2023 Sanders statement Mostly True.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., liberal think tank, found that a 2023  measurement of CEO wages versus average workers’ wages showed a 290-to-1 ratio. That was smaller than previous years’ estimates of 344-to-1 in 2022 and 399-to-1 in 2021. (Sanders has updated his talking point.)

A 2022 AFL-CIO estimate using a different methodology found a lower ratio, 272-to-1.

Sanders: "Today, in the richest country in the history of the world, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck." 

Sanders is citing the upper end of survey data.

It matches a November 2023 survey by LendingClub, an online banking platform, that found 62% of Americans reported living paycheck to paycheck. 

A 2022 survey conducted by MagnifyMoney, a website about personal finance, found that 50% of Americans said they live paycheck to paycheck and have no money left after all their expenses are paid. Another 15% of respondents said it varies.

A 2020 survey conducted by Highland Solutions, a digital product consultant, found that 63% of Americans said they had been living paycheck to paycheck since the onset of the pandemic. 

But there is no clear definition for the phrase "paycheck to paycheck," so people should be skeptical of statistics based on the concept, Gary Burtless, an economist and senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, said.

Sanders: "In America today, despite spending twice as much per capita on health care as the people of any other nation, our life expectancy, how long we live, is four years shorter than other countries. On average."

This is mostly accurate.

An analysis by KFF, a health policy research center, found that U.S. health expenditures per person were around $12,500 in 2022, $4,000 higher than the next highest spender, Switzerland — not double. But when it comes to other wealthy countries, the average spending is lower, about $6,600 per person, so the U.S. spending is nearly double the average of most wealthy countries.

In 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid reported that U.S. health care spending grew to $14,570 per person. 

In 2015, we rated a similar Sanders statement about per capita spending False, but the spending gap between the U.S. and its peer countries has increased over the decade that followed. 

Sanders is in the ballpark about life expectancy in comparison with other countries. A 2024 report from the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that U.S. life expectancy is, on average, 78.6 years versus 81.3 years in England and Wales.  

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this article.

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