{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/121214", "News December 12", "2014-12-12", "2014", "2014-12", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "www.sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "News December 12\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\tFriday, December 12, 2014\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSenator Sanders\r\nHouse Sends Spending Bill to Senate\u00a0The House narrowly approved a $1.1 trillion spending package to keep most government agencies operating through next summer. The 219-206 vote came late Thursday less than three hours before government funding expired at midnight. The Senate is expected to vote Friday on the package loaded with Republican policy riders to loosen Wall Street regulations, slash pensions and cut environmental protection spending. \u201cThis is a bad bill, and I'm certainly going to vote against it,\u201d Sen. Bernie Sanders told\u00a0MSNBC.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s does not reflect the needs of the working families of this country\u201d he told The Washington Post. It contains \u201cvery onerous provisions which will hurt working people,\u201d he said in Politico. LINK,\u00a0LINK,\u00a0VIDEO\u00a0\r\nBreaks for Big Banks While the bill includes increased funding for veterans' health care - one of Sanders's top priorities - he told The Washington Post that the changes in Wall Street regulations are \u201ctotally absurd.\u201d Congressional Quarterly said Sens. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren threatened to vote against the bill over their concerns that it undercuts a Wall Street reform law by letting banks protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation trade in risky derivatives. \u201cInstead of cracking down on Wall Street CEOs who plunged the country into a terrible recession, this bill allows too-big-to-fail banks to make the same risky bets on derivatives that led to the largest taxpayer bailout in history and nearly destroyed the economy,\u201d Sanders said in The Hill. LINK, LINK, LINK\r\nBudget Politics \u201cThe desires of establishment Democrats have been increasingly drowned out by liberals like Sen. Warren, who have energized activists across America and are beginning to pull other Democrats further to the left. That's a dynamic that will likely play out in the Democratic presidential primaries. To many in the party, likely front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton is too cozy with Wall Street and out of step with the grass roots. She's likely to be challenged on that front by a handful of rivals, including Sen. Sanders\u2026,\u201d according to a Washington Post analysis also published by the Valley News in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. LINK, LINK\r\nSanders: No on Defense Bill The Senate on Thursday advanced a bill authorizing $560 billion dollars for military spending. Sen. Sanders voted no. He said he has concerns about a boated military budget and that the bill reflects misplaced national priorities. \"We have millions of working class families today finding it very difficult to send their kids to college; we're not addressing that. We have young people graduating from college deeply in debt; we're not addressing that. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our roads, bridges, water systems, airports. We're not addressing that when, if we did, we could create millions of decent paying jobs.\u201d Sanders said he supports a strong national defense but it is unacceptable for the Defense Department to be waste massive amounts of money, WVNY-TV reported. VIDEO\r\nHealth Funding Threatened\u00a0Integral funding for primary care services nationwide are under threat as Congress closes out its session,\u00a0Congressional Quarterly\u00a0reported. Sen. Sanders said \"it is an absolute imperative\" that Congress\u00a0extend funding set to expire next September for community health centers before millions \"lose access to doctors and dentists and mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs.\"\u00a0LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nTreasury Nominee\u00a0An increasing number of senators, including Sen. Sanders, oppose the nomination of Wall Street banker Antonio Weiss to a key Treasury Department post,\u00a0Bloomberg,\u00a0Salon\u00a0and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel\u00a0reported.\u00a0LINK,\u00a0LINK,\u00a0LINK,\u00a0LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nDomestic Surveillance\u00a0In a\u00a0letter\u00a0sent Tuesday\u00a0to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security\u00a0Jeh Johnson, 10 Democratic senators and Sen. Sanders asked how law enforcement officers are permitted to use cell-site simulators which intercept Americans' cell data,\u00a0Ars Technica\u00a0reported.\u00a0LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nTorture Report\u00a0In the wake of the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report, Sen. Bernie Sanders called the Central Intelligence Agency's brutal interrogation tactics an \"ugly chapter in American history during which our leaders and the intelligence community dishonored our nation's proud traditions,\"\u00a0CBS News\u00a0and CNN reported online. Sanders said a great nation \"must be prepared to acknowledge its errors.\"\u00a0LINK, LINK\r\nInnovation Exchange\u00a0Democrats are looking to form an organization to serve as an exchange for policy ideas among state lawmakers after a decade of deep losses in state legislatures,\u00a0Bloomberg\u00a0reported. The group met for the first time at the Center for American Progress on Thursday in Washington, D.C. at an event with Sen. Sanders and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.\u00a0LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nWorld\r\nHong Kong Protesters Cleared by Police For the Hong Kong authorities and their superiors in Beijing, the peaceful end to the protest is likely to be seen as a major victory. They repeatedly rebuffed demands for a greater degree of democracy in this former British colony, and defused the longest sustained political uprising on Chinese territory in many years without a bloody crackdown, according to The New York Times. LINK\r\nNational\r\nObama Backs Spending Bill\u00a0The White House swung its support behind a $1.1 trillion spending billl on Thursday after many Democrats promised to oppose the legislation due to policy riders that would slash pensions, scale back Wall Street regulations and cut environmental protection funding,\u00a0The Associated Press\u00a0reported.\u00a0LINK\r\nJ.P. Morgan Calls Congress Should banks be allowed to make risky investments using taxpayer-backed money? The very idea was abhorrent to many Democrats on Capitol Hill. And some were stunned that the White House would support the bill with that provision intact, given that it would erase a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, one of Obama\u2019s signature achievements. But perhaps even more outrageous to Democrats was that the language in the bill appeared to come directly from the pens of lobbyists at the nation\u2019s biggest banks, aides said. The provision was so important to the profits at those companies that J.P.Morgan's chief executive Jamie Dimon himself telephoned individual lawmakers to urge them to vote for it, according to The Washington Post. LINK\r\nCIA Chief Defends Agency\u00a0In a rare televised Central Intelligence Agency news conference,\u00a0Director John Brennan challenged a Senate report on the agency's interrogation tactics and said the CIA \"did a lot of things right\" after the September 11 terror attacks,\u00a0The Associated Press\u00a0reported.\u00a0LINK\r\nPoll: Half of Republicans Back Limits on Carbon When Republicans take control of Congress next month, top on their agenda will be undoing environmental regulations they claim will harm the economy, chief among them President Obama's plans to limit heat-trapping carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. But a new poll for The Associated Press found that six in 10 Americans, including half of all Republicans, support regulation of carbon dioxide pollution. Nearly half of Republicans said the U.S. should lead the global fight to curb climate change, even if it means taking action when other countries do not. And majorities across party lines said environmental protections \"improve economic growth and provide new jobs\" in the long run, a popular Obama administration talking point. LINK\r\nWhite House \u201916 Hillary Rodham Clinton is signaling that she will postpone making her shadow campaign official until later in 2015 than expected, according to The Washington Post. Clinton is also debating whether to even establish an exploratory committee \u2014 a placeholder organization that would allow her to raise money to pay for consultants, office space and other operating expenses \u2013 because the move would trigger financial disclosures she can now avoid.\r\nVermont\r\nWelch Votes No Rep. Peter Welch voted against the bill because it included \u201crelief for Wall Street banks\u201d and another provision \u201callowing very wealthy people to give huge, over $2 million contributions to party committees in an election cycle,\u201d he told Vermont Public Radio. LINK\r\nLeahy Takes Credit for Drug Money in Bill Aides to Sen. Patrick Leahy say the $1.1 trillion bill contains law enforcement and drug treatment grants inspired by a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee\u2019s visit to Rutland eight months ago, the Rutland Herald and Times Argus reported. LINK\r\nFood Labels Lawmakers in Washington are considering legislation that would prohibit Vermont and other states from requiring labels on foods made with genetically modified organisms unless the Food and Drug Administration finds that the products pose a safety threat. The issue was raised at a hearing held by the U.S. House Commerce Committee. Supporters of Vermont's mandatory GMO labeling law stressed the importance of giving consumers important information about the food that they buy, VPR reported. LINK\r\nFairPoint Outage\u00a0FairPoint said it was working to restore service for thousands of customers across Vermont and part of New Hampshire who've lost their high-speed Internet service,\u00a0The Associated Press\u00a0reported. Thousands of FairPoint workers in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire are on strike.\u00a0LINK\r\nEat More Kale A Vermont folk artist who became a folk hero to some after taking on the fast-food giant Chik-fil-A in a legal fight with can now legally protect the phrase \"eat more kale.\" Chik-fil-A had objected to the use of the phrase by Bo Muller-Moore of Montpelier because of its similarity to the company's trademark phrase \"eat mor chikin.\" Muller-Moore says the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted his application to trademark \"Eat more kale,\u201d AP reported.", 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://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/121214"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9776339866220951, "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"}