This is a pivotal moment in American history.

The United States currently faces more serious challenges than at any time since the Great Depression. This is true whether one looks at our economy, health care, foreign policy, infrastructure, national debt, education or environment.

I wanted to take this opportunity to give you an update as to what I'm trying to do here in Washington as Vermont's senator. It is my strong belief that, working together, we must do everything we can to fight for our progressive values and make sure that we leave our children and grandchildren a world in which they can flourish. The right-wing political agenda must be defeated. As, perhaps, the most progressive member of the Senate, I am writing to ask for your political support.

Please join me in opposing any deficit reduction agreement that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid - programs that are of vital importance to millions of our fellow citizens.

Today, actual unemployment is over 15 percent. Median family income has declined by $2,500 during the last decade and millions of workers are now forced to work at wages that are lower than they used to earn. (For example, new employees in the auto industry are now receiving 50 percent less than what older workers receive). More and more middle-class families are rapidly descending into poverty as they lose their jobs, their homes, their savings and their retirement benefits.

Meanwhile, while the middle class disappears and poverty increases, the wealthiest people in this country and largest corporations are doing extremely well. Today, the top one percent earns over 20 percent of all income - more than the bottom 50 percent. Incredibly, the richest 400 individuals in America own more wealth than the bottom 150 million. And this horrendous gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider every day. While the CEOs on Wall Street who helped cause this recession are now doing just fine, the rate of childhood poverty in this country is the highest in the industrialized world, and continues to grow.

But it's not just unemployment and low wages. Fifty million Americans lack health insurance, we remain involved in two wars, our infrastructure is crumbling and we are falling further and further behind other countries in student achievement and college enrollment. Tragically, we have not passed any significant legislation to address the planetary crisis of global warming. Incredibly, despite huge and visible aberrations in weather patterns there is not even serious discussion that we may be approaching a tipping point which would impact the future of our planet and the well-being of billions of people.

As you know, many of these issues are coming to a head in the huge and contentious debate that is currently taking place in Washington over deficit reduction and raising the debt ceiling. The Republicans, dominated by their extreme right-wing Tea Party members, have passed one of the cruelest budgets ever seen in Congress - the so-called Ryan budget. Under that plan, Medicare as we know it would be ended, and there would be massive cuts to Medicaid, education and children's needs, environmental protection, nutrition and food stamps, medical research, affordable housing and virtually every program that low and moderate Americans depend upon.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that the rich and large corporations are doing very well and enjoy huge tax breaks, the Republicans are using the issue of raising the debt ceiling - something this nation has done over 80 times, seven of them under George W. Bush - to push their reactionary agenda on the nation. They are adamant about making sure that the wealthy and powerful do not contribute one penny more toward deficit reduction. They want all the sacrifices to be made by the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable people in our country. The rich get richer - and they receive tax breaks. Working families get poorer - and they receive major cuts in programs they desperately need. The Defense Department's budget has soared in recent years - and they get more. That's the Republican logic.

Click here to join me in making it absolutely clear to President Obama and the Democratic and Republican Leadership in Congress that there must not be cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. At a time when the richest people in our country are becoming richer while the middle class is disappearing and poverty is increasing, we must not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick and the children.

I wish I could tell you, in the midst of all of this, that President Obama was waging the kind of fight against these draconian Republican proposals that the American people would like to see. He is not. In my view, he is compromising far too much with right-wing Republicans and is not rallying the American people around an effective and fair deficit reduction proposal that would demand that the wealthy and large corporations contribute at least fifty percent toward deficit reduction, and that there be significant cuts in military spending as well.

Instead, he is proposing three dollars in cuts to every dollar in increased revenue and only modest cuts in defense spending. Most incredibly, despite campaign assurances to the contrary, he has embraced the long-held Republican dream of making major cuts in Social Security and raising the eligibility age for Medicare.

Where do we go from here? Please let the President know that he must not cut Social Security or raise the eligibility age for Medicare. Please let him know that the American people will back him if he demands that corporate America and the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes so that we can move to deficit reduction without decimating programs that working families desperately need.

These are tough times, but despair is not an option. The fight must continue, not just for ourselves but for the well-being of future generations and for the very future of the planet that we inhabit. Together, we WILL defeat the right-wing threat and their big money backers and we will move this country forward toward economic and social justice, peace and environmental sanity.

Thank you for all that you do.



U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

20,000 people have already signed our petition opposing any cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Thank you for your support. -Bernie