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• June 11, 2014: Sanders pushes bill that helps the Department of Veterans Affairs serve America’s aging population of veterans and to meet the needs of a new generation of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, Sanders steered the bill through Congress. 

       (Click Link) or (Click Link) 

 

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• June 11, 2014: Sanders works with Senator John McCain (R-AZ), to strengthen the Veterans Administration. Some measures on the bill include authorizing leases for 26 new medical facilities in 17 states and Puerto Rico, designating funds for hiring more VA doctors and nurses, and eliminating wait times.

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• November 21, 2013: Sanders introduced a bill to increase Veterans Disability compensation by 16.3 billion dollars. . The bill was called Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013 and it became law. 

       (Click Link) or (Click Link) 

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• November 13, 2013: Bernie Sanders co-sponsored a bill called Women's Health Protection Act of 2013, which lifted restrictions on abortion. The bill made it a unlawful for a medical professional to perform specific tests, unless generally required in the case of medically comparable procedures.

       (Click Link) or (Click Link)

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• November 30, 2012: Sanders successfully passed an amendment to the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013" to require public availability of the database of senior Department officials seeking employment with defense contractors. This amendment exposes corruption in the military industrial complex.

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• November 29, 2012: Sanders worked with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to pass an amendment onto the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013", which provides for treatment of autism under the TRICARE program.

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• July 26, 2011: Bernie signed a bill that would require pharmacies to comply with certain rules related to contraceptives, including:

1. providing a customer a contraceptive without delay if it is in stock

2. immediately informing a customer if the contraceptive is not in stock and either transferring the prescription to a pharmacy that has the contraceptive in stock or expediting the ordering of the contraceptive and notifying the customer when it arrives, based on customer preference, except for pharmacies that do not ordinarily stock contraceptives in the normal course of business; and

3. ensuring that pharmacy employees do not take certain actions relating to a request for contraception, including intimidating, threatening, or harassing customers, interfering with or obstructing the delivery of services, intentionally misrepresenting or deceiving customers about the availability of contraception or its mechanism of action, breaching or threatening to breach medical confidentiality, or refusing to return a valid, lawful prescription.

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• March 29, 2011: Sanders helped rally a powerful coalition of seniors, women, veterans, labor unions and disabled Americans to stop a 2013 proposal to cut Social Security and disabled veterans’ benefits. A year after broaching the idea of changing the way cost-of-living adjustments are made, the White House backed off the idea to cut benefits by revising how the consumer price index is calculated.

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• March 10, 2011: Co-sponsored and helped pass the "Student Non-Discrimination Act". (It made it illegal to exclude students from educational programs on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity)

       (Click Link) or (Click Link) 

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• December 22, 2010: Bernie pushed for and then voted in favor of the repeal of "Don't Ask. Don't Tell", which forces America's armed services to let homosexuals serve openly. After the vote, Sanders said "Discrimination of any kind is not what America is supposed to be about," 

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• December 10, 2010: When the tax breaks for the rich were set to expire in 2010, Sanders delivered an INCREDIBLE 8 ½ hour fillibuster to stop them from renewing it. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful this time. However, he did get his redemption two years later on Jan. 1, 2013, with a 90-8 Senate majority to end the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of American wage earners.

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• May 11, 2010: Sanders passes an amendment to the "Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010", in the FIRST EVER audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment requires the non-partisan Government Accountability Office to conduct an independent audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that does not interfere with monetary policy, to let the American people know the names of the recipients of over $2 trillion in taxpayer assistance from the Federal Reserve System.

       (Click Link)

   

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• March 3, 2010: Sanders successfully got Senate majority leader Harry Reid to add $11 billion in funding for community health centers that provide care regardless of a person’s ability to pay to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which provided healthcare to an additional 10 mostly low-income Americans.

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• November 19, 2009: Sanders works with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley to pass an amendment to an economic recovery bill preventing Wall Street banks that take taxpayer bailouts from replacing laid-off U.S. workers with exploited and poorly-paid foreign workers. The bill is called "Employ America Act"

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• July 23, 2009: Bernie introduced and passed an amendment to the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010", which requires the Comptroller General of the United States to report to Congress on financial assistance for child care available to deployed members of the reserve components of the Armed Forces.

       (Click Link)

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• February 6, 2009: Sanders’ authored an energy efficiency and conservation grant program in 2007, which passed into law in 2009. He later secures $3.2 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for the grant program.

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• February 6, 2009: Sanders successfully passed an amendment onto the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009", which requires recipients of TARP funding to meet strict H-1B worker hiring standard to ensure the bail out funds weren't used to displace U.S. workers 

       (Click Link)

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• January 6, 2009: Bernie co-sponsored a bill called Prevention First Act. This bill requires hospitals, as a condition of receiving federal funds, to offer and to provide, upon request, emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.

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• March, 2008: Bernie Sanders voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP.

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• December 19, 2007: Sanders helped write and pass legislation to create an energy efficiency block grant program called the "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007"

       (Click Link) or (Click Link)

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• October, 18 2007: Bernie voted NO on barring HHS grants to organizations that perform abortions. The bill allows government to dictate how non-governmental entities should spend their own private funds. This amendment punishes the very organizations that work hard every day using their own funds to provide family planning services and reproductive health care, including legal abortion services.

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• October 2, 2007: Sanders successfully passes an amendment onto the "Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2008" which increased the amount appropriated for Operation and Maintenance, Army National Guard by $10 million after it had been depleted from the war in Iraq.

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• June 21, 2007: Bernie pushed an amendment onto the "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007", which requires that not less than 30 percent of the hot water demand for certain new or substantially modified Federal buildings be met through the installation and use of solar hot water heaters.

       (Click Link)

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• April 2, 2007: Sanders co-sponsored a bill called Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act, which provides emergency contraception at military facilities. This bill ensures that emergency contraception is more broadly available at military health care facilities.

       (Click Link) or (Click Link)

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• September 26, 2006: Bernie Sanders co-sponsored a bill that provides emergency contraception for rape victims at all hospitals. This bill prohibits any federal funds from being provided to a hospital unless the hospital provides to women who are victims of sexual assault:

1. accurate and unbiased information about emergency contraception;

2. emergency contraception on her request; and

3. does not deny any such services because of the inability of the woman to pay.

       (Click Link) 

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• June 28, 2005: Sanders pushed an amendment and brought together a bipartisan coalition that outnumbered a bipartisan coalition on the other side to successfully prohibit the Export-Import Bank from providing loans for nuclear projects in China.

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• September 8, 2004: Sanders was able to push through an amendment giving a $22 million increase to the low income home energy assistance program and related weatherization assistance program.

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• September 9, 2003: Sanders also passed an amendment to prevent the Bush administration from working to overturn a federal district court ruling that IBM’s pension cuts violated age discrimination laws.  This amendment helped 130,000 IBM workers regain $320 million in pension benefits that had been taken away from them. 

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• November 2, 2003: Bernie authored and helped pass legislation to provide all Americans with one free credit report per year. The bill became law on December 4, 2003.

       (Click Link) or (Click Link)

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• October 10, 2002: Bernie Sanders has strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq. He voted against the Iraq war and warned at the time that an invasion could “result in anti-Americanism, instability and more terrorism.” and “I am concerned about the problems of so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed and what role will the U.S. play in ensuing a civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.” See below for the video statement he made on the floor of the House of Representatives on October 9, 2002.

       (Click Link) or (Click Link) or (Click Link) or (Click Link)​

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• September 25, 2002: Bernie Sanders voted NO on funding for health providers who don't provide abortion information

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• July 24, 2002: Sanders' amendment to the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act of 2003 stopped the IRS from being able to use funds that “violate current pension age discrimination laws.” Although he faced stiff GOP opposition, his amendment still succeeded along a 308 to 121 vote. 

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• July 25, 2001: Sanders successfully passed an amendment to the "Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 2002", which banned the importation of goods made with child labor.

       (Click Link) 

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• May 24, 2000: Sanders voted no on establishing permanent normal trade relations with China called the "Authorize Extension of Nondiscriminatory Treatment (Normal Trade Relations Treatment) to the People’s Republic of China"

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• October 10, 1999: An overflow crowd of Vermonters packs a St. Michael’s College town hall meeting hosted by Sanders to protest an IBM plan to cut older workers’ pensions by as much as 50 percent. After IBM enacted the plan, Bernie passed 2 amendments to prohibit fed govt from trying to overturn a court decision that ruled IBM’s plan violated age discrimination laws. Thanks to Bernie’s efforts, IBM agreed to a $320M legal settlement w/130,000 IBM workers & retirees.

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• July 29, 1999: Bernie Sanders voted against an amendment that would’ve banned same-sex couple adoption in Washington, D.C. 

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• July 11, 1999: Standing up against the major pharmaceutical companies, Sanders becomes the first member of Congress to personally take seniors across the border to Canada to buy lower-cost prescription drugs. The congressman continues his bus trips to Canada with a group of breast cancer patients the following April.

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• July 27, 1998: Sanders worked with Rep. Chris Shays to pass a bill to care for illnesses afflicting Gulf War veterans called the "Persian Gulf War Veterans Act of 1998".

       (Click Link) or (Click Link)

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• April 29, 1998: Sanders added an amendment to H.R. 6 "Higher Education Amendments of 1998", that allowed the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education to make competitive grants available to colleges and universities that cooperated to reduce costs through joint purchases of goods and services., saving money for colleges and taxpayers.

       (Click Link) or (Click Link)

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• July 12, 1996: Sanders is one of only 67 (out of 409) votes against the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman. DOMA effectively banned same-sex marriage and set the stage for years of legal battles before same-sex marriage bans were finally struct down. Sanders voted against DOMA from the beginning, which denied federal benefits to same-sex couples legally married. Sanders urged the Supreme Court to throw out the law, which it did in a landmark 2013 ruling – 17 years later.

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• 1995: Bernie famously defended gay members of the military on the House floor in a fiery exchange. On the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) criticized the idea of what he called "homos in the military." Sanders, a US House representative at the time, blasted him. "Was the gentleman referring to the many thousands and thousands of gay people who have put their lives on the line in countless wars defending this country?" Sanders asked. "You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line."

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• February 6, 1995: Sanders successfully passes an amendment to the Victims Justice Act of 1995 which required "offenders who are convicted of fraud and other white collar crime to give appropriate notice to victims and other persons in cases where there are multiple victims eligible to receive restitution."

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• January 5, 1993: Bernie Sanders co-sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act of 1993, which bar states from restricting the right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability or at any time when a termination is necessary to protect the health of a woman.

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• February 7, 1992: Bernie Sanders kicked off his political career with an amendment to start a National Program of Cancer registries, which is now maintained by all 50 states, helping researchers gain valuable information. It was the first bill by Sanders to become law. 

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• January 12, 1991: Sanders voted against authorizing US military force in Iraq. As a congressperson, Bernie Sanders spoke out in unequivocal opposition to the 1991 resolution authorizing the first Gulf War. “I have a real fear that the region is not going to be more peaceful or more stable after the war,” he said at the time.

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• In 1984: Sanders established the Burlington Community Land Trust, the first municipal housing land-trust in the country for affordable housing. The project becomes a model emulated throughout the world. It later wins an award from Jack Kemp-led HUD.

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• August 1963: Sanders was charged with resisting arrest after protesting segregation at a school on the city’s South Side. He was fined $25, according to the Chicago Tribune.

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• August, 1963: Bernie Sanders participated in MLK’s Civil Rights March. One of only 2 sitting US Senators to have heard MLK’s “I have a Dream Speech” in person in the march on Washington, DC.​

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• August 12, 1962: Sanders organized picketers at a Howard Johnson in Cicero. Sanders told the Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, that he wanted to keep the pressure on the restaurant chain after the arrest of 12 CORE demonstrators in North Carolina for trying to eat at a Howard Johnson there.

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• January, 1962: At just 20  years old, Bernie led a 15 day long sit-in protest outside the university president's office. During Sanders’ first year in Chicago, a group of apartment-hunting white and black students had discovered that off-campus buildings owned by the university were refusing to rent to black students, in violation of the school’s policies. He was quoted as saying “We feel it is an intolerable situation, when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university owned apartments".  It was Chicago’s first civil rights sit-in. He was arrested for the protest, and the police came to call him an outside agitator, as he went around putting up flyers around the city detailing police brutality.

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• January 1962: Bernie Sanders joined both the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the University of Chicago.

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• In 1961: Bernie Sanders testified about his University's racist housing policy. You can read the full testimony here

       (Click Link)

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• Both the NAACP and the NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda) have given Sanders 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate. Earns a D- from the NRA.

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• Co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus and chaired the group for its first 8 years.

 

• Former professor of political science at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at Hamilton College.​​

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• Led the first ever civil rights sit-in in Chicago history to protest segregated housing.

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• Ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.

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• Elected by the state of Vermont 8 times to serve in the House of Representatives and the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. 

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