Campaign

Reality seems to have been flipped on its head in the debate over the administration’s draft executive order to require federal contractors to disclose more information about their campaign contributions.

It used to be that transparency was a solution, not a problem. But today, Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is holding a hearing stacked with witnesses representing defense and aerospace contractors who oppose additional disclosure.

Chairman Issa, who is also the co-chair of the Congressional Transparency Caucus, now suggests that more transparency is dangerous. In desperate rhetoric, he warns that President Obama secretly wants to use this new information to create a “Nixonian type enemies list.”

While a time for jubilation, Osama bin Laden’s removal from the scene brings the United States to a critical fork in the road in the ongoing war against terror. As in the wandered in Robert Frost’s poem, it can follow the well-trodden path, which also happens to be the most popular. Or it can, as did he, follow the one less traveled. The choices it makes will impact heavily on its ability to remain a force for good in the world and continue to protect the safety of its citizens.   

Already we hear calls for an accelerated American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those making them argue that without bin Laden, Al Qaeda is a spent force. As such, they insist, it poses no threat to the security of the United States. But what about the future of the people of Afghanistan, and especially of those who believed the United States meant it when it said that it would stand with them in their quest to bring some semblance of democracy, rule of law, and economic development to a land time forgot? 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave these remarks on maternal health on Tuesday.

Sunday is Mother’s Day, in case any of you need reminding. And many of us will find ways to celebrate and thank our mothers, and we’ll be grateful for all of the blessings that we’ve been given. But let’s not forget that becoming a mother can be a dangerous and life threatening undertaking. Every year, nearly 360,000 women worldwide don’t survive childbirth. Four million babies die during childbirth or within a few weeks. Most of these deaths can be prevented. 

And there are some encouraging trends. Recent data confirms that the global maternal mortality ratio has declined 34 percent between 1990 and 2008. In Bangladesh, for example, maternal mortality has gone down by 40 percent. In Nepal, where it was the first time, many years ago, that I saw a birthing kit, which some of you know is one of UNICEF’s great contributions, and in Nepal it’s dropped 50 percent. 

So our investments in family planning and maternal and newborn health have contributed to a decline of at least 30 percent in maternal deaths in 19 countries. And I want to underscore that because all too often people wonder, well, what happens with this money that you spend and that the Congress appropriates to be spent? Well, this is one example of where we can really trace U.S. Government efforts that have made a difference in the lives of women, babies, and children. 

So it’s clear that with the right tools, the right partnerships, and the right commitment, we can achieve real results. It’s not only the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do as well. Improving the health and status of women and girls acts as a positive multiplier because when women succeed, they lift themselves, they lift their families and their communities along with them. 

According to a recent analysis published in The Lancet, half the reduction in child mortality over the past 40 years can be directly attributed to better education for women. If a woman knows better how to care for her child, she will demand more and receive more, enabling her to do so.

So that’s why we’ve put women and children at the heart of our development efforts, including our Global Health Initiative. Through the Global Health Initiative, we’ve set very ambitious new targets for improvement in maternal and child health and access to family planning. 

We want our efforts to be broad-based, self-sustaining, and country-led. So we’re working to build health systems that give women and children access to an integrated package of essential health services, from prenatal care and skilled birth attendants to reproductive healthcare, immunization services, and the prevention for mother-to-child HIV transmission. 

We’re funding scientists to identify what works to improve women and children’s health and to spread those practices. We’re also working together to remove barriers, and there are still so many barriers. There are economic barriers, cultural barriers, social and even legal barriers that keep women from getting access to healthcare. And we’re creating these innovative, cross-cutting solutions that depend upon better coordination on the ground. 

We’ve recently launched an initiative to spur innovation, prevention, and treatment for pregnant women and newborns, as well as an alliance to increase access to family planning and reduce maternal and neonatal deaths in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Last year, we started the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, something that I have to confess I wasn’t as focused on until I really began paying attention because cooking a meal for your family is something that people do every single day, mostly women. But the toxic smoke caused by open fires or unventilated cookstoves kills nearly 2 million women and young children every year. So I think we have a lot that we know needs to be done and a lot of opportunities to do it better. 

Today, I am pleased to announce another tool in our arsenal, another roster of impressive partners, to create the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, or MAMA. I love acronyms when they work. Together with Johnson & Johnson and with the help of the UN Foundation, the mHealth Alliance and BabyCenter, we will harness the power of mobile technology to deliver vital health information to mothers across the globe. 

Women in developing countries, some of the women most at risk for pregnancy-related problems, will be able to use their cell phones to get health information via text messages or voicemails, and the information can even be customized for the stage of pregnancy or the age of their children. 

Over the next three years, this $10 million partnership will be piloted in three countries –Bangladesh, South Africa, and India – and if it is successful, as we expect it to be, we will expand it. We have the ability, therefore, to help more women live healthy lives and more babies to get off to a healthy start; and that’s why we have to keep asking ourselves what works and let’s take it to scale, and if it doesn’t work, let’s quit doing it and find something more innovative and effective. 

Thanks to the attention of the UN Secretary General and other leaders, we’re finally giving this issue the attention it deserves. And there are so many of you in this room, as I look around, who have been leading voices. You’ve been advocates, policy makers, service providers, leaders in every sector. 

And I thank you, because it’s going to take all of us. This has to be a team effort, because there is so much to be done and so many positive results that we can achieve together.

So let me now have the great pleasure of welcoming to the podium the CEO of Johnson & Johnson – and I thank him and all of the representatives of J&J for being part of this very exciting program – Bill Weldon. 

The majority of working Americans believe they won’t have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, according to a Gallup poll out this week. And while Washington debates the future of Social Security, three out of five non-retired Americans have already declared they hold little hope of ever receiving benefits.

While these numbers suggest that America’s optimism on retirement has hit a 16-year low, they also tell us that policymakers should do whatever they can to support and promote savings initiatives that have proven successful. 

One of the great privileges of being a Member of Congress is that I often have the opportunity to spend time with young people. I am impressed when they demonstrate their intelligence, positive spirit, and willingness to serve their communities. When I spoke with high school students three weeks ago, I asked them to tackle a problem that they and the nation had not yet seen in our history to this degree; our impending bankruptcy. I specifically asked them for help because they and their children will have to deal with the aftermath of this looming bankruptcy. I stressed their right to know what promises have been made in their names and that these promises can’t possibly be kept. 

Those promises are immense, and they are expensive. Within the next three decades, our country will probably be bankrupt almost entirely due to the cost of social entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, thanks to those three overpromised programs, our debt problems are about to get much worse. Over the next 75 years, these three programs alone will cause our national debt to rise to nearly 800 percent of current Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The trajectory is catastrophic. There is no way our economy can sustain this explosive growth of government.  

The United States has begun to lose its status as a scientific and technological leader, and the only way we can hope to compete in the 21st century global economy is if we invest in research and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. It is vital that we not lose sight of that, even in these tough budget times. As we work to pass an FY 2011 appropriations bill and a budget resolution for FY 2012, I urge my colleagues to remember that our long term economic growth and competitiveness are dependent upon the investments in research and education that we make today.  

Many high-tech companies cite the availability of a skilled STEM workforce as the number one reason for determining where they locate their facilities. More and more U.S. companies are moving abroad because they can’t find the highly skilled workforce they need here at home. According to 2008 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the professional IT workforce was projected to add a little under a million new jobs between 2008 and 2018. This represents more than twice the rate of the overall workforce growth between 2008 and 2018. If we want those jobs to stay in the U.S., and in Texas, we must continue to invest in STEM education for our future workforce.

For about a decade, I was fortunate enough to teach broadcasting courses. One of the first lessons I tried to instill to the students was the main focus of a commercial media outlet was not necessarily to create great programming but to turn a profit.

This way of thinking was prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s and many saw the degrading influence commercialism can have on programming of substance.  This is not say there is no need for entertainment. However, if everyone concentrated on fluff entertainment or selling goods and services; what would happen to our society?

As a member of the United Kingdom legislative body in both Houses for the past 30 years, I have taken an interest in and closely observed Iran’s developments. Being acquainted with many Britons of Iranian descent, Iranian circles and groups, I also came to know the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI) or as it is referred to in the United States the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK). 

I found the MEK supporters to be the most active, most organized and dedicated to win freedom and democracy for their country and people. It might seem odd to emphasize that they are freedom-loving and democratic but the mullahs of Tehran have repeatedly sought to present them as neither.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) released the following video statement in response to the one year anniversary of the passage of President Obama's healthcare bill.

Currently the United States is operating without a budget as no formal resolution was adopted for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2010. This untenable situation requires numerous continuing resolutions to fund government operations. We have recurring budget battles, rather than secure expenditures. 

Any government agency would claim it is next to impossible to conduct business this way and we need to adopt a formal budget. The question is why President Obama and Congress have not done so and the answer is complicated for a couple of reasons.

First, the United States is operating under a $14 trillion debt and a $1.5 trillion deficit, which means we are spending quite a bit more than we are bringing in. There is only one solution to this problem: cut spending and raise revenues. The former seems relatively easy, but the problem is what do you cut?