Sanders said he isn’t “that much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower” and the room erupted as if on cue, like a sitcom laugh track, and the camera turned to a bemused Hillary Clinton before panning out to show the audience cracking-up to the point of elation.
Sanders, who describes himself as a "democratic socialist," has been known to draw this kind of reaction from crowds.
But it wasn’t the first time Sanders invoked Eisenhower while promising to increase taxes on the nation’s wealthiest, and the comparison holds true,
because under Ike rich Americans paid considerably more tax than they do today.
As Politifact reports, during Eisenhower’s two-term presidency from 1953 to 1961, the top marginal tax rate, which affects the highest earning bracket,
was 91 percent. It applied to individuals with an annual income of $200,000 or more, and couples whose combined earnings was equal to or greater than $400,000. Accounting for inflation, in 2015 those numbers would be the equivalent of about $1.7 million for individuals and $3.4 million per couple.
Today, the top marginal tax rate in 2015 is about 39.6 percent and applies to individuals with an annual income of $413,200 or higher, and couples who make $464,850 or more. The equivalent of these earners in 1954 would have been placed in the 72 percent and 75 percent tax brackets, respectively, leaving that heavy 91 percent rate for the mid-century relative-counterparts to our present-day "1%" of wealthiest Americans.
And that is Sanders’s point.
Under Eisenhower, taxes were higher for the upper-class, who weren’t as rich as America’s wealthiest today.
Also, historians would be quick to point out, one of Eisenhower's greatest achievements as president was the creation of the Interstate Highway System – a massive civic infrastructure project that cost the equivalent of more than $500 billion in today's dollars. Also, in his farewell address,
Eisenhower warned the country about the growth of the military-industrial complex, a phrase now decidedly associated with liberalism.