Opinion

WASHINGTON, June 26 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today introduced legislation to make federal regulators invoke emergency powers to stop speculators from taking advantage of turmoil in Iraq to drive up oil prices and make motorists pay more for gasoline.

“I am getting tired of big oil companies and Wall Street speculators using Iraq as an excuse to pump up oil and gas prices,” said Sanders, a member of the Senate energy committee. “The fact is that high gasoline prices have less to do with supply and demand and more to do with Wall Street speculators driving prices up in the energy futures market.”

WASHINGTON DC—Last evening, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Congressman Peter Welch’s bipartisan legislation to encourage schools administrators to make cost-saving energy efficiency upgrades. The Streamlining Energy Efficiency for Schools Act, modeled after Vermont’s school-based energy efficiency efforts, is the second Welch-authored energy efficiency bill to pass the House this year.

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch voted in favor of defund some of the NSA’s spying on innocent Americans yesterday. He added his support to a bill that stops the backdoor searches of information collected under the Section 702 program and blocks the NSA from mandating that tech companies add backdoors in their software or hardware.

The Senate and White House will need to approve, but a vote of 293-123 shows that the House, at least, is ready to curtail some of the NSA’s unnecessary activities. It’s the first time that Congress has acted to defund NSA activities since Edward Snowden gave documents to journalists just over a year ago. It’s a pretty solid vote, too, across party lines.

WASHINGTON, June 19 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today accused oil companies and Wall Street speculators of using unrest in Iraq as a phony excuse to artificially drive up crude oil and gasoline prices.

The price of oil today rose above $115 a barrel – a new nine-month high on the New York Mercantile Exchange – ostensibly because of concerns that sectarian violence in Iraq could cut off the country’s exports. The price of regular gasoline rose to $3.67 a gallon today, up a nickel in the past month. That was despite the fact that today there is more supply and less demand for gasoline than five years ago, when the average price of a gallon of gas was just $2.67 a gallon.

WASHINGTON, June 18 – Over staunch opposition by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 12-10 for the construction of the Keystone Pipeline which would transport oil from the tar sands region in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico in Texas.

Sanders said extracting and refining “the dirtiest oil imaginable” would spew more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and worsen global warming.

Completing the Keystone XL pipeline, he added, would send a signal that the United States is unwilling to lead the way toward reversing global warming.

Roger Allbee has announced that he is a candidate for the Vermont State Senate, representing Windham County, as a Democrat. Allbee will contest the Democratic primary on August 26 with incumbent Senator Jeanette White, as well as several other candidates.  He will enjoy the endorsement of Senator Peter Galbraith who has decided to not seek reelection.

Allbee is currently the Chief Executive Officer and Administrator of Grace Cottage Hospital / Carlos G. Otis Health Care Center in Townshend and is the former Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets for the State of Vermont. Additionally, he is working on VIEWBOOST, a rural tourism application for mobile devices, which connects tourists to places, events and businesses in real time and is using Vermont as a model. 

WASHINGTON, June 11 – The Senate today voted nearly unanimously for a bill to expand hospitals and clinics run by the Department of Veterans Affairs and to hire more doctors and nurses to provide timely, quality care for veterans.

The bipartisan bill by Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would let veterans facing long delays for doctor appointments at VA facilities go elsewhere. Their measure also would hold VA officials accountable for trying to conceal patient wait times.

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Peter Welch made the following statement after Senators Sanders and McCain announced a bipartisan agreement for reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs:

“The cost of any war must include the cost of caring for warriors when they return home. That solemn commitment has been shaken by recent events.

WASHINGTON, June 5 – Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today reached a bipartisan agreement to improve veterans’ access to health care and address serious problems facing the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“While this is not the bill that I would have written, we have taken a significant step forward with this agreement,” said Sanders.

At a time when VA medical facilities in parts of the country have waiting lists that are too long, this legislation would give veterans access to private doctors, community health centers, Department of Defense medical facilities and facilities funded by the Indian Health Service.