Sen. Bernie Sanders was in Havana, Cuba, on Friday as part of a congressional delegation. The itinerary included a Saturday visit to military prison at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. There was another disappointing jobs report on Friday when the Labor Department said real unemployment in January was 12.7 percent.  The bad news came one day after Senate Republicans once again blocked an extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. A five-year farm bill was passed by the Senate on Tuesday. It will cut nearly $9 billion in food stamps at a time when poverty in the United States is at an all-time high. And as sports fans around the world focused on the Winter Olympics, Sanders placed a statement in Friday’s Congressional Record praising a big delegation of Vermont athletes representing the United States in Sochi, Russia.

Cuba Sanders departed late Thursday on a congressional delegation trip to Cuba. The senators will discuss human rights, trade and health care issues in Havana and also travel to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. Sanders supports President Obama’s effort to close the military prison. During the Havana leg of the trip, the delegation plans to meet with Alan Gross, an American arrested in 2009 while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development to set up Internet access for Cubans.  Gross is serving a 15-year sentence. His case has become an obstacle to improving ties between the United States and Cuba, which have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1961. Sanders favors normalized relations between the two nations.  Read more

Unemployment Hiring was surprisingly weak in January for the second straight month. The Labor Department said employers added 113,000 jobs, less than last year’s average monthly gain of 194,000 jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 6.6 percent, the lowest since October 2008. But the real unemployment rate was 12.7 percent counting those forced to settle for part-time work and those who gave up hunting for a job, according to the Labor Department. The January jobs report came out one day after Senate Republicans blocked another attempt to revive benefits for 1.7 million people whose benefits have run out so far this year. The proposed three-month extension of the jobless-aid program, which expired Dec. 28, was supported by all members of the Democratic caucus, including Sanders. Only four Republicans supported the measure. One more vote would have provided the 60 needed to advance the bill. 

Farm Bill The Senate, by a vote of 68-32, passed a five-year farm bill on Tuesday.  Sanders said the bill will bring greater stability to Vermont dairy farmers and also encourage increased access to healthy, local foods. He faulted the bill for cutting food stamps by $8.6 billion over the next decade. But the reduction was less than the $40 billion in cuts that House Republicans had demanded.  In Vermont, moreover, Sanders was assured by Gov. Peter Shumlin that he will work with the state Legislature to make up the difference for families and seniors that receive both food stamps and home heating assistance. Sanders called his support for the bill “a very difficult vote.” Read more

Tar Sands Pipeline Secretary of State John Kerry has become the focus of Keystone XL pipeline opponents. Kerry will advise President Obama on whether to allow construction of the pipeline from the tar sands region of Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico coast in Texas.  A State Department environmental impact study claimed the pipeline wouldn’t contribute to climate change based on a notion that Canada would still extract the dirtiest oil on the planet no matter how it is shipped to world markets. Sen. Sanders, who opposes the pipeline, said he will call Kerry to discuss his environmental concerns. “Given his pronouncements when he was senator, I think it's a no-brainer to suggest that this pipeline should not go forward,” Sanders told The Boston Globe on Wednesday. Read The Boston Globe article

USPS Sanders wants to let post offices provide basic banking services like cashing checks and issuing money orders. The Postal Service’s inspector general said in a report last week that the USPS could offer prepaid bank cards or loans to the 68 million adults who currently don’t have bank accounts. Sanders is the sponsor of legislation that would let the Postal Service expand business services.  Instead of cutting services, “the alternative is to bring the Postal Service into the 21^st century and one of the areas we should be looking at is banking,” Sanders said on Wednesday. His measure also would relieve the Postal Service of a requirement to put $5 billion a year into an account for future retirees’ health benefits. That fund already has more than enough money socked away to handle the health care costs. Without that onerous and unique requirement, the Postal Service would have posted a profit last year. 

Debt Ceiling In a speech on Monday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the Treasury has only a few days before it runs out of money to pay the nation’s bills. The situation is particularly dire this month, he said, because the government has to begin sending out tax refunds and that will draw down its cash faster. There have been rumblings among House Republicans who want to exact concessions in exchange for supporting any measure to raise the limit on how much the government may borrow to pay its debts. “Ain’t going to happen,” Sanders declared on Wednesday. “There’s nothing to discuss.” Listen to Sanders on The Ed Schultz Show

Heroin Crisis Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's death last Sunday from an apparent heroin overdose focused attention on addiction and substance abuse treatment. In Vermont in 2012, 914 people were treated for heroin abuse in Vermont, up from 654 the year before. “One of the problems in Vermont is you have waiting lists of people who want to break the habit, want to break their addiction, and we can't treat them when they want to do it," Sanders told The Huffington Post in an interview posted on Friday. "So you tell them, come back in six months. Well, in six months, they might not be prepared to take that step. I will tell you that in Vermont it is a very, very serious problem. Read more in The Huffington Post

College Costs Sanders co-sponsored a bill to bring down college costs. Sen. Brian Schatz, a bill’s lead sponsor, said on Tuesday that it is troubling that the federal government has made $66 billion in profits on student loans.

Veterans Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Sanders on Tuesday urged Senate passage of legislation that would repeal military pension cuts and enhance veterans’ health care and other benefits. “What this legislation is about is keeping promises and getting our priorities right,” Sanders told a news conference where he was flanked by more than 20 veterans groups, including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The bulk of Sanders’ $24 billion measure is paid for with savings from a fund for wars that are winding down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Read more

Winter Olympics As the winter games got underway, Sen. Bernie Sanders congratulated Vermonters who will be representing the United States. “Vermont has a long tradition of excellence in winter sports that we owe partly to our state’s cold climate and mountainous terrain, but also to an outdoor spirit that dates back generations,” Sanders said in a statement in the Congressional Record. Read the Congressional Record