{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=46DED41B-D50A-48D4-9BEB-28EE700A00D1", "The Week in Review", "2013-09-13", "2013", "2013-09", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "The Week in Review\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tFriday, September 13, 2013\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tWith the backdrop of Saturday\u2019s fifth anniversary of Lehman Brothers\u2019 crash and the Wall Street-caused recession that followed, surveys showed that Americans continue to overwhelmingly dislike and distrust Wall Street and worry about our economy. That sentiment and frustration with Washington\u2019s failure to deal with jobs and low wages fueled overwhelming public opposition to President Obamas\u2019 push for military strikes against Syria. Obama on Tuesday put aside plans for military intervention to pursue a proposal for international monitors to take over Syria\u2019s chemical weapons arsenal.\u00a0\r\nBack from the Brink\u00a0\u201cWith a loud and clear voice the overwhelming majority of the American people, across the political spectrum, are saying no to another war in the Middle East,\u201d Sanders wrote in a column for The Huffington Post on Friday. Building on that momentum, the senator said Americans now must demand action on important domestic issues. \"Now is the time to use that same energy and passion to save the middle class,\" he wrote. As the president had waged an intense campaign to sell Americans on the need to go to war, Sanders urged him to bring the same focus to the need to create jobs. \u201cI raised this issue to the president the other day,\u201d Sanders told Yahoo News. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to give a speech which most people know really is not going to translate into terribly strong action,\u201d Sanders said. \u201cIntensity is the key issue. Is he prepared to fight?\u201d\u00a0Read the Huffington Post column,\u00a0Read the Yahoo article\r\nWall Street -- Five Years Later\u00a0As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior by Wall Street, America five years ago was plunged into the worst recession since the Great Depression. It was on Sept. 14, 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the financial crisis began. Over Bernie\u2019s opposition, Congress voted to bail out the largest financial institutions in the United States. In addition, the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in virtually zero interest loans to financial institutions and corporations in the United States and around the world, according to a GAO audit performed as a result of a Sanders provision in the Dodd-Frank Act. Amazingly, five out of the six largest Wall Street banks are even bigger today than five years ago. They now have $9.6 trillion in assets, or nearly 58 percent of GDP. Bernie wants tobreak up the big banks\u00a0and\u00a0end Wall Street speculation.\r\nTake the poll\r\nJobs\u00a0The share of the population in the workforce hit a 35-year low last month, the lowest since 1978. Real unemployment in August was nearly 14 percent. Youth unemployment stood at 22.7 percent. Black youth unemployment was 38.2 percent. Seventy-five percent of the jobs created so far this year have been part-time jobs. A Bernie provision in a Senate-passed bill would invest $1.5 billion in jobs for American young people.\r\nIncome Gap\u00a0The gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America is the widest it's been since before the Great Depression, according to report released on Tuesday. The wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country's household income last year. That\u2019s the greatest share for any year since 1928. Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez crunched IRS data to determine that 95 percent of all the gains since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman summed it up this way: \u201cBasically, while the great majority of Americans are still living in a depressed economy, the rich have recovered just about all their losses and are powering ahead.\u201d\r\nRead Rich Man\u2019s Recovery\r\nDental Crisis\u00a0Spending for dental care is rapidly climbing, according to a\u00a0new report\u00a0prepared by the Government Accountability Office. Americans spent about $108 billion on dentists in 2011, according to a report for a Senate panel that Sanders chairs. The subcommittee on Thursday heard that millions of Americans do not have access to dentists because of those skyrocketing costs and inadequate insurance coverage. Another obstacle is government policies that don\u2019t pay to prevent or take care of minor problems that left untreated get worse and cost more for taxpayer-funded emergency care. \u201cWe can and must address the dental crisis in America now,\u201d Sanders said at the outset of the hearing by the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, which he chairs.\r\nWatch a video", 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=46DED41B-D50A-48D4-9BEB-28EE700A00D1"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8137819822877645, "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"}