The Week in Review

Does the government pick energy winners and losers? You bet. The problem is it picks the wrong ones. Profitable polluters in the oil, coal and gas industries have been given tax breaks that should end, Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Sunday. He made the case for encouraging job-creating clean energy sources like solar and wind power. In other news, Sanders said on Wednesday that a California ballot initiative could be the beginning of a national movement to label genetically modified food. And Americans who receive Social Security will see only a 1.7 percent increase in monthly benefits next year, the Social Security Administration announced on Tuesday. Believe it or not, some in Washington think that cost-of-living adjustment is too generous. They hope a lame-duck Congress will cut benefits. Sanders is doing all he can to stop that from happening. Amid a flurry of last-minute campaign spending by super PACs, New Jersey on Thursday joined the list of states calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

Social Security The slight increase in benefits next year is tied to a measure of inflation that Sanders said doesn't accurately reflect seniors' real outlays for prescription drugs and other health care expenses that go up faster than the basic inflation rate. "The method for calculating inflation for seniors is broken. Instead of fixing the problem, some in Washington and on Wall Street want to make a bad situation even worse by cutting benefits for senior citizens and veterans through a so-called chained CPI. It would be a shock to millions of seniors and disabled veterans to learn that some in Washington think their current COLAs are too generous," said Sanders, who founded the Defending Social Security Caucus in the Senate.

Deficits "In my view, it is wrong to be talking about Social Security in the name of deficit reduction because Social Security hasn't contributed a nickel to the deficit, has a very large surplus and can pay off all benefits owed to eligible Americans for the next 21 years. So I would really like to hear in this debate the president to be much stronger in taking it to the Republicans on the issue of Social Security," Sanders said in a Wednesday interview with radio host Stephanie Miller.

Citizens United New Jersey became the ninth state to back a constitutional amendment to undo a Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for unregulated campaign spending by wealthy individuals and corporations.  With an overwhelming vote by the state Assembly on Thursday New Jersey joined Vermont, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Mexico and Rhode Island in calling for an amendment to reverse the 2010 Citizens United decision. Sanders is the chief sponsor of the Saving American Democracy Amendment.

Energy Winners and Losers "The Big Energy industries (oil, coal and gas) along with their political allies like Mitt Romney are waging war against sustainable energy and the need to transform our energy system and reverse global warming. In many instances they are aided and abetted by the very powerful nuclear power industry. One of their main lines of attack (used repeatedly by Romney in his first debate with President Obama) is that the federal government is picking energy winners and losers ... The government does pick winners and losers in the energy sector. What Romney has not told the American people, however, is that the big winners of federal support are the already immensely profitable fossil fuel and nuclear industries, not sustainable energy," Sanders wrote in a column first posted Sunday by Grist.

Food Labels Californians will vote Nov. 6 on a measure that would make their state the first to require labels on genetically modified foods. "I would love to see this done nationally, but right now we have to depend on states to do this," Sanders told U.S. News & World Report in an article posted on Wednesday. Sanders and 54 other members of Congress earlier this year urged the Food and Drug Administration to implement food labeling on the federal level. He also offered an amendment to the farm bill that would have given states clear-cut authority to require labels. The amendment was offered after state lawmakers in Vermont considered a label law but dropped the effort after a lawsuit was threatened.

Gay Marriage A federal appeals court in New York ruled that a federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman unlawfully discriminates against same-sex married couples by denying them equal federal benefits. The ruling followed another by a federal appeals court in Boston that also rejected a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Sanders is a co-sponsor of legislation to repeal the law that he voted against when it was enacted in 1996.