Bernie Sanders Net Worth: Vermont Senator Joins The 1 Percent

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders rose to political fame after railing against the nation's wealthy and promoting Democratic socialism, but the senator has officially become one of the moneyed elite himself. Sanders raked in more than $1 million in 2016, according to Senate financial disclosure forms, putting him in the top one percent of Americans, a group he’s often denounced.

While Sanders’ annual Senate income alone wouldn’t put him among the ultra-wealthy, the royalties and advance from his book “Our Revolution” did. The senator received a $795,000 advance in addition to the 200,000 copies he’s sold so far.

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But Sanders has made a career of criticizing the moneyed elites.

“How many yachts do billionaires need?” Sanders tweeted in April. “How many cars do they need? Give us a break. You can’t have it all.”

Social media users, however, were quick to point out that he himself owns three separate homes, including a summer house on Lake Champlain. And while such spending habits don’t make him a billionaire, they certainly don’t jive with the lifestyle of those he championed.

“Our job is to take on the moneyed interests,” Sanders said during an April speech in Kentucky. “And the only way I know as to how we do that is by bringing millions of people into the political process, with a newborn understanding that we have got to get involved.”

The top one percent of the nation earns 25.3 times as much as the bottom 99 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. While the top one percent earns an average income of $1.15 million per year, the rest of the country earns an average of $45,567 per year. Sanders, however, has maintained that he is not among the wealthy elite.

“I remain one of the poorer members of the United States Senate,” he said during a presidential debate last year.

Without his book deal, that claim was true. However, even with just his Senate income alone, 18 senators, including 10 Republicans, had a net worth less than Sanders in 2014, according to PolitiFact.

Sanders, 75, recently toured the country to rally his base in an effort to revamp the Democratic Party. The senator has repeatedly voiced his opposition to President Donald Trump. He railed against Trump’s proposed budget in May, calling the proposal “grotesquely immoral” and “horrific.”

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“What you are looking at is a massive transfer of wealth from working families, from seniors, from children, into the hands of the very, very richest billionaires in this country,” he said during an appearance on NBC. “It is an outrageous budget. It is a budget the American people do not want. It is a budget that should not see the light of day in the U.S. Senate.”

Sanders has made it his mission to revamp the Democratic Party after failing to clinch the nomination for president in 2016.

“We need to transform the Democratic Party,” he said during a speech in April in Kentucky. “We need to open the doors of the Democratic Party to working people and to young people.”