Bernie Sanders

Senators Lead Effort on Behalf of Estimated 175,000 Affected Gulf War Vets

11/09/2007 -- Washington, DC - U.S. Senators Robert C. Byrd, D-West Virginia, and Bernie Senders, I-Vermont, applauded the Senate’s passage of a $10,000,000 investment in research to combat Gulf War Illness. Byrd and Sanders led the effort to include the funding in the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Defense Appropriations legislation, which cleared the Senate on November 9th.    » read more »

1st Override Of A Bush Veto; Supported By Leahy, Sanders, Welch

WASHINGTON (Thursday, Nov. 8) – The U.S. Senate Thursday joined the House of Representatives in overriding President Bush’s veto of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) – the first time Congress has overridden a veto during the Bush Administration. The bipartisan Senate vote was 79 to 14 in favor of overriding the veto.

The bill authorizes water resources projects in Vermont and nationwide, which now will be subject to funding in the annual Appropriations process.    » read more »

11/08/2007 -- A solar energy plant is being built in California that will generate as much electricity as a small nuclear power plant. It will harness energy from the sun to provide electricity in a way that is economical, efficient and environmentally friendly.    » read more »

11/07/2007 -- Legislation that would phase out the use of private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan was unveiled Wednesday by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Jan Schakowsky. The bill would restore vital military functions to the military, reducing the reliance on unaccountable private security contractors in the war zones. As many as 48,000 heavily armed guards are among the private security contractors now operating in Iraq, performing sensitive functions that should be undertaken by U.S. military personnel.    » read more »

11/01/2007 -- A Senate panel on Thursday narrowly approved a global warming bill that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) opposed because it would not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases as much as scientists say is necessary to stop catastrophic changes in the Earth’s climate. “This bill is a step in the right direction, but it simply does not go far enough to do what scientists tell us must be done to stop global warming,” Sanders said. “If we are not extremely bold and aggressive, this planet faces a catastrophe in the years to come.”    » read more »

10/30/2007 -- A global warming bill that a Senate panel is scheduled to take up on Thursday carves out $324 billion for the coal industry and $232 billion for car makers. There’s not a nickel carved out for solar power, wind energy, geothermal or other alternative energy sources. “This is a rather extraordinary omission,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, a member of the subcommittee that will consider compromise legislation drafted by Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Warner.    » read more »

10/24/2007 -- A Senate panel on Wednesday took up global warming legislation. To Vermont’s own Bill McKibben, a national leader on the environment and climate change, it’s about time. “Long after the Nobel-winning reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, long after Hurricane Katrina, long after ‘An Inconvenient Truth, they're finally taking up the single biggest question that the planet faces,” he wrote. Senator Bernie Sanders, the sponsor of the strongest legislation on climate change, is a member of the subcommittee.    » read more »

10/23/2007 -- Days after he vetoed a children’s health insurance program, President Bush asked Congress for almost $196 billion that the Pentagon says is needed to keep combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year. The president says, “Our men and women on the front lines should not be caught in the middle of partisan disagreements in Washington, D.C.” Well Mr. President, neither should America’s children.    » read more »

10/17/2007 -- As a key Senate committee prepares to take up legislation to reverse global warming, Senators Bernie Sanders and Frank Lautenberg set down a set of principles that will guide their consideration of legislation. Sanders and Lautenberg both serve on a subcommittee that will consider legislation expected to be formally introduced on Thursday by Senator Joseph Lieberman, the subcommittee chairman, and Senator John Warner, the panel’s ranking Republican.    » read more »

10/16/2007 -- The richest 1 percent of Americans earned more than 21 percent of all U.S. income in 2005, according to Internal Revenue Service data. That is a big increase from 2004, when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of the nation's income. What's more, the gap between America's rich and poor is wider than at any time since the Roaring Twenties. "The time is long overdue," Senator Bernie Sanders said, "for members of Congress to look beyond the needs of their wealthy campaign contributors and begin addressing the issue of income and wealth disparity."    » read more »

10/11/2007 -- "House Joint Resolution 114 passed the House on October 10, 2002 by a vote of 296-to-133. It passed the Senate on October 11 by a vote of 77-to-23. It was signed into law by President Bush on October 16, 2002.

The resolution required the president to employ diplomatic efforts at the United Nations Security Council to "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion, and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions."    » read more »

10/03/2007 -- Vermont’s Congressional Delegation – Sen. Patrick Leahy (D), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), and Rep. Peter Welch (D) – issued the following reaction to President Bush’s veto of legislation renewing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The legislation protects insurance coverage for 6.6 million children currently enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and provides coverage for an additional 4 million children without insurance.    » read more »

10/02/2007 -- “Retired Vermont National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Michael Currier heads out looking for service members who are having trouble readjusting to civilian life. Some days, he meets with members of the clergy, soldiers' wives, parents, employers, sometimes the police. And of course, he meets with the soldiers themselves. Based in Springfield, he's looking for soldiers having trouble resuming a routine after having spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan,” began an Associated Press article on a first-of-its-kind veterans outreach program in Vermont.    » read more »

10/01/2007 -- The Senate reached final approval on Monday of a major Department of Defense policy bill that includes a provision cosponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders to create a commission to investigate U.S. wartime contracting abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. “There is already a lot of evidence that they have overcharged the taxpayers of this country. Money that should’ve been going to our soldiers has been going to make very wealthy people even wealthier,” Sanders told Vermont Public Radio.    » read more »

09/28/2007 -- The Senate tonight approved legislation cosponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders that would establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. wartime contracting abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The evidence is clear that taxpayers are being ripped off for billions of dollars in no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton and other firms,” Sanders said. “Astonishingly, we know that $9 billion spent on private contractors in Iraq is missing. We owe it to taxpayers to take a long, hard look at the conduct of contractors.”    » read more »