During Tuesday's State of the Union Address, President Obama focused on income inequality in America. Sen. Bernie Sanders welcomed the growing awareness that the gap between the super rich and the rest of us is greater now than at any time since 1928. Sanders raised red flags over Obama's new overture to Republicans to "reform" (code for cut) Social Security. The president's call to eliminate oil tax breaks was welcomed by Sanders. At a Capitol Hill rally earlier Tuesday, he had called for eliminating all fossil fuel subsidies. And with 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day, Sanders on Thursday introduced legislation to reauthorize the Older Americans Act.  He recapped the week on the "Brunch with Bernie" segment Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program.

State of the Union "The American people are beginning to catch on that there`s something fundamentally wrong in our society when so few have so much and so many have so little," Sanders said after Obama made economic fairness a key theme in Tuesday's State of the Union address. The senator praised the president for stressing the need to create millions of good-paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels. Watch the senator's reaction to the speech on MSNBC and Current TV.

Social Security The president's renewed willingness to work with Republicans to "reform" Social Security worried Sanders. "You know what that really means? Let`s be frank, that means cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If he proposes that, I will be leading the opposition. He should have gotten up there and said, ‘You know what, in the midst of a terrible recession, I promise you we are not going to cut one nickel of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We are going to move toward deficit reduction, we are going to do it in a way that is fair and responsible. Cut military spending. Ask the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes and end these absurd corporate loopholes.' "

The Older Americans Act Sanders, chairman of the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, on Thursday introduced a bill to reauthorize the law which provides Meals on Wheels, home-care, job-training, and legal services. One in five seniors survives on just $7,500 a year. Investing in the programs is not only the moral thing to do, it also makes financial sense, he said. Meals on Wheels has calculated that it can feed someone for a year for what it costs for one day in a hospital or 10 days in a nursing home. Read more on the bill. Read more in The Nation. 

No More Tax Breaks for Big Oil Addressing several hundred demonstrators at a Capitol Hill rally on Tuesday, Sanders called for an end to tax breaks and other subsidies for the enormously-profitable oil and coal industries. "I'm going to introduce legislation to do just that," he told demonstrators clad in black-and-white striped referee shirts who rallied to "blow the whistle" on members of Congress whose campaigns are bankrolled by Big Oil. Ending tax breaks and subsidies for oil and gas companies would reduce the deficit by more than $40 billion over the next 10 years.  Watch  the rally.

Citizens United A look at how an infamous Supreme Court decision changed presidential elections was on ugly display in Florida during the past week. TV viewers were bombarded with multimillion-dollar Super PAC ads by backers of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Florida Rep. Ted Deutch is the House sponsor of a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling in Citizens United. The same proposal is sponsored in the Senate by Sanders, Deutch noted in a Miami Herald column.  Read the column.