The Week in Review
At a gas station in Burlington, Vt., on Friday morning, a woman filling up her Subaru shook her head as the price for a tank of gas went up and up to more than $50. "That's not right," she told the man at the next pump. The man, also putting gas in his car, was Sen. Bernie Sanders. He has been trying to get federal regulators to clamp down on Wall Street speculators who have driven up oil prices despite low demand and high supplies. In Washington, the Senate on Thursday defeated a Republican attempt to let employers and health insurance companies deny coverage for birth control. Also on Thursday, Sanders and insurance industry leaders teamed up at a Capitol news conference to warn about the mounting costs of extreme weather patterns that scientists have linked to global warming. On Wednesday, Sanders chaired a hearing on the dental crisis in America. He talked about all that and more during his weekly nationwide radio and Internet appearance Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program.
What if There Were 83 Women Senators?
The Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican amendment to circumvent a rule requiring employers to provide contraceptives. "In Vermont and around the country, there is growing anger that members of Congress, mostly men I should add, are trying to roll back the clock on women's rights, in this case the right of women to receive contraceptive services through their insurance plans. This attack is grossly unfair," Sanders said in a floor speech before the vote to table the Republican amendment. "If the Senate had 83 women and 17 men instead of 83 men and 17 women, my strong guess is a bill like this would never make it to the floor," Sanders said.
Transportation Bill
The effort to curtail women's access to birth control was offered as an amendment to a totally unrelated transportation bill. Senate leaders on Friday said Republicans have now come up with new ways to stall the two-year, $109 billion proposal. (It would provide $408 million for Vermont.) Sanders is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which voted unanimously to send the measure to the full Senate. Investments in roads and bridges are one of the most effective ways to create jobs, Sanders said. "It is estimated that this bill will save more than 1.8 million jobs nationwide in each of the next two years, and it will create a million new jobs through an expanded infrastructure-financing program," he added.
Dental Crisis in America
"As a nation, we don't talk about it much but there is a dental crisis in America," Sanders said Wednesday at a Senate hearing he chaired. A new report released at the hearing said more than 47 million people live in places where it is difficult to access dental care. More than 130 million Americans do not have dental insurance. One quarter of U.S. adults ages 65 or older have lost all of their teeth. About 17 million low-income children do not see a dentist each year. Only 45 percent of Americans age 2 and older saw a dental provider in the past 12 months. In Vermont, Sanders noted, there has been progress. There now are dental facilities serving 25,000 patients at community health centers in eight of Vermont's 14 counties. There was only one in Island Pond as recently as 2000. Vermont now ranks first in the nation in access to dental care for children, but more than 40 percent of the children still don't have a regular dentist.
Watch excerpts from the hearing »
Read the report on the dental crisis »
Gas Prices
Gas prices approaching $4 a gallon on average are causing severe economic pain for millions of Americans. Pump prices spiked 5 percent in the past month alone. Crude oil prices stood at $108 on Friday. Speculators are cashing in by jacking up oil and gas prices in the very loosely regulated energy futures market, said in a column for CNN.com.
Global Warming
Representatives of leading insurance companies said on Thursday that costs to taxpayers and businesses from extreme weather will continue to soar because of climate change. The insurers joined Sens. Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse at a press conference in the Capitol to discuss the mounting financial impact of global warming. Both Vermont and Rhode Island last August felt the brunt of Tropical Storm Irene, one of the record 14 natural disasters in the United States last year that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. Irene alone, which first came ashore as a hurricane, killed at least 45 people and caused more than $7 billion in damage. "Perhaps no industry better understands the impact of global warming than the insurance industry whose job it is to analyze risk," Sanders said.
Watch excerpts from the news conference »
Postal Service
"At a time when the post office is losing substantial revenue from the instantaneous flow of information by email and on the Internet, slowing mail service is a recipe for disaster," Sanders wrote in a column published on Friday by Politico. He detailed a plan that is drawing broad support in the Senate to maintain delivery standards for first-class mail and preserve Saturday deliveries.
