'Too Big to Exist': Sanders Introduces Bill to Break Up Big Banks

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who in April announced his candidacy for president for the 2016 election, on Wednesday will introduce a bill to break up the country’s biggest banks—just a day after the Senate passed a Republican budget that takes aim at many progressive issues.

Under the proposal, called the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, regulators on the Financial Stability Oversight Council would compile a list of institutions which say they are so large that their collapse could trigger an economic crisis—otherwise known as “too big to fail.”

The Treasury Secretary would then have a year from the bill’s passing to break them up.

“If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” Sanders said Tuesday. “No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis.”