The Week in Review
President Obama on Wednesday asked Congress to give him new powers to wage military operations against the Islamic State militant group. Sen. Bernie Sanders wants clearer limits on combat troops. During an appearance Monday at The Brookings Institution, Sanders became the first senator to say he would not attend a March 3 speech to a joint session of Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At a Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sanders laid bare attempts by Republicans in Congress to cut Social Security benefits.
War Powers Resolution Goes Too Far The “brutal and dangerous” terrorist organization must be defeated, Sanders said, but he will not support the broadly-worded resolution without clearer limits on committing U.S. ground troops to combat missions. He renewed his call for Saudi Arabia, with the world’s third largest military budget, and other Muslim nations in the region to take more responsibility for the fight against ISIS.
No to Netanyahu House Speaker John Boehner's invitation for the Israeli prime minister to talk about Iran’s nuclear program came without consulting the White House. “What Speaker Boehner has done is politicize the situation in a way that's unprecedented and creates a dangerous situation for American foreign policy,” Bernie said.
Bernie at Brookings Sanders laid out his Agenda for America during a speech and question-and-answer session at the preeminent Washington think tank. He spoke about reversing a 40-year decline in wages and increasing wealth and income inequality. He advocated a higher minimum wage, tuition-free college for freshmen and sophomores, and a $1 trillion infrastructure rebuilding program which would create some 13 million jobs.
Read more about the senator at Brookings
Of the Billionaires, By the Billionaires, For the Billionaires Sanders last weekend took a trip to the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “While there, we read Lincoln’s extraordinary Gettysburg Address – where he spoke of his hope that this nation would have a ‘new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ As we drove home it struck me hard that Lincoln’s beautiful vision – a government of the people, by the people, for the people – was, in fact, perishing, was coming to an end, and that we are moving rapidly away from our democratic heritage into an oligarchic form of society – where we are experiencing a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class.” American democracy is in peril, he explained, because the Supreme Court let billionaires spend unlimited sums to buy elections. The Koch brothers alone are planning a nearly $1 billion campaign in 2016, a bigger budget than either of the major political parties.
A Manufactured Crisis Unless Congress acts, there will be a 19 percent cut next year in a Social Security program that helps disabled people. Instead of allowing a routine bookkeeping transfer that Congress has done 11 times before, Republicans now in control of Congress are targeting this life-and-death program. “Republicans are manufacturing a phony crisis in Social Security in order to cut the earned benefits of millions of the most vulnerable people in this country,” Sanders said. “The American people won’t let them get away with it.”
Read a Budget Committee minority report
Veterans
President Obama on Thursday signed legislation to address suicides among veterans. Sanders headed the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee when the bill passed late last year. Twenty-two veterans a day, on average, take their own lives. The act was named for Clay Hunt, a Marine veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who took his own life in 2011 after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. His mother, Susan Selke, testified at a hearing Sanders chaired last fall. Valerie Pallotta of Colchester, Vermont, also testified. Her son, Pfc. Joshua R. Pallotta, took his life after he returned from a Vermont Army National Guard deployment to Afghanistan.
