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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Bernie Sanders - Minimum Wage, Income Inequality, Birth Control

Today's news from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):

Minimum Wage: President Barack Obama will announce during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address that he's raising the minimum wage for workers under federal contracts to $10.10 per hour, The Huffington Post reported. The move marks a significant victory for labor unions and a handful of progressive Democrats who pressed the president to issue the order, including Reps. Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva and Sen. Bernie Sanders. The new policy, to be instituted via executive order, may affect hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs are supported by federal dollars. Fifteen senators, led by Sanders, sent a letter to the president urging him to exercise his executive authority to raise the minimum wage, Politico reported.

Minimum Wage: An analysis by the Employment Policies Institute found that 96 percent of House and Senate sponsors of the minimum wage bill do not pay their interns, according to FoxNews.com. Sen. Sanders is the only sponsor who pays all of his interns, the Washington Examiner reported.

Income Inequality: Sen. Bernie Sanders told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday that providing a quality education to every American should be a top priority to reduce poverty. “We should learn from many other countries that understand that education is an investment, and that every kid in this country regardless of income should have educational opportunity.” At one point, Sanders accused Bachmann of wanting to cut Social Security. “That’s absolutely a lie,” Bachmann responded, not mentioning that in 2010 she called the program “a tremendous fraud” in 2010 and supported Rep. Paul Ryan’s program in 2011 that called for doing just that, The Raw Story reported.

Sanders Signs Supreme Court Brief in Birth Control Case: In a brief to be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, 18 Democratic senators and an independent, Sanders, side with the Obama administration against evangelical Christian businessmen who argue that paying for their employees’ birth control, a requirement under Obamacare, violates their company’s religious freedom. The senators—five of them women—argue in their “friend of the court” brief that the owners of the Oklahoma-based crafts store chain Hobby Lobby are not exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate simply because some forms of birth control offend their religious beliefs, Yahoo News reported.

Continue reading here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/012814

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