Dear Friends,

I want to give you an update on my work in Washington and abroad on behalf of the 9^th Congressional District. Below are some highlights:

DARFUR GENOCIDE

Recently I traveled with a senior, bipartisan Congressional delegation led by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to Darfur, Sudan. Our mission was to evaluate the situation on the ground and to determine what could be done to stop the genocide, which has now gone on three years. I wanted to make sure the sense of urgency was not lost.

Last Tuesday, Leader Pelosi, UN Ambassador John Bolton, and other members of our delegation met with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to report the results of our trip. We called on the Secretary General to get UN troops in Darfur as soon as possible; currently, 7,000 African Union troops have been charged with maintaining security in a region the size of France. Secretary General Annan stressed the importance of obtaining the support of African nations for UN intervention before troops could be deployed, and we expressed the urgent need for him to lead the effort to gain the support of those nations. In the time to come I will do my best to also convince President Bush to do all he can to prompt real movement on this issue.

My ideas on how to stop the genocide in Sudan were published in the Chicago Sun-Times last Tuesday [http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref07.html]

NATURAL GAS/HEATING PRICES

I have heard concerns from many of you about the sky high heating bills you paid this winter. Natural gas prices were up 25% across the Midwest, and the average bill was over $1,000 per household for the first time in history.

On Tuesday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the AGs of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri came to Washington to release a report on the rising price of natural gas. The report demonstrated that simple market factors had not caused the extreme rise in prices – an increase of $400 billion at the wellhead from 2000 - 2005. Instead, speculators on the futures market and oil and gas companies were to blame for the significant increase in prices.

In a hearing of the Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, I pressed Secretary of Energy Bodman to respond to the report’s bottom line: more can be done to bring down the rising price of natural gas. I asked him to consider giving the federal government the legal authority to hold accountable oil and gas companies that price gouge, and to include provisions in his FY2007 budget request which would bring prices down. Unfortunately, the Department of Energy’s budget request, as currently drafted, would do nothing to bring down natural gas prices and instead invests hundreds of millions of dollars in reckless programs like expanding nuclear power.

The report’s results are available here: The Role of Supply, Demand and Financial Commodity Markets in the Natural Gas Price Spiral.  I will let you know when Secretary Bodman responds to the report.

PHONE RECORDS FOR SALE

Finally, an important bill which would protect your privacy passed the Energy and Commerce Committee this week. This January the Chicago Sun-Times broke an important story about how fraudsters were obtaining private phone records and selling them online. The Chicago Police Department informed its undercover officers that their identities may not be protected because of the ease with which their phone records could be obtained.

I introduced the SAFE CALL Act, a bill I drafted last July, when I learned about this privacy invasion from the Electronic Privacy Information Center.  My bill would make it illegal to pose as someone else to obtain their phone records in order to sell them. The SAFE CALL Act was incorporated into the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act which passed the Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously on Wednesday. This bipartisan legislation would also require phone companies to provide better security for their customers’ records so that con artists can’t get them in the first place, and require that consumers give their consent before any company shares their records. I will work to help the bill move quickly through the House and into law.

                                                                  Sincerely,

                                                                      Jan