NEW YORK – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders extended his victory streak on
Saturday when he won the Wyoming caucuses, his eighth victory in the
last nine contests.
Sanders won the caucuses over Hillary Clinton, who pundits had cast as a prohibitive favorite when the campaign began.
He was speaking to a rally at LaGuardia Community College when his wife, Jane, went on stage to tell him the news.
“Alright, news bulletin. We just won Wyoming,” Sanders said to
cheers. “We appreciate and thank the people of Wyoming so much for their
support,” Sanders added.
Sanders comments on Wyoming came as he was campaigning in Queens and
other boroughs of New York City in advance of the next Democratic Party
primary. There are 247-pledged delegates at stake when New York
Democrats go to the polls on April 19.
Sanders has been pulling closer to Clinton in the state she represented in the Senate and where he was born and raised.
Nationwide, Sanders leads Clinton in two of the past three polls. He
also fared much better than Clinton in match-ups with Donald Trump and
the other remaining Republican White House hopefuls.
"These reports document dysfunction on the part of both the
Department of Veterans Affairs and its inspector general. The fact that
the IG only released these documents after public pressure from the
media as well as Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate
is proof that it still has much more to learn when it comes to providing
the oversight VA needs and the transparency taxpayers deserve.
Nevertheless, the reports outline a host of serious scheduling issues
that masked wait times at VA facilities around the country. And in
classic VA fashion, almost no one has been seriously held accountable
for any of this wrongdoing. In fact, according to VA’s own data, the
department has successfully fired just four low-level employees for
wait-time manipulation. Right now it’s incumbent on VA leaders to
explain why that’s the case given the IG’s findings of widespread
wait-time manipulation and other serious problems. And in the meantime,
the Senate needs to get in step with veterans service organizations and
taxpayers and get behind commonsense legislation like the House-passed
VA Accountability Act, which would make it easier for the department to
swiftly discipline corrupt and incompetent employees. Until those who
caused the wait-time scandal are purged from the VA payroll, the
department will never be fixed. Unfortunately, Senate inaction is
currently preventing that from happening.” – Rep. Jeff Miller, Chairman, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Related
The VA Accountability Act
(H.R. 1994) passed the House in July of 2015 and is pending in the
Senate. It would give the VA secretary the authority to swiftly fire or
demote any employee for poor performance or misconduct while protecting
whistleblowers and limiting the agency’s ability to place misbehaving
employees on paid leave. It would also give VA the ability to recover
annuities on pensions of VA senior executives convicted of felonies
committed on the job.
NEW YORK – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday called for raising
Social Security benefits to help seniors make ends meet. He also urged
Hillary Clinton to back a plan endorsed by leading Democrats and
seniors’ advocates to strengthen the retirement program.
Sanders’ stops at Bronx Community College and at the United Palace in
Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood were part of a presidential
campaign tour of New York City boroughs.
More than 1,000 backers turned out to hear Sanders in Washington
Heights and more than 800 supporters in the Bronx packed an auditorium
in the Gould Memorial Library and an overflow room at the college.
Sanders said seniors in New York and across the United States don’t
have enough income to heat their homes or feed themselves and many are
forced to cut their pills in half to save money on prescription drugs.
“These are the people who built this country – our parents, our
grandparents. We should not be treating them that way.”
Clinton, Sanders’ rival for the Democratic Party nomination, has
refused to back Sanders’ plan to strengthen Social Security. In fact,
Clinton has left open the possibility that she would support raising the
retirement age at which seniors become eligible for Social Security. “I
would consider it,” she told a town meeting in New Hampshire last Oct.
28.
In New York, more than 3.5 million seniors, orphans, widows, widowers
and disabled people received Social Security benefits last year. The
average annual benefit totaled only $15,000.
Without Social Security, more than 43 percent of the elderly in New
York, including more than 48 percent of senior women, would be living in
poverty. With Social Security, the elderly poverty rate in New York is
11.6 percent.
Sanders has introduced legislation to make the wealthiest Americans
who make more than $250,000 a year pay the same share of their income
into the retirement system as everyone else. Current law now caps the
amount of income subject to payroll taxes at $118,500.
Under Sanders’ plan, a senior making less than $16,000 a year would see income go up by more than $1,300 a year.
The measure also would increase cost-of-living adjustments. This
year, for only the third time in four decades, seniors on Social
Security did not receive a cost-of-living increase. Sanders’ legislation
would increase COLAs by more accurately measuring the spending patterns
of seniors. Under current law, the consumer price index used to
calculate annual benefit adjustments does not accurately reflect how
inflation in health care costs and prescription drug prices impact
seniors.
The proposal to lift the cap would raise taxes only on the wealthiest
1.5 percent of Americans.
Sanders’ plan is patterned after a proposal
to scrap the cap first brought forward by President Barack Obama in
2008.
According to new estimates from the Social Security Administration,
Sanders’ plan would extend the solvency of Social Security until the
year 2074.
The senator from Vermont who was born and raised in Brooklyn was
headed later Saturday to a third rally in Queens before capping the day
with a nighttime event at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
