As Congress begins its annual summer district work period, I believe it is important to reflect on the many accomplishments that will benefit Arkansas’s hard working families, veterans, seniors, farmers and small businesses since the 110th Congress began 18 months ago.
We began the session with a demand from the American people for a New Direction. After years of inaction and incompetence on the toughest challenges, our country stood on the brink of recession because of a costly war without end, skyrocketing fuel prices without a plan for energy security or solutions, and a housing crisis that threatened to force families from their homes.
Throughout the session, I used my position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to ensure a better way of life for Arkansans. I worked to combat record high gas and energy prices, and worked to reduce our dependence on foreign oil through an historic commitment to American-grown bio-fuels and through my plan that calls for more oil drilling here in the U.S., off our coast and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I also fought for our children’s safety by working to pass critical legislation protecting them from toxic toys, while also working to enhance Americans’ health by demanding more oversight of the tobacco industry.
We made America more secure by making the 9/11 Commission recommendations the law of the land. I also helped make Arkansas farms more secure by working with my House and Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to craft and pass the Farm Bill that ensures a reliable safety-net for all Arkansas farmers.
I am also proud to have helped this Congress more quickly address our current economic downturn and to rebuild our ailing economy. With bipartisan support, we enacted an economic stimulus plan that put recovery rebates in the hands of 130 million American households and created 500,000 new jobs. We also extended unemployment insurance to the growing number of Americans looking for work, launched a new GI Bill to ensure veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have access to a four-year college education, and enacted a comprehensive rescue package for the housing foreclosure crisis dragging down our economy.
Early in this new Congress, we helped put the American dream back within reach for millions of Americans with the first minimum wage increase in a decade, the largest college aid expansion in six decades, and a national science, technology, math, and engineering teacher corps to spur innovation across our economy. We also made the largest increase in funding for veterans’ health care in history, enacted landmark ethics reform, and passed the first election-year budget agreement in eight years based on a new commitment in Washington to fiscal responsibility.
Amidst these important accomplishments, there is still much more work to be done in Washington. I will sustain my call for a new direction in the war in Iraq because the cost to our troops and their families, our military readiness, our ability to defeat terrorism worldwide, our international reputation, and our economy as a whole has been staggering.
With my seat on the House Energy Subcommittee, I will continue working to move our nation’s energy policy forward so that we can combat our nation’s current energy crisis and break our dependence on foreign oil by encouraging more drilling in the U.S. I will also use my seat on the Health Subcommittee to continue fighting to extend health care coverage to 110,000 Arkansas children because even one child without health care is one too many.
Congress has made great strides over the last 18 months by taking significant steps to clean up the mess in Washington and restore the American people’s trust in their government. As your representative in Washington, I will continue working on behalf of all Arkansans and I want to thank each of you who contacted me about the issues that are important to us. I look forward to continuing my work and fight on behalf of the people of Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District who I have the honor of representing each week in our nation’s Capitol.
