Lawmaker News

The end of the fiscal year has come and gone and yet again Congress has failed to enact any appropriations bills and the country is deeper in debt.  

Congress also hasn’t addressed real spending reform as entitlement spending continues to bring the country closer to bankruptcy. Despite these dire circumstances, those responsible for these pressing national concerns, the United States Congress, still receive pay and benefits totaling $285,000 per year. This makes members of Congress among the highest-paid five percent of American workers.  

More Americans now support the notion of legalizing marijuana than oppose it. That was the conclusion of a new nationwide Gallup poll, released on Monday.
 
While the result may come as a surprise to some, it shouldn’t. The public’s growing support for marijuana law reform has been constant and consistent. Says the polling firm: “When Gallup first asked about legalizing marijuana, in 1969, 12 percent of Americans favored it.  … Support remained in the mid-20s … from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, but has crept up since, passing 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009 before reaching the 50 percent level in this year's … survey.”
 
In fact, since 2005, public support for legalizing cannabis has grown among every single demographic  polled. That’s right, today a greater percentage of Americans of every age, political ideology, and from every region of the country back marijuana law reform than did just six years ago.

Over last few weeks I have questioned the intent of Maine's Senator Susan Collins in her drive to overturn school-nutrition recommendations made by our nation’s most recognized medical authority, the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (IOM).  Specifically, the Senator takes issue with the recommendation to moderate potato and overall starchy vegetable servings from being unlimited to 2 servings a week in school lunches.  A broader concern, however, is the impact of politicians trying to trump scientific evidence that the medical community relies upon to improve the health of our nation and its children.

The IOM’s purpose is to provide biomedical science, medicine and health advice to the public based on the most thorough reviews of evidence-based medicine.  The Institute does this in an unbiased and authoritative fashion, and its recommendations for policy are considered the most respected views on health in our nation.  Congress often funds IOM studies and implements its recommendations.

The conclusions of the IOM can sometimes be surprising, even to the medical experts who serve on its panels.  One example of such a surprise was a recent IOM report on Vitamin D.  One of Maine’s most admired physicians, Dr. Clifford Rosen, served on this panel, which concluded that the doses of Vitamin D recommended by health professionals are in many cases too high.  Though a surprise, these results have changed the way physicians now recommend Vitamin D to their patients. 

The night before September’s unemployment numbers came out last week, the world’s greatest deliberative body spent the evening debating Senate rules instead of voting on jobs.   No wonder Americans are disillusioned with Washington.  So far this month the Senate has taken four votes: three of them have been about internal Senate procedures.  14 million people remain out of work, foreclosures are at record highs, yet it’s arcane parliamentary procedure that is taking up much of the Senate’s attention. 

In Congress, the Tea Party Republican majority is determined to ignore the jobs crisis in this country.  They’d rather focus Congress’ time and energy on busting unions and attacking the federally protected rights of workers to organize.
 
The Tea Party Republicans’ latest assault on hardworking Americans comes in the form of this legislation: Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act (H.R. 2587), which should have been titled the Busting Unions and Outsourcing Jobs to Protect Corporate Profits Act.  This legislation dismantles workers’ rights in the name of protecting the profits of a single corporation -- Boeing. 

 
H.R. 2587 is the Tea Party Republicans’ attempt to reward a corporation that breaks the law in order to bust union workers.  Rather than negotiate with union members to reach contract agreements, Boeing built a new $750 million facility in South Carolina.  H.R. 2587 would permit any company in America to move their operations to any low-wage location where workers’ rights are ignored, whether inside or outside the United States.
 

I met “Sonia,” a farmworker in upstate New York, in August. She and her husband had managed to scrape together $3,000 for a down payment on a house. After two years of making mortgage payments, they discovered the seller had never transferred the title to them. They are being evicted from the home they thought was their own.

What would you do if you were Sonia? Hire a lawyer?

Sonia and her husband tried to do just that, but as they started to seek recourse in the legal system, the seller threatened to call immigration. Sonia is an undocumented immigrant.

Read more...

Most U.S. taxpayers would agree with the need for restraint in government spending and for government agencies to follow established policies governing procurement of products and services. However, last week’s grandstanding by Sen. Harry Reid over the reported cost of a muffin at a government meeting was most likely inaccurate and definitely shortsighted.
 
In contrast to the press reports that the Justice Department paid as much as $16 per muffin at a recent meeting in Washington, Hilton Worldwide noted last week that the contracted breakfast included fresh fruit, coffee, juice, and muffins, plus tax and gratuity for an all-inclusive price of $16 per person. That compares very favorably to the prices paid by the United States Senate over which Sen. Reid himself presides.
 
According to the United States Senate Dining Services website, “the Catering Department of the U.S. Senate Restaurants is responsible for providing food and beverage service to Senators, Officials of the United States Senate and outside groups who are sponsored by them.” A review of the menus posted online show breakfast cost ranging from $12 up to $20 per person before tax and gratuity, lunch ranging from $15.50 for deli meats up to $42 for a 3 course hot plated lunch, and dinners from $49 to 69 per person, with most selections above the current GSA per diem rates for Washington, DC of $12/$18/$36 for breakfast, lunch and dinner respectively and some of the Justice Management Division’s conference policy limits listed in the report.

On September 15, the Army formally deactivated Fort Monroe, the largest stone fort ever built in the United States- also the only one surrounded by a moat. 
  
With luck, Fort Monroe will become America's newest national park or monument, due in large part to strong local support from the Hampton Roads community and the Commonwealth of Virginia. 
  
That fits a positive pattern. Many of the heritage places now protected as national parks were preserved because local people brought the treasures in their backyards to the attention of the nation. 
  
For example, local boosters in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, including schoolchildren, were driving forces behind preserving lush Appalachian scenery within Great Smoky Mountains National Park—now America's most visited park. 
 

Having had much experience in leadership training and two sons who have excelled in their own careers, at times I am asked by my friends with high-school-age kids for ways to help them develop important leadership skills. One of the internship programs I have always recommended they consider is the House of Representatives’ Page program. I am sad to say, that program is no longer available to them.

On August 8, without discussion or prior warning, House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a joint news release that effectively ended the nearly 200-year-old program (which arguably had been in use in some form since the first Continental Congress in 1789). Why was there no warning, no discussion, and no notice to members concerning cancelling this program that is an important part of our nation’s history?

Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) concluded a visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan this week. The Senators were in the region from Aug. 21 through Aug. 23 and met with U.S. troops and commanders and senior civilian and government leaders.

The Senators made the following joint statement about their trip:

We are in awe of the extraordinary professionalism of our troops and at the high morale they maintain.

There has been militarily significant progress in Afghanistan since our last visits, particularly in the south. The transition of selected regions to Afghan control is on target. The proportion of Afghan troops conducting missions has significantly improved, and the Afghans are increasingly in the lead. Increasing the size and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is having benefits. The ability of the ANSF to protect the Afghan people is the key to success of our mission. The vast majority of the Afghan people detests the Taliban and tolerate their presence out of fear.