Posted Monday, April 2, 2018 8:30 pm

BRATTLEBORO — For Bernie Sanders, toiling for his constituents is about working for the young, the old and everyone in between.

For proof of this, witness the budget that was recently passed by Congress and signed by the president.

"We were able to get a $480 million increase for the Social Security Administration," Sanders said during a phone interview with the Reformer last Friday. "That's the first increase the agency has seen in almost 10 years."

Sanders has served in the U.S. Senate since 2007, and is running for re-election. Before that, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives starting in 1990.

He launched an unsuccessful bid for the White House in 2016, but in doing so, raised his profile around the country and brought attention to the progressive causes he has espoused since he became mayor of Burlington in 1984.

Sanders said the increase for the Social Security Administration will be used to help tackle a backlog in processing disability claims. Sanders noted that in November of 2017, The Washington Post published a report that 10,000 people died waiting for a disability decision while the Social Security Administration has been dealing with vacancies in its offices around the country.

"It's horrible and it's disgraceful," said Sanders.

The money will be used to fill vacancies, such as those in Vermont. "My staff in Vermont has been telling me that it's been taking longer and longer for these claims to be processed," he said. "Hopefully, we will see some improvement in the processing of claims."

Since 2010, Congress has cut Social Security's operating budget by 16 percent in inflated-adjusted dollars, according to a release from Sanders' office. Senate Republicans wanted to cut it by another 4 percent next year.

Nationally, these budget cuts have resulted in the loss of more than 10,000 employees, the closing of 64 field offices and reduced hours in many others, according to the news release. In Vermont, one field office has seen staffing fall by almost 30 percent.

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Over the same period, "The number of people receiving old age and survivors' benefits increased by 17 percent, and disability insurance beneficiaries increased by 5 percent," Sanders said.

"The simple fact is that fewer staff are being asked to do more work, and this is having a serious impact on worker morale and customer service," he said.

Sanders said the amount approved for Social Security operational funding will "bring staffing back up to a level needed to provide adequate customer service for the tens of millions of Americans who routinely communicate with and depend on the agency."

Along with the increase in Social Security funding, Congress also secured additional money for the Veteran's Administration and another $2 billion to deal with student debt.

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Sanders said being the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee gives him position "to make some things happen."

In addition, Sanders is one of 10 members of the Senate Democratic leadership team.

"I had a number of priorities, which included Social Security and significant increases in child care," he said.

The Child Care Development Block Grant received a $2.3 billion increase, bringing the program's total budget to $5.2 billion. It was the largest single-year increase in the program's history. The increase doubled the amount of funding provided for child care for low-income working families.

The new budget includes an increase in Pell Grants, raising the maximum from $5,920 to $6,095. Pell Grants go to people whose families earn less than $50,000 a year. In addition, $107 million was added to the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant budget, which provides up to $4,000 to 1.6 million low-income college students. According to Consumer Reports, the SEOG program now has an annual budget of $840 million.

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Congress also approved more money for work-study jobs, boosted by $140 million, to $1.13 billion. The Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools program, which helps low-income parents pay child-care costs while they pursue a degree, got a 230 percent increase in its budget, to $50 million, according to Consumer Reports. The budget also gave $350 million for public service loan forgiveness for borrowers who make 10 years of payments and work in the nonprofit or public sector. After 10 years, their student debt is erased.

"Republicans in the Senate needed 60 votes to get the budget passed," said Sanders. Because of that, Democrats were able to sweeten the $1.3 trillion pot for some of their pet causes.

Sanders said now that the budget has passed, it's time for Congress to consider "common-sense" gun control legislation.

"What people are saying across this country, which is profound, is they want to see a significant effort to pass gun safety legislation. There is an overwhelming majority of the American people wanting us to pass an improvement to background checks, and who want to do away with the gun show loophole and more thoroughly enforce straw-man laws," Sanders said. "And more and more people want to ban assault weapons and the sale of assault weapons."

However, said Sanders, it might be a tough sell to push gun legislation through Congress while "Republicans are caving to the NRA."

Sanders said it may be different this time, though, because so many young people are getting more involved in politics.

"I recently met with some of these young people from the high school in Parkland," he said. "They are very impressive young people, in that they are able to take their grief and their fear — can you imagine what a traumatic experience it is to be in a school where 17 people were killed? — they took their trauma and grief and they decided to place it in a positive way. What they are doing is helping to transform America and anybody who starts attacking these young people is on the wrong side of history."

Despite opposition from the GOP and the NRA, said Sanders, he and the Democrats "continue the effort to bring common-sense gun control to the floor of Congress."

Bob Audette can be contacted at 802-254-2311, ext. 151, or raudette@reformer.com.