The good news Friday that unemployment dropped again in December was welcome, but Sen. Bernie Sanders said there is still a long way to go as the country emerges from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. At a meeting Tuesday in White River Junction, Vt., Sanders called a U.S. Postal Service proposal to slash 100,000 jobs "insane." On Tuesday, the senator went on The Colbert Report to talk about his constitutional amendment to curb corporate campaign cash.

The Older Americans Act

After a meeting on Friday with his Seniors Advisory Council, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced that he will introduce a bill to reauthorize the Older Americans Act. Sanders is the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging. His panel has jurisdiction over the landmark law which supports Meals on Wheels and other programs for seniors. Originally enacted in 1965, the act was the first initiative by the federal government to provide comprehensive assistance to seniors allowing them to remain independent in their homes and communities. 

Jobs 

The Bureau of Labor statistics announced on Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December and that the U.S. added roughly 200,000 jobs. "The trend is positive but we have a long way to go," Sanders said. He said that the real unemployment rate is more than 15 percent when those forced into part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work are counted.  He called that "a real crisis." He renewed his call for the federal government to invest in roads and bridges and other projects to replace the country's aging and crumbling infrastructure.

U.S. Postal Service 

More than 450 people packed a meeting on Wednesday at White River Junction, Vt., to oppose closing a mail sorting center there as part of a nationwide plan to cut costs by slashing jobs. "It makes zero sense at all to be shutting down this processing plant, cutting jobs and slowing down mail service throughout our region," Sanders told the crowd at the public meeting. "Clearly, we need changes in the post office so that it becomes a robust institution in the digital world, but I believe we can make those changes without slashing jobs."  Sanders, the author of legislation called the Postal Service Protection Act, said reforming the mail delivery system will be one of the first orders of business after Congress reconvenes later this month.

Manufacturing Jobs 

U.S. manufacturers are hiring again but paying a new generation of blue-collar workers, even those protected by unions, $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on their payrolls, according to a New York Times report. "During the Congressional debates over the North American Free Trade Agreement, permanent normal trade relations with China and other ‘free trade' agreements, corporate America and its representatives told us how beneficial these deals would be for the American worker. Some of us never believed those arguments. Now the results are in," Sanders wrote in a letter to the editor published on Friday. "The time is now to rethink our disastrous trade policies. The time is now to prevent the pauperization of America's working class," Sanders said.

Saving American Democracy 

Corporations should not be allowed to spend unlimited, undisclosed amounts of money to influence political campaigns. "This is a tremendous attack on what American democracy is supposed to be about," Sanders said Tuesday in an interview on The Colbert Report. More than 150,000 people have signed an online petition supporting Sanders' constitutional amendment to undo a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that opened the floodgates to corporate campaign cash. Watch The Colbert Report.

Saving Social Security 

Congress quietly made a critical change in how Social Security is funded by extending a payroll tax cut, according to The Washington Post. "For the first time in the program's history, tens of billions of dollars from the government's general pool of revenue are being funneled to the Social Security trust fund to make up for the revenue lost to the tax cut."  Sanders had cited the same concern when he was one of 10 senators to vote against the bill. "Working families need tax relief to help them survive in this terrible economy," he said, "but diverting billions of dollars from Social Security to provide that tax relief is wrong. Read  the article.