Health care reform and the economy will top the agenda when Congress returns from recess. Going into the Labor Day weekend, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate rose in August to a 26-year high of 9.7 percent. Meanwhile, the White House announced that President Obama will renew his call for health care reform with a speech to a special joint session of Congress. Republicans have spurned the president’s calls for bipartisanship. "It does not surprise me that the Republicans have not come on board. I don't believe they ever had any intention to," Sen. Bernie Sanders told Rachel Maddow.

Seeking Reform "It does not surprise me that the Republicans have not come on board. I don't believe they ever had any intention to," Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Monday.  Looking ahead, Sanders said: "if some of the conservative democrats don't want to vote for final passage (of a health insurance reform bill) because we have a strong public option, taking on the insurance companies and drug companies, fine.  All we need is 50 votes plus the vice president. That is the preferred route. If you can't do that, then you use reconciliation and that's a harder approach to bring forth comprehensive reform." Watch the video here.

Medical Fraud The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer agreed to pay a staggering $2.3 billion after it encouraged doctors to prescribe its drugs for uses and dosages that the Food and Drug Administration had specifically declined to approve due to safety concerns.  "What we have seen for many years is the systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies, and private for-profit hospitals ripping off the American people and the taxpayers of this country to the tune of many billions of dollars," Sanders said recently regarding his anti-fraud amendment to health care reform legislation.  Read more here.

Unfiltered: Afghanistan "What I'm not hearing is the national debate about what our exit strategy is going to be (in Afghanistan).  We've been there now for eight years - how many more years will we be there.  What are our goals? Originally we went in there to find Osama bin Laden, we have not accomplished that.  Is it our goal to rebuild a very primitive poor society which has long resisted intervention, which has one of the highest illiteracy rates?  Are we going to create a Jeffersonian democracy there, is that our goal?  I think not," Sen. Bernie Sanders said in this week's Unfiltered web video from Brave New Films.  To watch, click here.  For updates on submitting your own question and when the next video comes out, join the senator's Facebook page here.

The U.K. Care Myth Sen. Sanders joined a delegation of members of Congress in a trip to the United Kingdom this week to meet with their counterparts in Parliament.  Sanders noted in his weekly "Brunch with Bernie" segment on the nationally syndicated Thom Hartmann radio show that in Great Britain he felt "a real sense of outrage across the political spectrum - Labour, Tory, etc. - about the attacks on their system by the right wing in of the United States.  They have created a high-quality, cost-effective system that they are proud of.  They are very angry that people in the right wing are lying about their system."  Read an Associated Press story on the British health care system here.

Fed Secrecy U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska recently ruled that names of financial institutions that took more than $2 trillion in secret emergency loans from the Federal Reserve must be made public. The central bank wanted the judge to stay her order until the U.S. Court of Appeals can review her ruling in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Bloomberg News. "What has the Fed got to hide?" asked Senator Bernie Sanders. "The time has come for the Fed to stop stonewalling and hand this information over to the public.  Trillions of taxpayer dollars have been put at risk by the Fed propping up the banking sector and large corporations without the approval of Congress or the administration.  The very least the Fed can do is tell the American people who received this money, how much they received, and what they are doing with it.  This money does not belong to the Fed.  It belongs to the American people."  Read more here.