Last week, Bernie Sanders convened a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the following question: Should taxpayers subsidize poverty wages at large profitable corporations?

The way the subject is posed is classic Sanders. In the past, the senator has told the Walton family, who own Walmart and remain the richest family in the United States, to “get off welfare.” He was referring to the large share of workers employed by companies like Walmart, McDonald’s, Dollar General, and other major corporations, who rely on public assistance to survive because their wages are too low. In this view, it’s not the workers who should feel any shame or criticism for their use of food stamps, Medicaid, or public housing; it’s the executives of corporations, who are underpaying workers, knowing that they won’t be able to survive on their wages alone.

The context for the hearing was the push to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — a provision supporters had hoped would be included in the COVID-19 relief bill now making its way through the budget reconciliation process. Sanders, as the Budget Committee chairman, invited CEOs and workers, along with experts on wages and labor market policy — Economic Policy Institute president Thea Lee, former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and University of Washington professor Jacob Vigdor — to speak to the committee. Unsurprisingly, few of the CEOs accepted his invitation.