Press Releases

WASHINGTON, June 18 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said a new report released today by the Joint Economic Committee showed the average student loan debt in Vermont was greater than the amount in all but six other states. In Vermont, 63 percent of college graduates hold student loans. The average balance is $28,860. That debt load amounts to 82 percent of the average

WASHINGTON, June 17 – As the Senate resumes consideration of an immigration reform bill this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today proposed an amendment to stop employers from using a cultural exchange program to exploit foreign college students and take jobs away from young American workers. The Summer Work Travel program brings as many as 109,000 foreign university students to

WASHINGTON, June 14 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation to put strict limits on sweeping powers used by the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation to secretly track telephone calls by millions of innocent Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. “We must give our intelligence and law enforcement agencies all of the tools that they

WASHINGTON, June 13 – The President’s prompt declaration today of a major disaster associated with severe storms in May will help speed Vermont communities’ recovery, said Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Peter Welch.  On Thursday, President Obama signed a disaster declaration for the State of Vermont, requested just days ago by Governor Peter Shumlin, and ordered federal

WASHINGTON, June 12 – Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) welcomed assurances today that the Department of Veterans Affairs has made “significant progress” and is “at a tipping point” in reducing a massive backlog of claims for disability benefits. The assurances came from Thomas Murphy, the VA’s director of compensation services during testimony before Sanders’ committee. Murphy

WASHINGTON, June 11 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today called for changes in a law that the National Security Agency used to obtain hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records and tap into Internet companies to gather searches, emails, audio, video and photographs. The massive surveillance programs divulged by The Guardian and The Washington Post relied on the so-called USA