Senator Sanders

No to Social Security Cuts National labor leaders are warning President Barack Obama against including damaging cuts to Social Security and Medicare in any bipartisan budget agreement.  "I and others have got to do everything that we can to make sure that we do not see cuts in Social Security,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told Salon. LINK

Sanders Named to Budget Panel Sen. Sanders was named to a conference committee designated to hash out differences between House and Senate-passed budgets. Sanders told Vermont Public Radio that one of his goals on the committee is to protect programs that are priorities for working families. “There are some good people on the conference committee,” syndicated radio host Nicole Sandler said on WWRL-AM in New York, N.Y. She mentioned Sen. Sanders. AUDIO,AUDIO

Crazy People As the deadline neared for defaulting on the nation’s debts, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had vowed not to be “taken in by these crazy people.” At one point, he squelched a proposal by Sen. Susan Collins. “My goal was to maintain cohesion with my caucus and the White House … Now my caucus is just as varied as a caucus could be. I have Bernie Sanders, I have Mary Landrieu. I mean, they have different interests in the world. But they had had enough of this,” Reid told The Huffington Post. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said “Bernie Sanders and Mark Pryor are staying on the same page.”LINK, VIDEO

The Fed Democrats’ support of Janet Yellen to chair the central bank coupled with the lukewarm reception of Larry Summers, meant that Summers’ Senate confirmation would be a tough fight. In September Sen. Sanders decried Summers: “What the American people want now is a Fed chairman prepared to stand up to the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street — not a Wall Street insider.”  Summers later withdrew his name for consideration, Becca Balint wrote in theBrattleboro Reformer. LINK

Vermont High School Concert Sen. Sanders is hosting a special concert at Montpelier High School on Saturday featuring 10 high school choruses from Vermont, WCAX-TV and WPTZ-TV reported. LINK, LINK, VIDEO

World

Assad Says He's Not Leaving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a television interview that aired Monday that he would not leave office as part of any peace deal between warring parties, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Arab League and United Nations envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, was expected to meet with Assad and other Syrian officials next week after holding talks with regional powers. LINK

Drone Strikes Kill More Civilians than U.S. Admits, Rights Groups Say Two influential human rights groups say they have freshly documented dozens of civilian deaths in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, contradicting assertions by the Obama administration that such casualties are rare, The Washington Post reported. LINK

National

Unemployment The official U.S unemployment rate ticked down to 7.2 percent in September when the economy added 148,000 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistic reported Tuesday. The report said 13.8 percent of the workforce was unemployed counting those forced to settle for part-time jobs and those who gave up looking for work. The September jobs report, which was originally scheduled to be released on Oct. 4, was delayed by the 16-day government shutdown. LINK

Obama: 'No Excuse' for Health Care Web Problems President Obama on Monday said there was "no excuse" for problems with the administration's online rollout of health care insurance exchanges, The Associated Press reported. In a speech, the president guaranteed that everyone who wants to obtain insurance through the exchanges will be able to, even if they must enroll offline.  LINK

Sebelius to Testify on Capitol Hill Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will testify in front of Congress about the bungled rollout of a website allowing people to purchase healthcare under the newly created insurance exchanges, Reuters reported. LINK

VA Backlog Veterans Affairs tallies show the claims backlog held steady during the two-week furlough period. The VA’s backlog of claims 125-days-old or greater has fallen to 411,704 as of Oct. 19, down from 421,793 on Sept. 28, according to the VA. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said in testimony before Congress that claims processors were losing ground during the shutdown, but the net negative impact didn’t appear, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK

Shutdown's Biggest Toll: Less Confident Consumers Washington's misadventures have extracted a historically high toll on America's confidence. Inevitably, a feeling that the nation's leaders are botching the job of managing the government's finances leaves Americans fearing that the ripple effects will spread out beyond Washington to their workplaces and neighborhoods, according to The Wall Street Journal. LINK

Major Damage to Republicans The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to Republican’s image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Eight in 10 Americans say they disapprove of the shutdown. Two in three Republicans or independents who lean Republican share a negative view of the impasse. And even a majority of those who support the tea party movement disapprove. An overwhelming majority of Americans say the budget dispute damaged the U.S. economy and the nation’s image in the world. LINK

Security Check Now Starts Long Before You Fly  The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment information. The new measures give the government greater authority to use travelers’ data for domestic airport screenings. Previously that level of scrutiny applied only to individuals entering the United States. The prescreening, some of which is already taking place, is described in documents the T.S.A. released to comply with government regulations about the collection and use of individuals’ data, but the details of the program have not been publicly announced, according to The New York Times. LINK

New Jersey Drops Gay Marriage Appeal New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced Monday that his administration would drop a court appeal to same-sex marriage, The New York Times reported. Gay couples were legally allowed to wed in New Jersey on Monday after a ruling by a state court. LINK

Court to Rule on Death Penalty Policies The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up a case that could limit how states set death penalty policies based on a determination of mental health, The Washington Postreported. LINK

Vermont

Vermont Health Connect Glitches State officials say the state’s online health insurance marketplace is improving even as some technology flaws persist. Vermont is one of 14 states that opted to design its own marketplace, but it has not fared much better than the problem-plagued national website. Load times are slow, the registration process often becomes stuck or error messages are received by users, Vermont Press Bureau reported. LINK

Guns in Burlington The Burlington City Council on Monday voted to allow police to seize firearms in cases of suspected domestic abuse, require safe gun storage using trigger locks or locked containers and prohibit firearms in bars and other establishments with liquor licenses. A fourth provision, which would have created a permit system for concealed carry of guns, did not pass, the Burlington Free Press reported. LINK

Shutdown Disrupts Brewers Vital federal permits, delayed by the government shutdown, disrupted local brewers counting on the paperwork necessary to order ingredients and sell beer, the Burlington Free Press wrote. LINK

Solar Power Environment America ranked Vermont ninth in the nation in per capita solar installations. “This tracks with our data at the Public Service Department showing strong growth in solar energy and other technologies … With our state’s goal of getting to 90 percent renewable energy by 2050, solar energy is a critical part of our energy mix,” Darren Springer, the department’s deputy commissioner and a former top aide to Sen. Sanders, wrote in a commentary for vtdigger.org. LINK