Sen. Bernie Sanders Statement on State of the Union

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement yesterday after President Barack Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress:

“I welcome President Obama’s focus on reducing inequality and helping working families in America. The American economy is not sustainable when so few have so much and so many have so little. It’s a moral issue and it’s an economic issue.

“The American people, no matter what part of the country they are from or what political party they support, want us to put millions of people back to work. They want to deal with income and wealth inequality. They want us to raise the minimum wage.

“I applaud the president’s decision to issue an executive order which will raise wages for hundreds of thousands of workers, an issue that I and other senators have been working on for months. The president has made it clear that employees working for government contractors should not be paid starvation wages. This executive order also gives us momentum for raising the minimum wage for every worker in this country to at least $10.10 an hour.”