{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/121314", "News December 13", "2014-12-13", "2014", "2014-12", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "www.sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "News December 13\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\tSaturday, December 13, 2014\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSenator Sanders\r\nSenate Sets Saturday Vote on Spending Bill\u00a0The Senate moved closer to passing a $1.1 trillion bill to fund almost all of the government through most of 2015, but a late-night maneuver by Sen. Ted Cruz delayed a final vote on the spending deal and forced the Senate to meet on Saturday. Sen. Bernie Sanders opposes the bill that he said \u201ccomes nowhere close to reflecting the needs and priorities of the American people,\"\u00a0WCAX-TV, Politico, National Journal,\u00a0The Nation\u00a0and WAMC-FM\u00a0reported. LINK, LINK,\u00a0LINK,\u00a0LINK, VIDEO\r\nWall Street Banks Wall Street lobbyists tucked a provision in the bill to put taxpayers on the hook if risky investments boomerang, Sen. Sanders warned on KTVM-TV in Butte, Montana, and other NBC News affiliates. \u201cIf they win they make a lot of money. If they lose the taxpayers bail them out. That is totally crazy,\u201d Sanders explained to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. \u201cAnyone who thinks that Congress regulates Wall Street has got it backwards,\u201d Sanders said in reports by The Associated Press and USA Today. Sanders\u2019 effort to delete the provision was unlikely to succeed, The New York Post reported. Sanders and another critic of the bill, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, declined to say whether they would filibuster, The Washington Post reported. LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, VIDEO, VIDEO\r\nSenate Passes Bloated Pentagon Budget\u00a0The Senate gave final approval to a $560 billion defense spending bill on Friday. \u201cI\u00a0just don't think we can\u00a0spend all that much on defense\u00a0and ignore the needs of our\u00a0kids, ignore the needs of our\u00a0elderly, ignore the needs of\u00a0our working families, of our\u00a0infrastructure, of education.\u00a0We've got to get our\u00a0priorities right,\" said Sen. Sanders on WCAX-TV. He voted against the bill.\u00a0LINK,\u00a0VIDEO\u00a0\u00a0\r\nSanders Named Ranking Member on Budget Panel\u00a0Senate Democrats appointed independent Sen. Sanders to lead their caucus on the chamber's budget committee next year, the Burlington Free Press, The Wall Street Journal,\u00a0Bloomberg,The Hill\u00a0and\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0reported. His appointment is \u201craising eyebrows inside the beltway,\u201d International Business Times reported. \u201cAt a time when the middle class is disappearing and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we need a budget which reflects the needs of working families and not Wall Street and the top 1 percent,\" Sanders said. \u00a0LINK, LINK,\u00a0LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK,\u00a0LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nVeterans Suicides\u00a0Veterans groups are blasting a move by a Republican senator intended to scuttle a veterans' suicide prevention bill. Sen. Sanders said the Senate should pass the bill, National Journal and Military.com\u00a0reported.\u00a0\"In my view the goal is to make sure that every veteran in this country who is having problems is able to get access to the medical help they need and get that mental health care immediately without bureaucratic or financial impediments,\" Sanders said.\u00a0LINK, LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nAgenda for America Sen. Sanders has detailed a 12-point economic agenda to rebuild America\u2019s middle class by creating jobs and raising wages. \u201cThe burning issue of our time is the reality that for the last 40 years the middle class has been disappearing and we have more people living in poverty than at almost any time in history,\u201d Sanders said in an interview for \u201cThe Independents\u201d on Fox Business News. VIDEO\r\nEat More Kale\u00a0A small Vermont company beat fast-food giant Chik-fil-A in a trademark battle. The fast-food corporation filed a complaint trying to stop Vermont's \"Eat More Kale\" t-shirt maker from using the phrase.\u00a0\u201cThe American people are getting tired of the greed and recklessness of large corporations which use their size and power to push individuals and small businesses around,\u201d Sen. Sanders said in The Guardian. LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nA Great Intellect In speech after speech on Friday,. senators praised the 36-year career of Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the\u00a0Detroit Free Press\u00a0reported.\u00a0Sen. Sanders called him \u201cperhaps the greatest intellect\u201d in the Senate.\u00a0LINK\u00a0\u00a0\r\nBest Books \u201cWe face two immense crises \u2013 the decline of the American middle class and global warming,\u201d Sen. Sanders wrote in The Wall Street Journal. Sanders counted Bob Herbert\u2019s \"Losing Our Way\" and Bill McKibben\u2019s \"Oil and Honey\" among his favorite books of 2014. LINK\r\nHoliday Dinners Sanders had planned to make it to Bennington Friday to host a Christmas dinner at the Unitarian Universalist\u00a0Church on School Street, but the budget battle in congress kept him in Washington,., according to the Bennington Banner. LINK\r\nWorld\r\nIran\u00a0The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned U.S. businesses to be on the alert for a sophisticated Iranian hacking operation whose targets include defense contractors, energy firms and educational institutions, Reuters\u00a0reported.\u00a0LINK\r\nNational\r\nInsurers Avoid Up to $100 Billion in Taxes\u00a0Life insurers are taking advantage of loopholes that allow them to pull cash away from required reserves to pay for bonuses,\u00a0shareholder dividends, acquisitions and other projects, and because of complicated accounting maneuvers, the money escapes federal taxation,\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0said. The companies have used the maneuvers to save as much as $100 billion in federal taxes, much of it in the last several years.\u00a0LINK\r\nDemocratic Lawyer Crafted Cash Grab A powerful Democratic lawyer helped craft a provision that was slipped into a year-end spending bill allowing political parties to raise huge new pools of cash \u2014 including some for legal fees that are likely going to be collected by his own firm. Marc Elias, a partner at the Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie, was called in to advise outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid\u2019s aides on the campaign finance proposal, Politico reported. LINK\u00a0\r\nNo Jail for Reporter Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided he will not force a New York Times reporter to reveal his confidential source in a high-profile leak investigation that has pitted the Obama administration against the press for years, according to a person familiar with the decision. A federal judge had set a Tuesday deadline for the Justice Department to say whether it intended to compel Times reporter James Risen to identify his source in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA official who was accused of leaking classified information. LINK\r\nWhite House \u201916, Republicans Jeb Bush and his emissaries are sending increasingly strong signals that the former Florida governor is gearing up for a 2016 presidential campaign, with associates saying he could announce his intentions within a month. Bush recently e-mailed major Republican donors asking them to, as several of them put it, \u201ckeep your powder dry,\u201d The Washington Post reported. LINK\r\nVermont\r\nShumlin: Resolve FairPoint Strikes\u00a0Gov. Peter Shumlin is calling for a quick resolution of the strike by unionized workers for FairPoint Communications, saying \"enough is enough\" on a recent spate of phone and Internet outages on the company's system,\u00a0The Associated Press\u00a0reported.\u00a0Shumlin on Friday wrote to FairPoint CEO Paul Sunu, urging the company to return to the bargaining table with the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers units that represent about 1,700 FairPoint workers in northern New England.\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://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/121314"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.818953849375248, "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"}