{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=1A608139-5E05-4B6A-ADAF-73BAE2D026A9", "News August 21", "2013-08-21", "2013", "2013-08", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "News August 21\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tWednesday, August 21, 2013\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSenator Sanders\r\nVA Backlog\u00a0The Department of Veterans Affairs is chipping away steadily at a disability claims backlog. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders said the latest figures show progress but \"we must remain aggressive and we intend to closely monitor the situation to ensure that the progress continues,\" The Washington Post reported.\u00a0Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, said the decrease is \"a welcomed statistic,\" but he questioned whether the progress will continue, according to the article also published by the Valley News. LINK, LINK\r\nWall Street\u00a0\"The center of establishment and big-money power is Wall Street,\" Sen. Sanders said on The Ed Show Tuesday. With assets equal to two-thirds of the nation's gross domestic product, Wall Street entities enjoy enormous political power in Washington. Sanders has proposed legislation to break up \u201ctoo-big-to-fail\u201d banks. AUDIO\r\nMarch on Washington A young Bernie Sanders attended the March on Washington that featured Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream\" speech. The future senator said King was just as interested in economic justice and wanted to end the Vietnam war, stands that turned much of the political establishment against King. \u201cSanders relates to that and credits King with shaping the values that have defined his own career,\u201d WPTZ-TV reported. LINK, VIDEO\r\nEgypt\u00a0The White House disputed news reports citing Sen. Patrick Leahy\u2019s claim that the U.S. has secretly suspend most forms of military aid to Egypt. Leahy argued for an aid cutoff after a military coup toppled the democratically-elected president. Sen. Sanders also criticized the coup by Egypt\u2019s military but voiced concern that an aid cutoff could cost the U.S. leverage in its attempt to restore democracy, WCAX-TV reported.\u00a0LINK, VIDEO\r\nUSPS Regular mail delivery could be cut to five days a week - or less - and door-to-door delivery would be phased out under provisions of the U.S. Senate's latest attempt at Postal Service reform. Co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn, the bill already has drawn fire from postal employees who fear it will further degrade service standards and make the Postal Service less competitive by eliminating jobs and closing sorting stations. Postal worker unions back a bill by Sen. Sanders, according to the Tulsa (Okla.) World. LINK\r\nIncome Inequality \u201cAfter a bankrupt Wall Street was resurrected in 2008, it became clear that capitalism is killing America\u2019s soul,\u201d Paul B. Farrell wrote for The Wall Street Journal\u2019s MarketWatch. He said Sen. Sanders said it best: \u201cThere is a war going on in this country \u2026 waged by the wealthiest people in America on the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The nation\u2019s billionaires \u2026 want more, more, more. Their greed has no end and they are apparently unconcerned for the future of this country if it gets in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth.\u201d LINK\r\nPlainspoken\u00a0Sen. Sanders \"believes in the principles he's arguing and defends them with his logic,\" conservative radio personality Jim Vicevich said Tuesday on WTIC-AM in Hartford, Conn. \"I don't agree with him, but if everybody in Congress were as plainspoken as Bernie Sanders on both sides of the aisle, you might actually get something done.\"\u00a0AUDIO\r\nWorld\r\nSyrian Gas Attack Anti-government activists accused the Syrian government of pounding areas east of Damascus, the capital, with rockets carrying poison gas early Wednesday, saying that people had been killed in their sleep and that local hospitals were filled with casualties, The New York Times reported. LINK\r\nU.S. Weighs Military Aid to Egypt The White House is poised to cancel a shipment of U.S.-made attack helicopters to Egypt, but the Obama administration remains opposed to a wholesale halt of military aid to the country, according to U.S. officials. President Obama convened a meeting on Tuesday with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other national-security aides to discuss U.S. aid to Egypt in the aftermath of the military ouster of President Mohammed Morsi and the crackdown on his supporters, administration officials told The Wall Street Journal. LINK\r\nEgyptian Opposition Leader Arrested\u00a0Egypt's interim military government Tuesday arrested key Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Mohamed Badie, CNN reported. LINK\r\nRadioactive Water Leak in Japan\u00a0Three hundred tons of highly contaminated water leaked from a storage tank at the destroyed Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, The New York Times reported. The spill raised further concerns over the site's safety, prompting regulators to declare a radiological release incident for the first time since the 2011 disaster. Recent leaks are at \"crisis levels\" according to the plant's operator.\u00a0LINK\r\n\u00a0National\r\nDemocrats to Sue IRS over Tax-Exemptions A top House Democrat plans to file a lawsuit in federal district court Wednesday challenging the Internal Revenue Service\u2019s interpretation of a law that governs whether groups qualify for tax-exempt status as so-called social welfare organizations. Rep. Chris Van Hollen said Tuesday that he will serve as lead plaintiff in the case, which addresses one of the main concerns that surfaced with the recent IRS targeting controversy: differences between federal law and the IRS rules on eligibility for 501(c)(4) candidates. LINK\r\nNew Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach The National Security Agency\u2014which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens\u2014has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say. The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK\r\nSummers, Yellen Allies Wage Effort for Federal Reserve \u00a0The opposing camps have waged high-profile media campaigns, featuring dueling op-eds in the nation\u2019s top newspapers, interviews defending their candidates and comments on social media. But the battle also has played out behind the scenes, The Washington Post reported. LINK\r\nImmigration Reform Analysis from center-right think tank American Action Network says that the Senate-passed immigration bill would add 14,000 new jobs on average in each congressional district over the next decade, ABC News reported. The report claims that more than six million American jobs would be created if the bill were passed and signed into law.\u00a0LINK\r\nKerry Clears State Dept. Employees\u00a0Secretary of State John Kerry has cleared four State Department employees put on administrative leave last December in the fallout of a terrorist attack on the United States mission in Benghazi, NBC News reported. Following a review of the Accountability Review Board, Kerry reassigned the four employees to different roles within the department.\u00a0LINK\r\nHealth Care Costs\u00a0Analysis of health care premiums for employer-sponsored coverage indicates that cost increases have slowed since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report cited by Think Progress.\u00a0LINK\r\nVermont\r\nSolar Power Citing a new report on global warming, a Rutland Herald editorial said Green Mountain Power has been a solar booster but noted that small, electric co-ops have put restrictions on solar power generation. \u201cIt is time for clever people to think up ways to enlist the enthusiasm and interest of the customers of small utilities, like Washington Electric, to allow for maximum production of solar power,\u201d the editorial said. LINK\r\nFarmers Oppose Food Rules Farmers from Vermont and New Hampshire told federal officials Tuesday that sweeping food safety rules could sweep them out of business.\u00a0 About 200 farmers, consumers and others attended a session Tuesday hosted by the Food and Drug Administration at Dartmouth College to discuss proposed rules for implementing the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, The Associated Press reported. LINK\r\nCanadian Border\u00a0 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has dropped plans for a major expansion of the port of entry from Canada at the northern end of Interstate 91 in Derby Line, local officials said. Derby Line Village Trustee Keith Beadle said that rather than a full-scale expansion that would re-route traffic, Customs and Border Protection plans to expand a building within the existing footprint, AP reported. LINK\r\nObesity Vermont is now the sixth least obese state in the nation, according to a new report cited by the Burlington Free Press.\u00a0LINK", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=1A608139-5E05-4B6A-ADAF-73BAE2D026A9"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4983720611780882, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}