Senator Sanders

Senate Nears Fiscal Deal Sen. Bernie Sanders was optimistic on Monday as prospects for ending a two-week-old government shutdown and extending the nation’s debt limit seemed to take a positive turn, WCAX-TV reported. “I am pleased that, finally, the Senate Republican leadership understands that this crisis must be resolved.” Sanders told the Burlington Free Press.  Sanders stressed that Senate Democrats already made a huge concession in agreeing to continue across-the-board spending cuts, he said in an MSNBC interview cited by The Washington Times.  LINK, LINK, VIDEO, VIDEO

Is a 1.5% COLA Too Generous? With Social Security and veterans’ benefits expected to go up by only 1.5 percent in January, congressional Republicans and some Democrats would cut future benefits by changing how inflation is calculated. Sen. Sanders warned that adopting a so-called chained consumer price index would cut future benefits, WVNY-TV and WFFF-TV reported. He told WCAX-TV that he wouldn’t support cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid as part of any deal to reopen the government.The Senate veterans’ committee chairman said he finds it "incomprehensible that any serious person would believe that a 1.5 percent COLA is too generous,” Common Dreams and The Reno Dispatch reported. LINK, LINK, VIDEO, VIDEO, VIDEO

The Next Citizens United The Supreme Court is weighing a decision to throw out aggregate donor limits on individual campaign contributions, which would inevitably increase the amount of money from high-dollar donors flowing political candidates' campaigns, Amy Goodman wrote for Truthout. She quoted Sen. Sanders telling a rally outside the Supreme Court that “freedom of speech, in my view, does not mean the freedom to buy the United States government.” LINK

Obamacare Wendell Potter, who testified at a hearing last week chaired by Sen. Sanders, wrote in The Huffington Post, "Obamacare is not going to be defunded. It will not even be delayed. It is and will continue to be the law of the land." LINK

Sanders Headed South Pending action on the meltdown in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders is slated to go to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina from Wednesday through Friday. The trip is being organized with help from South Forward, a new organization trying to help elect left-leaning candidates to mostly local offices in the South, the Burlington Free Press reported. LINK

World

China, World Must ‘De-Americanize’ The Chinese government news agency Xinhua said this week that as American politicians engage in continued brinksmanship over the possibility of a debt default the world should look to "de-Americanise" in order to head off future economic problems caused by congressional divisions in the United States, The Telegraph reported. Global economists are concerned that a default on the nation's debts would cause a "massive" economic disruption. LINK

Al-Qaeda Suspect Headed to Court A senior al-Qaeda suspect captured in Libya by United States special forces this month has been transferred to the U.S., where he will faces charges in a New York court, Reuters reported. LINK

National

Senate Leaders in Striking Distance of a Deal Top Senate leaders said they were within striking distance of an agreement Monday to reopen the federal government and defuse a looming debt crisis just days before the U.S. could run out of money to pay its bills. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said leaders had made "tremendous progress" toward a deal and that he was hopeful Tuesday would be a "bright day." The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, seconded Mr. Reid's optimism. The White House postponed a planned afternoon meeting of congressional leaders with President Barack Obama, saying the schedule change would give Senate leaders time to hash out a deal. The latest proposal would reopen the government at current spending levels until Jan. 15 and extend the federal borrowing limit until early February, according to The Wall Street Journal. LINK

U.S. Defaulted Twice Before America has briefly stiffed some of its creditors on at least two occasions. Once, the young nation had a dramatic excuse: The Treasury was empty, the White House and Capitol were charred ruins, even the troops fighting the War of 1812 weren't getting paid. A second time, in 1979, was a back-office glitch that ended up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The Treasury Department blamed the mishap on a crush of paperwork partly caused by lawmakers who — this will sound familiar — bickered too long before raising the nation's debt limit, The Associated Press reported. LINK

Poll: Republicans Losing No-Win Game Entering the third week of a disruptive government shutdown, a new joint poll from The Washington Post and ABC News found that 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling ongoing negotiations. LINK

House Dems Decry Rule Change House Democrats condemned a rule change adopted by Republicans just before the government shut down on Oct. 1, arguing it shows GOP leaders closed agencies intentionally. Under long-standing House rules, any member of the chamber can bring a measure to the floor. But Republicans altered the rule governing legislation to fund the government so that only House Majority Leader Eric Cantor holds the power to make such a motion, The Hill reported. LINK

NSA Knows Who You Know The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links, The Washington Post reported. LINK

State-Run Health Exchanges Gain Traction At least 38,000 people have signed up for new health plans in the state-run insurance exchanges that opened Oct. 1, while more than 100,000 have completed applications and are close to finishing the process, according to state data. The data, tabulated by The Wall Street Journal, show that health-law supporters are still a long way off from making a significant dent in the nation's uninsured population, but suggest that the prospect of buying insurance without being asked about medical history has drawn considerable interest across the nation. LINK

Retirement Postponed Older Americans not only are delaying their retirement plans, they’re also embracing the fact that it won’t necessarily mark a complete exit from the workforce. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Monday found 82 percent of workers 50 and older say it is at least somewhat likely they will work for pay in retirement. And 47 percent of them now expect to retire later than they previously thought — on average nearly three years beyond their estimate when they were 40. Men, racial minorities, parents of minor children, those earning less than $50,000 a year and those without health insurance were more likely to put off their plans. LINK

Vermont

Federal Courts Hit by Shutdown The government shutdown is slowing the wheels of justice in federal courts by delaying civil cases, forcing prosecutors to operate with skeleton staffs and raising uncertainty about the system’s immediate future if the stalemate continues, the Burlington Free Press reported. Money to run Vermont’s three federal courthouses — in Brattleboro, Burlington and Rutland — will be gone as of Thursday, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday. LINK

Housing Assistance Stopped by Shutdown The federal fiscal crisis is affecting Wall Street — Wall Street in downtown Springfield, that is. Housing Vermont, the owner of the 13-unit Wall Street apartment building, won’t be getting a month’s worth of rental subsidy because of cutbacks at USDA Rural Development. A month’s subsidy is $10,000, said Kenn Sassorossi, vice president of partner relations for Housing Vermont. “We’re not kicking anyone out and we’re not increasing anyone’s rent,” Sassorossi told the Rutland Herald. “But there are real-life repercussions to the budget crisis.” LINK

Boost for Small Airports Vermont's small airports are benefiting from changes in the way the federal government has distributed discretionary aviation funding, according to the Burlington Free Press. In the wake of mandatory federal budget cuts known as "sequestration," federal agencies have altered spending priorities to push more money to small airport projects. LINK