As key congressional committees continued hammering out health care reform legislation, Senator Bernie Sanders compiled in a new booklet some of the more than 4,000 letters he received describing real-life experiences with health care in America. Spurred by Sanders, federal regulators may clamp down on speculators for artificially driving up oil prices. Bailed out banks are getting stingy, meaning credit will be “denied to a large number of responsible and hardworking American consumers and small-business owners,” Sanders wrote in USA Today. And an investigation sought by Sanders found the Pentagon doled out undeserved bonuses for private contractors.

The Health Care Crisis: Letters from Vermont and America “In poignant and heartbreaking terms, the letters describe the pain and outrage that people are experiencing with our dysfunctional health care system,” the senator said.  "It is my intention to read some of these letters on the floor of the Senate. Every American needs to hear what’s going on with health care in this country.” For a copy of the booklet, click here.

Credit Cards Banks are getting "stingy" and denying credit cards to millions of Americans. “Huge lenders need to be told in no uncertain terms: Use the money that the American people gave you to increase lending to responsible consumers and small business owners, and stop ripping off the American people by charging usurious interest rates and sky-high fees,” Sanders wrote in a USA Today op-ed. To read the article, click here. To read the senator’s op-ed, click here.

Oil Prices U.S. regulators are clamping down on oil and gas price speculators. At the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, hearings are to begin later this month into the need for restrictions on speculative trading in oil, gas and other energy markets.  Bloomberg noted that the hearings come amid increased scrutiny of the impact of speculators on oil prices. Senator Bernie Sanders blamed speculators – and inaction by federal regulators – for last year’s surge in crude-oil prices. The increased scrutiny comes as oil prices have gone up 41 percent this year despite falling demand and rising supplies. To read the Bloomberg report, click here.

Defense Contractors Federal agencies have awarded billions in bonuses to contractors regardless of whether the work was deemed satisfactory, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Monday in The Washington Post. Agencies are supposed to link award fees to results and prohibit payments for poor performance. That policy has saved hundreds of millions of dollars, the Government Accountability Office reported to Sanders. But investigators faulted departments of Energy, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services, Defense and NASA.  "The Pentagon and other federal agencies seem to live in a world where every contractor is above average," Sanders said. To read the Post article, click here.