Senate and House negotiators worked on a budget for the rest of this fiscal year after Congress on Monday passed a stopgap spending measure that averted a threatened government shutdown.  In impassioned floor speeches, Sen. Bernie Sanders made the case against cutting programs for seniors, children, and working families still reeling from the recession.  He called out Republican hypocrites whose newfound concern about deficits comes fast on the heels of a deal that gave more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.  The bill now under consideration by the Senate was rammed through the House last month by the new Republican majority. Among the many cuts it includes is a sharp reduction in funds to run the Social Security Administration.  The American public overwhelmingly disapproves, according to an important new poll.

Budget "In the midst of a major recession it is morally wrong and economically bad policy to balance the budget on the backs of those people who are already hurting," Sanders said Wednesday in a Senate floor speech. Over his objections, Congress late last year extended tax breaks for the top 2 percent of Americans who now pay the lowest tax rates in decades. "It is time to ask the wealthy to start paying their fair share," Sanders said. Tax breaks for the wealthy and corporate tax loopholes are major causes of the current deficits, he said, as are unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Wall Street bailout. To watch the speech, click here. To watch an interview that MSNBC's Martin Bashir called "provocative," click here.

Social Security Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security, according to a new poll conducted for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal. Americans, by large margins, said that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in the retirement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit.  Meanwhile, Sanders is organizing a group of senators to defend Social Security. Now you may become a citizen member of the caucus. To sign up, click here. To see other key findings of the poll, click here. To take the survey yourself, click here.

Jobs For the first time in nearly two years the unemployment rate was below 9 percent. Still, about 13.7 million people who would like to work can't find a job. Another 8 million Americans are working part-time but need full time jobs. Nearly half of the job gains over the past year were jobs that pay as little as $9 an hour and as high as $12.91 an hour. In other words, jobs lost during the recession were jobs that paid a decent living while employment gains over the past year were in low-paying jobs.

Health Care President Obama on Monday told a National Governors' Association meeting that states should be allowed to experiment with ways to deliver better health care at less cost beginning in 2014. A Sanders bill would let Vermont become a national model of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. "I am very pleased the president now agrees," the senator said. To read more, click here.

Vermont Yankee The Vermont congressional delegation asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday not to let Entergy Nuclear mothball Vermont Yankee for decades after the nuclear power plant shuts down. A letter drafted by Sanders, a member of the Senate panel that oversees the NRC, called it unacceptable that Entergy could engage in decades of delay in cleaning up the site. The 39-year-old reactor is slated to cease operations in 2012, when its federal and state licenses and permits expire. To read more, click here.

Citzens United The Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations were people and thus deserved the same free speech rights.  Sen. Bernie Sanders calls the decision "an absolute disaster."  To discuss this issue further, Sanders invited nationally-syndicated radio host Thom Hartmann, an expert on the issue of corporate personhood, to keynote a forum in Montpelier on Saturday.  Sanders said, "The reason we're holding this meeting is because this issue of 'Citizens United' has huge consequences in many areas.  Certainly in terms of our democracy and the funding of elections.  Let's be clear: campaign financing for many years has been a disaster in this country in the sense that candidates have had to run out to rich people in order to get the money they need to run campaigns.  With Citizens United it has taken a giant step in the wrong direction."