Through much of the 2016 campaign, the press maintained a glaring double standard. Since then-candidate Donald Trump was, well Trump, he was rarely grilled on his policy notions (where’s your fabulous health-care plan? why should we believe you have one?), confronted with his outright lies or quizzed face to face on his finances. If a reporter had the audacity to ask a question, Trump would shy away and no follow-ups would be forthcoming.

The same pattern now repeats itself with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). He is indulged, allowed to skip by details, avoid probing and evade hard policy questions. We’d like to hear him pinned down, not permitted to move to the next topic without answering queries such as these:

You promised over a month ago to release your tax returns. Why haven’t you? You say you just need to fix a few things, but aren’t past tax returns completed? Why does it take over a month to get them posted online? What things do you need to fix?

You shut down a foundation recently. What percentage of donations were used to pay your son and other family members? How much did you take in? What was spent on programs? Who were your major donors?....

It has been more than a month since Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told a national audience during a CNN town hall that he would release 10 years of his personal taxes “soon,” adding, “We have to do just a few little more things.” Five weeks later, it seems those “little” things still aren’t done; he told CBS on Sunday that “we have it all done and it’s just a question of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.”

Enough with the excuses, Senator. These sorts of shenanigans — and make no mistake, that’s exactly what they are at this point — both reduce the pressure on cowardly congressional Democrats to pursue President Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, and endanger Democrats’ hopes of taking back the presidency in 2020. The progressive positions that Sanders champions, including Medicare-for-all, expanded Social Security and increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, are much too important to both the future of our country and our own personal finances to risk them over tax returns.

Trump broke with decades of precedent in refusing to make his tax returns public when he was running for president. The result? Not only don’t we know our president’s net worth, we also have little idea how he earned his fortune or how he makes his money now. Minus his paperwork, it’s hard to determine whether Trump is using the White House as a just-in-time moneymaking opportunity, violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and/or even paying his fair share of taxes at all.