As the Senate debated health care reform, Senator Bernie Sanders led the fight for a strong Medicare-like public option to provide competition for private insurance companies.  President Obama went to West Point to announce a troop surge in Afghanistan, a move met with skepticism in Congress. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke ran into roadblocks in the Senate.  Fed policies were blamed for tight credit for small businesses, usurious credit card interest rates, and unacceptable unemployment, which stood at 10 percent in November, the Labor Department reported on Friday.  Sanders' effort to deny the central bank boss a second term is the subject of this week's Web video, Senator Sanders Unfiltered. 

Where Was the Fed? Sanders on Wednesday placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.  "The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few," Sanders said. "What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy."   As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.  He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not.  He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not.   He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not. To read more about the senator's stand on Bernanke, click here.  To watch Sanders' speech on the Senate floor, click here.  Sign the senator's petition here.

Where is the Rest of the World President Obama announced on Tuesday that he was ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.  "Where is the rest of the world? This is an international problem," Sanders said. "Why is the United States now going to be supplying 70 percent of the foreign troops at $100 billion a year when we are in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s?"  Regarding the costs of the war -pegged at roughly $1 million a year per soldier, Sanders noted that the United States already is $12 trillion in debt. "We have problems here at home which urgently need to be addressed.  One-quarter of our nation's children are now on food stamps, 17 percent of American workers are unemployed or underemployed, our infrastructure is collapsing and, in many states, funding for education, health resources and public services are being cut back.  While I believe that the United States and other major countries should provide support for the impoverished people of Afghanistan, I believe our main concern has to be on the needs of the American people.   For more on the senator's reaction, click here. To watch the senator's interview on MSNBC, click here.

Health Care The Senate this week opened debate on health care reform.  Sanders wrote in USA Today on Monday that the legislation's major weakness is the lack of strong cost-containment provisions that could begin to control soaring health care costs. "If Congress is not prepared to go forward with a single-payer program, which would be the most cost-effective approach, at the very least there should be a widely accessible public option. A strong, Medicare-type, premium-based public option is an effective way to keep private insurance companies honest by providing them with real competition." The newspaper editorial said public option in versions of the legislation now before Congress "would be a modest plus, but if it drops out, that should not be a reason to torpedo changes that will improve millions of lives." To read the senator's editorial rebuttal, click here.

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