WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement after President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address to a special joint session of Congress:   

“President Obama is clearly right that we must address the continuing jobs crisis in America in an aggressive way. We must do all we can to create millions of good-paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels. While we recently have seen a small decline in unemployment, 25 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed. Putting Americans back to work must be our most important priority.

“I also appreciate that the president used his State of the Union address to talk about income inequality in America and the grossly unfair distribution of wealth and income.  It is a reality that has been ignored for too long and must be addressed. It is simply indefensible, from both a moral and economic perspective, that the 400 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million, and that the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. We can and must do better than that.”