The official unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent last month, the worst since 1983, the Labor Department announced on Friday. Hours later, President Obama signed into law a bill extending unemployment benefits for the longtime jobless.  Saying that what’s good for the environment is good for the economy, Senator Bernie Sanders voted on Thursday for a sweeping climate change bill that would cut greenhouse gases from power plants and factories by 83 percent by 2050.  The measure supports clean energy technologies that Sanders said could create millions of good-paying jobs. To forestall future financial failures, Sanders introduced legislation late Thursday that would break up big banks and other financial institutions whose collapse would put the entire economy in jeopardy.  In this week’s Web video, “Senator Sanders Unfiltered,” he says that if it is too big to fail it’s too big to exist. Watch it here.

Official Unemployment The unemployment rate shot up last month to 10.2 percent as employers shed 190,000 jobs. It marks the first time since 1983 that the jobless rate has reached 10 percent. Unemployment for adult men and teen-agers set records as construction and manufacturing industries continue to slash tens of thousands of jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.  The Senate voted late Wednesday for a 14-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits. The extension would help about 1,800 Vermonters whose benefits were to have run out by the end of this year.  Job hunters in states with the worst unemployment would get six additional weeks of benefits. Senator Bernie Sanders said workers who have lost their jobs during the worst recession since the 1930s have remained unemployed an average of 27 weeks – longer than at any time since the end of World War II.

The Reality is Worse Here’s what the senator had to say in a floor speech on Friday: “As a result of the greed, the recklessness and the illegal behavior of a hand full of executives on Wall Street, we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the great depression. Millions of Americans from one end of this country to the other have lost their jobs. They've lost their homes. They've lost their savings. They have lost their ability to send their kids to college. And they've lost their hope. The official unemployment rate is now a staggering 10.2 percent, the highest in over 26 years. Since the recession began in December of 2007, 8.2 million Americans have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate has more than doubled. In total today, 15.7 million Americans are officially unemployed. Another 9.3 million are working part time. They want to work 40 hours a week, but they're only working part  time. And 2.2 million workers have given up looking for work altogether. When you add those three  * factors together -- official unemployment, people have given up  looking for work, people are working part-time who want to work  full time -- what you were left with is an incredible 17.5 percent  of the American workforce unemployed or underemployed. That’s 27 million Americans. And when we go out and we find that people are angry  *or they're hurt or they're depressed, that is one of the reasons why.”

Too Big to Fail A bill that would break up financial institutions that are too big to fail was introduced Thursday by Sanders. "If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," he said. "We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy. We should end the concentration of ownership that has resulted in just four huge financial institutions holding half the mortgages in America, controlling two-thirds of the credit cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits." Sanders' legislation would give Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner 90 days to compile a list of commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies that he deems too big to fail. The affected financial institutions would include "any entity that has grown so large that its failure would have a catastrophic effect on the stability of either the financial system or the United States economy without substantial Government assistance." Within one year after the legislation became law, the Treasury Department would be required to break up those banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. To watch the weekly Web video "Senator Sanders Unfiltered," click here. To read the bill, click here. To take our poll on Wall Street, click here. To read about the bill and discuss it online at The Huffington Post, click here. To sign the petition to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, click here.

Climate Change Reflecting deep partisan divisions in the Senate over the issue of global warming, the environment committee pushed through a climate bill on Thursday without any debate or participation by Republicans.  The measure sent to the Senate floor by the environment committee calls for a 20 percent reduction by 2020 in emissions that cause climate change. Sanders told Vermont Public Radio that he's disappointed that all of the Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted the vote on a bill he said will cut greenhouse gas emissions and create millions of new, good-paying jobs. The Republican boycott “was a stark demonstration of the Republicans' failure to engage seriously with the issues of the day,” the Rutland Herald editorialized. “Sen. Sanders understands the nature of the problem,” the paper added. "At the end of the day, we are looking at a major energy transformation, which in fact is going to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which we have got to do, which is going to create millions of new, good-paying jobs in the United States of America and make us energy independent," Sanders told VPR. Sanders also said one of the major goals of the bill is to sharply reduce this country's reliance on foreign oil.  "The opportunity is that right now this year we are spending about $350 billion - that's with a B - $350 billion this year importing oil from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq, Russia, Venezuela, other countries. Now just think for a moment the kinds of jobs and energy systems we can create in the United States of America if we move toward energy independence, if we move toward energy efficiency." To read the Rutland Herald editorial, click here. To listen to the VPR report, click here  

Global Warming Sanders wrote about how helping the environment can help the economy in a column that was published by several Vermont newspapers. “If we get our act together as a nation and start addressing the major environmental problems of our time, global warming and our continued dependence on fossil fuels, we can create millions of good-paying jobs. In other words, good environmental policy is good economic policy.” One of the papers that published the op-ed was The Burlington Free Press, which last Sunday also ran a long profile on the senator’s role as chairman