This is getting depressing. Rising unemployment and growing worries about recession pushed retail sales down by a record amount in October, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. Sales were off 2.8 percent from September and down 4.1 percent from one year ago. The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits jumped last week to a seven-year high, according to a Labor Department report on Thursday. The number of homeowners caught in the wave of foreclosures in October grew 25 percent nationally over the same month in 2007. The Treasury Department on Wednesday officially abandoned the original strategy behind a $700 billion effort to bail out the financial system. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he hoped to put in place a major new lending program that would be run by the Federal Reserve aimed at unlocking the frozen consumer credit market. What will Congress do about it all when senators and representatives return to Capitol Hill in the coming days?

Congress Reconvenes Congress comes back to Washington in the coming week for a lame-duck session that looks less and less likely to be productive. With the Bush administration sputtering to an end, prospects for passage of an economic recovery package were uncertain. "We are seeing in Vermont and across the country a deepening of the economic crisis with increases in unemployment, foreclosures and even hunger," Senator Bernie Sanders said. "I hope very much that the Bush administration will cooperate with Congress next week in advancing a major job-creating economic recovery package. If not, we're going to have to wait until President Obama comes in and then move very aggressively."

Rebuild America Vermont's congressional delegation is supporting a plan to quickly rebuild the country's transportation infrastructure. "If we're serious about rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure if we're serious about putting people to work in doing that it makes no sense to delay these projects because states are running deficits now and don't have the money to put up their matching portions," Sanders told Vermont Public Radio.

Big-Three Bailout Prospects of a government rescue for the American carmakers also dwindled as Congressional leaders conceded potentially insurmountable opposition. Sanders was among those voicing reservations, telling Politico, "The government shouldn't help the auto industry without making sure it changes its ways." He cited "disastrous" policies that shuttered American plants and lowered wages for American workers. He also said Detroit built too many gas guzzlers and too few cars to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Global Warming Sanders attended meetings in London on a coordinated response to climate change. The United Kingdom is expected to curb emissions of greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050 - compared to 1990 levels - , the same goal set out in a Sanders' bill in the U.S. Senate. "What was considered aggressive when I introduced that legislation is now understood to be the minimum we need to do," he said. Meeting with members of Parliament and advisors to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sanders returned to Washington optimistic. "There was widespread consensus that it is imperative that the two governments cooperate in moving away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and that, by doing that, we can not only address the crisis of global warming but create millions of good-paying jobs."