releases: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/121314
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| 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 | legacy | News December 13 Saturday, December 13, 2014 Senator Sanders Senate Sets Saturday Vote on Spending Bill The 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 “comes nowhere close to reflecting the needs and priorities of the American people," WCAX-TV, Politico, National Journal, The Nation and WAMC-FM reported. LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, VIDEO Wall 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. “If they win they make a lot of money. If they lose the taxpayers bail them out. That is totally crazy,” Sanders explained to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. “Anyone who thinks that Congress regulates Wall Street has got it backwards,” Sanders said in reports by The Associated Press and USA Today. Sanders’ 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 Senate Passes Bloated Pentagon Budget The Senate gave final approval to a $560 billion defense spending bill on Friday. “I just don't think we can spend all that much on defense and ignore the needs of our kids, ignore the needs of our elderly, ignore the needs of our working families, of our infrastructure, of education. We've got to get our priorities right," said Sen. Sanders on WCAX-TV. He voted against the bill. LINK, VIDEO Sanders Named Ranking Member on Budget Panel Senate 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, Bloomberg,The Hill and PJ Media reported. His appointment is “raising eyebrows inside the beltway,” International Business Times reported. “At 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. LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK Veterans Suicides Veterans 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 reported. "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. LINK, LINK Agenda for America Sen. Sanders has detailed a 12-point economic agenda to rebuild America’s middle class by creating jobs and raising wages. “The 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,” Sanders said in an interview for “The Independents” on Fox Business News. VIDEO Eat More Kale A 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. “The 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,” Sen. Sanders said in The Guardian. LINK A Great Intellect In speech after speech on Friday,. senators praised the 36-year career of Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reported. Sen. Sanders called him “perhaps the greatest intellect” in the Senate. LINK Best Books “We face two immense crises – the decline of the American middle class and global warming,” Sen. Sanders wrote in The Wall Street Journal. Sanders counted Bob Herbert’s "Losing Our Way" and Bill McKibben’s "Oil and Honey" among his favorite books of 2014. LINK Holiday Dinners Sanders had planned to make it to Bennington Friday to host a Christmas dinner at the Unitarian Universalist Church on School Street, but the budget battle in congress kept him in Washington,., according to the Bennington Banner. LINK World Iran The 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 reported. LINK National Insurers Avoid Up to $100 Billion in Taxes Life insurers are taking advantage of loopholes that allow them to pull cash away from required reserves to pay for bonuses, shareholder dividends, acquisitions and other projects, and because of complicated accounting maneuvers, the money escapes federal taxation, The New York Times said. The companies have used the maneuvers to save as much as $100 billion in federal taxes, much of it in the last several years. LINK Democratic 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 — 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’s aides on the campaign finance proposal, Politico reported. LINK No 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 White House ’16, 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, “keep your powder dry,” The Washington Post reported. LINK Vermont Shumlin: Resolve FairPoint Strikes Gov. 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, The Associated Press reported. Shumlin 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. LINK | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |