The recession still hangs over everything. Another 663,000 jobs disappeared in March, bringing total job losses since the downturn began last year to more than 5 million, according to a Labor Department report on Friday. The March unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent, the worst in 25 years. To bring the economy out of its nosedive, the Obama White House last week freed up more stimulus funds, including a major new investment in public schools and tax cuts for individuals.

Economic Stimulus - Tax Cuts More than 300,000 Vermont families will receive $100 million in tax cuts through the federal stimulus bill. The tax credit will amount to $400 for most individuals and $800 for couples. Wednesday was the deadline for employers to begin taking less out of paychecks. "The stimulus package is creating millions of jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us toward energy independence, but it's also important to remember that the stimulus bill includes tax relief for working families," Sanders said. "Every payday from now on, most workers will see more money in their paychecks and less taken out for the IRS." To read more about the tax cuts, click here.

Economic Stimulus - Schools The Obama administration on Thursday released $91.5 million in stimulus grants for Vermont schools. The funds distributed by the U.S. Department of Education are one of the biggest dividends for the state under the recently enacted economic recovery act. To read more about the school funds, click here.

Standing Up for the Middle Class "Vermont's middle class has three champions in Washington, D.C., according to the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. The 2008 legislative record of Vermont's Congressional delegation showed strong support for the state's current and aspiring middle class, according to a scorecard report released this week by TheMiddleClass.org, the Congressional accountability project of the Drum Major Institute, a middle class-focused think tank…Senator Patrick Leahy and Rep. Peter Welch, both Democrats, both received an A, while independent Senator Bernard Sanders received an A-plus," the Brattleboro Reformer reported. To read the article, click here.

Fed Secrecy The Senate went on record in favor of requiring the Federal Reserve to reveal the names of the banks and other financial institutions it has loaned more than $2.2.trillion since the financial crisis began last year. The amendment by Sanders to the budget resolution calls on the Fed to reveal the names of the financial institutions it propped up, how much they've received and what they are doing with the money. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had refused answer those questions when Sanders posed them at a recent Senate Budget Committee hearing. To read more, click here. To watch the senator's floor statement, click here. To read a Burlington Free Press editorial, click here.

Part of the Problem Do we really need another Goldman Sachs alum on the White House economic team? Sanders thinks Gary Gensler's advocacy for deregulation of the financial industry makes him the wrong choice to chair a commission that regulates part of the financial industry. Gensler spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and then joined the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, where he played a role in the 1990s deregulation mania that let Wall Street greed go unchecked and got us into the economic crisis we're in today. Watch an American News Project report on this below.

Credit Cards The Senate voted against a resolution to cap interest rates on credit cards. By a vote of 66 to 32, senators rejected a Sanders amendment to the budget resolution. Sanders earlier introduced legislation that would cap credit card interest rates at 15 percent. It also would limit bank fees that have been increased dramatically over the past decade. Banks that have received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history, the senator said, should not be allowed to slap consumers with heavy fees on top of interest rates that have shot up to as much as 30 percent.