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CAGW Names Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald April Porker of the Month

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Robert McDonald its April Porker of the Month for his further bungling of a massively mismanaged agency.

It is not easy to turn around a department in as much disarray as the VA. However, that effort should start by adopting commonsense business practices that are used in every company. Secretary McDonald appears to have run Proctor & Gamble (P&G) well enough that consumers can still brush their teeth with Crest rather than just Colgate and wash their dishes with Joy instead of just Palmolive. But the Secretary has so far done a poor job of managing the VA within the very limited confines of competency for a government agency, let alone a private-sector company.

Secretary McDonald should be front and center with a response to every report of mismanagement at the VA. He should present Congress, taxpayers, and most of all veterans, with a clear, concise, and comprehensive plan to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the VA. Instead, he has not exactly elicited the kind of empathy on Capitol Hill that would help him acquire the necessary tools to fix the agency’s problems.

During a February 11, 2015 House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on the VA’s fiscal year 2016 budget request, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) charged Sec. McDonald with “glossing over the extraordinary problems confronted by your department.” The secretary lashed back indignantly bragging, “I ran a company, sir, what have you done?” He shifted blame from the VA to Congress by telling Rep. Coffman, “You’ve been here longer than I have … If there’s a problem in Denver, you own it more than I do.” One would imagine that a response such as that to the P&G board when Mr. McDonald was CEO could have led to a vote on whether he should be fired for insubordination.

The “Denver” reference was to the medical complex in suburban Aurora, which has been a black eye for the VA for the past decade. The cost was originally slated to be $328 million in 2005. It ballooned to $621 million by 2006, and was estimated in March 2015 to cost $1.73 billion. The project was dubbed the “biggest construction failure” in the history of the VA. Despite his apparent abdication of responsibility for the project, it was on Sec. McDonald’s watch that the VA begged Congress to lift the $880 million spending cap imposed on the project. One rationale for the need to throw more good money after bad was to avoid another construction shutdown (the first of which happened on his watch in December). Indeed, Sec. McDonald forced one top official to take the fall for the VA’s continued financial negligence.

Sec. McDonald should also not escape blame for the failure to fix problems at the infamous Phoenix VA hospital, where the denial of benefits to veterans due to a combination of negligence and a flawed claims system has continued unabated. An October 2014 investigation found that a VA facility in Shreveport, Louisiana lacked “toothbrushes, toothpaste, pajamas, sheets and blankets” for veterans as the facility bought solar panels, new televisions, and new furniture. There so much mismanagement that the VA Committee could hold a hearing every week; indeed, there is another one on April 22, “Philadelphia and Oakland: Systemic Failures and Mismanagement.” The toxic culture at the VA has even fostered a chilling effect on employees who blow the whistle on this waste, fraud, and abuse.

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “After decades of mismanagement, abuse, and waste, Sec. McDonald should at least show a little contrition. In his short time as secretary, he has failed to demonstrate sufficient willingness to reform the bureaucracy; instead, he has been arrogant. It is time for the secretary to take charge and give veterans confidence that he will provide them with the services they need, without delay and without excuses.”

For further bungling the management of a department ravaged by scandal, abdicating responsibility for its condition, and failing to provide a clear plan for resolving the problems and moving forward, CAGW names VA Secretary Robert McDonald its April Porker of the Month.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

Congressional Pig Book

May 15, 2015
Tricks For Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette at Bard

Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette — On view through July 26, 2015. The extraordinary ways in which women and men have shaped their bodies into distinctive silhouettes in the name of fashion will be examined in an exhibition opened this spring.

Whalebone corset. France, ca. 1740–60. Silk satin damask, braided silk, linen bows covered in silk and decorated with metallic thread, whalebone, linen lining. Les Arts Décoratifs, collection Mode et Textile. Articulated pannier. France, ca. 1770. Iron covered with leather, fabric tape. Les Arts Décoratifs, depot du musée national du Moyen Âge-Thermes et hotel de Cluny 2005, Cluny 7875. Photographer: Patricia Canino

Curated by Denis Bruna, curator of pre-19th-century fashion and textile collections at the Musée des Arts décoratifs and professor at the École du Louvre, the exhibition will explore the history of what has long been “behind the scene” in clothing and fashion — far beyond the corset, the best-known device for shaping the ﬁgure. Drawing heavily on the Paris museum’s unrivaled costume collection, it is the ﬁrst of its kind, and Bard Graduate Center will be its only venue in North America.

Although a broad array of silhouette-shaping garments has evolved over the course of fashion history, and techniques have been reﬁned, the purpose of such garments has remained consistent: to ﬂatten the stomach, compress the waist to the point of hollowing it out, support the bust, lift the breasts (and sometimes ﬂatten them), and add curves to the hips. In short, comfort was superseded by appearance until about 1900, when couturiers such as Paul Poiret launched, however ﬂeetingly, a vogue for “natural” lines.

The tricks for fashioning women’s bodies have always confounded belief, from the earliest boned bodices through today’s push-ups. Installed on three ﬂoors of Bard Graduate Center Gallery’s townhouse, Fashioning the Body opens with the seventeenth-century silhouette, exempliﬁed by a rare women’s Spanish doublet, which was internally reinforced to be more rigid. Structured with armatures and other mechanisms, the garments of the eighteenth century enforced the erect posture prized ﬁrst by the aristocracy and later by an inﬂuential bourgeoisie in order to convey a sense of superiority through the display of an idealized physical form. The epitome of the transformed female silhouette is the late eighteenth-century formal or court dress, examples of which will be on display alongside the undergarments that molded their distinctive silhouettes.

May 13, 2015
Which States Have the Most Job Growth Since the Recession? The 50 States and DC Have Added Nearly 12 Million Jobs

By Jake Grovum, Stateline, May 13, 2015

Although the nation’s unemployment rate is at a seven-year low of 5.4 percent, job growth among the states has been uneven, with several showing only meager gains more than five years removed from the depths of the Great Recession.

General Motors’ Brownstown, Michigan Battery Assembly Plant worker Tina Oaks attaches wiring harnesses on a Spark EV battery pack

A Stateline analysis of states’ employment data shows that while all states have added jobs since their economies hit their nadir during the recession, some have added far fewer than others. Ten states (Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) have seen total employment grow 5 percent or less compared to their lowest points, according to the analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

On average, employment has increased 8 percent among all 50 states and the District of Columbia since each one’s individual nadir.

To calculate job growth, Stateline identified each state’s lowest level of employment since January 2008 (the recession officially began in December 2007), and compared that figure to the state’s March 2015 employment level, the most recent number available. The result is a state-by-state measurement of job growth since the recession.

Maine and West Virginia have seen the least growth, with employment increasing less than 3 percent in those states since they hit their lowest levels in 2010. Mississippi, Missouri and New Mexico have experienced less than 4 percent growth. In 21 states, employment has increased less than 7 percent.

But in other states, employment has bounced back strongly: In 14, employment has increased 10 percent or more since their low points.

North Dakota has led the way thanks to its oil boom. Employment there has jumped more than 28 percent since April 2009, the earliest low point of any state.

Other top performers are Texas and Utah, where employment has increased more than 15 percent since December 2009 and February 2010, respectively. Next are California and Colorado, where employment is up more than 13 percent since their lowest points in early 2010.

In raw numbers, the 50 states and the District have added nearly 12 million jobs since each one’s lowest employment level.

The most populous states — California, Florida, New York and Texas — dominate the growth in sheer numbers.

Michigan may be the biggest success story. By many economic measures, including employment rate and overall job loss, Michigan fell further than any other state during the recession. But Michigan has added 417,900 jobs since its low point in March 2010, placing it fifth in overall employment growth. Employment in the state is up nearly 11 percent, to 4,246,400 in March — about 10,000 more jobs than it had in January 2008.

Twenty-one states hit their Great Recession employment low in February 2010, according to Stateline’s analysis. The second most common low point was December 2009, which was the nadir for nine states. Seven states saw employment hit bottom in January 2010.

Every state plus the District experienced its lowest point in employment between April 2009 and September 2010. The District and North Dakota bottomed out first, while Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey and New Mexico were the last four to hit bottom in late 2010, nearly three years after the recession began.

May 13, 2015
America’s Changing Religious Landscape: Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow

May 12, 2015, ©Pew Research Center*

Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow

The Christian share of the US population is declining, while the number of US adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men. (Explore the data with our interactive database tool.)

To be sure, the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans – roughly seven-in-ten – continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith.1 But the major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%. And the share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus, albeit from a very low base.

The drop in the Christian share of the population has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics. Each of those large religious traditions has shrunk by approximately three percentage points since 2007. The evangelical Protestant share of the US population also has dipped, but at a slower rate, falling by about one percentage point since 2007.2

Even as their numbers decline, American Christians – like the US population as a whole – are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Non-Hispanic whites now account for smaller shares of evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics than they did seven years earlier, while Hispanics have grown as a share of all three religious groups. Racial and ethnic minorities now make up 41% of Catholics (up from 35% in 2007), 24% of evangelical Protestants (up from 19%) and 14% of mainline Protestants (up from 9%).

May 12, 2015
Still Learning: Lessons from a Lifetime in the Classroom, Eyes on the Prize

Wikimedia Commons

By Julia Sneden

A few years ago, I received a brochure advertising a meeting for Early Childhood educators that carried this lovely thought:

“Childhood should be a procession, not a race.”

As far as I’m concerned, that should become the motto of all our elementary school systems. It should be tattooed somewhere on the body of every member of the School Board, and engraved on the door of every classroom. At the very least, it could be made into a bumper sticker that the hospital hands out to the parents of every new baby.

We all laugh at stories of parents who spend their child’s kindergarten parent/teacher conference discussing what the child must study to ensure Harvard admission, but we shouldn’t be laughing. The image is too close to the truth.

I once had the father of a 5-year-old ask me: “On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate my daughter?” When I protested that I wasn’t in the business of rating kindergarten children, he persisted: “But if you were? Where would you put her?”
“As compared to what or whom?” I asked. “As compared to her academic potential? Her social skills? Her satisfactoriness as a daughter? Her athletic ability?”

“You know what I mean,” he said. “Compared to the rest of your class, 1-10, where does she stand?”

There seemed to be no point in giving a serious answer to something like that, and I gave him what he wanted to hear.

“She’s a 10, of course,” I said cheerfully. And mentally I added: “And you, sir, are a minus 3.”

I wonder why it is that people are so obsessed with competition that they forget what education is supposed to do. Perhaps my vision is faulty, but it seems to me that the purpose of education is to guide immature minds into ways to think clearly and creatively, using skills common to our society (like reading, writing and basic mathematics) and to develop social skills that come with growing maturity. That accomplished, it is hoped that the individual will be able to pursue happiness, and contribute in some meaningful way to the society in which he or she lives.

All the other supposed purposes of education, such as the ability to make more money, or to gain respect and social position, seem to me to be byproducts, not goals.

Somehow in our rush to make good lives for our children, we have forgotten that faster is not necessarily better. We tend to measure success by how far we can push our children to outstrip their peers, rather than by how hard a child can push his or her self to improve his or her own performance. Often we hear educators talking about helping students to reach their “full potential.” That sounds like a dead end to me, as if once one achieves the full potential, one might as well lie down and die since there’s no room for improvement. I prefer to think of an individual’s striving to become a more productive and resonant human being, no matter at what age or with what experience.

We operate as if there were time constraints on learning, when in fact the process continues for a lifetime. Education doesn’t stop when you leave school. But our society marches children through some preconceived framework that dictates the age by which a child should walk, talk, learn to read, etc. Deviations from the norm become cause for alarm, unless those deviations are on the side of early, as in early reader or early walker, in which instance they are suddenly brag-worthy.

May 11, 2015
White House Life: A Tea for Military Mothers, the New China Service and First Ladies Biographies

The First Lady and Dr. Biden Host their Mother’s Day Tea to Honor Military-Connected Mothers May 08, 2015 | 13:08 | Public Domain

Army News Service photo by Lisa Ferdinando

First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden host their annual Mother’s Day tea to honor military-connected mothers at the White House. As part of their Joining Forces initiative, Mrs. Obama and Dr. Biden deliver brief remarks in the East Room followed by a musical performance by Ben Folds. At the event, the First Lady and Dr. Biden also help military kids create homemade gifts for their mothers and grandmothers. May 8, 2015.

Catching Up with The Curator: The Obama State China Service, April 27, 2015 | 3:47 | Public Domain

For a new state china service, First Lady Michelle Obama wanted it to have modern elements, but also for it to be practical, in the sense that it would be complementary to the preceding historic state services. The Obama State China Service consists of eleven-piece place settings for 320.

The White House Beehive

The Beehive

Charlie Brandt, a White House carpenter for more than two decades, started beekeeping as a hobby, and the Obama White House quickly embraced the idea of making honey on-site to use in White House recipes. Brandt is now the official beekeeper of what is believed to be the first ever beehive on White House grounds. The beehive is located on the South Lawn, and the foraging bees help pollinate the Kitchen Garden.

The First Ladies

Which two first ladies met their husbands through local newspapers? Who was the first First Lady to make regular nationwide radio broadcasts? Which First Lady cared for wounded soldiers in her husband’s command? Who was originally a Broadway actress before becoming the First Lady? If you’re looking to learn more about the past First Ladies who have helped lead our country, you’re in the right place. Take a look at our full set of biographies. Then, quiz your friends.

May 9, 2015
Banned and Challenged Books; A Second Home for Many, the Library

La Trobe University library, Bundoora campus, Melbourne, Australia. Wikimedia Commons

Celebrating the Freedom to Read: Sept. 27 — Oct. 3, 2015

“Ulysses by James Joyce was selected by the Modern Library as the best novel of the 20th century, and has received wide praise from other literature scholars, including those who have defended online censorship. (Carnegie Mellon English professor and vice-provost Erwin Steinberg, who praised the book in 1994, also defended CMU’s declaration that year to delete alt.sex and some 80 other Usenet newsgroups, claiming they were legally obligated to do so.) Ulysses was barred from the United States as obscene for 15 years, and was seized by US Postal Authorities in 1918 and 1930. The lifting of the ban in 1933 came only after advocates fought for the right to publish the book.

“In 1930, US Customs seized Harvard-bound copies of Candide, Voltaire’s critically hailed satire, claiming obscenity. Two Harvard professors defended the work, and it was later admitted in a different edition. In 1944, the US Post Office demanded the omission of Candide from a mailed Concord Books catalog.

“John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (also known as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) has been frequently suppressed since its initial publication in 1749. This story of a prostitute is known both for its frank sexual descriptions and its parodies of contemporary literature, such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. The US Supreme Court finally cleared it from obscenity charges in 1966.”

— From the University of Pennsylvania Library

Editor’s Note:

The New York Times has recently published an editorial about the New York City libraries: New York City’s Libraries Need Money

“The libraries are where poor children learn to read and love literature, where immigrants learn English, where job-seekers hone résumés and cover letters, and where those who lack ready access to the Internet can cross the digital divide. Libraries can be a natural fit for mayoral projects like after-school programs and prekindergarten, and for the city’s justly lauded municipal ID program. They are havens for thinking, dreaming, studying, striving and — for many children and the elderly — simply for staying safe, and out of the heat.”

Each year, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms. See Frequently Challenged Books for more details.

According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.

The titles below represent banned or challenged books on that list ( see the entire Radcliffe Publishing Course list here). For more information on why these books were challenged, visit challenged classics and the Banned Books Week Web site.

May 8, 2015
Ten Days In the Vatican: Anti-Human-Trafficking Work, A Golden Bear Pin and A Kiss

By Carol Ness | May 7, 2015

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, director of UC Berkeley’s medical anthropology program, is an internationally recognized leader in the fight against human organ trafficking. She helped found the Berkeley Organs Watch project in 1999, and has traveled the world exposing abuses in the organ transplant trade.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes greet Pope Francis in the Vatican

At the Vatican, she joined some 20 other scholars, human rights activists, government and civic leaders and UN officials for a plenary meeting on human trafficking, called by Pope Francis as part of his ongoing initiative on the global problem, which the pope calls a “crime against humanity.”

The group hammered out a four-page list of draft recommendations that, among other things, would make forced labor a penal offense, and called for the creation of a world anti-trafficking organization. Scheper-Hughes gave two presentations and says her primary contributions came in proposals relating to organ trafficking. One would prohibit “the buying, selling, brokering and implanting of organs and tissues from trafficking persons in all countries.” Another would ask the world’s religions to encourage voluntary and altruistic organ sharing. The recommendations were intended to inform the pope as he plans an address to the UN General Assembly in September.

During her stay, Scheper-Hughes lived in rooms that were catty-corner to the pope’s own suite on the first floor of the Domus Santa Marta, his residence. Some mornings, he sat in the shared dining room, having breakfast with a visiting priest or scholar. “We kept our eyes on our plates so as not to stare,” Scheper-Hughes reports. One morning, she was the only woman in the dining room “except for a nun from Kirala who was helping to serve the guests, all of whom were male clerics.” Though Scheper-Hughes dressed in black sweater and pants, and the clerics wore white robes, “In the end, clothes did not make either the man or the woman,” she observes. “Gender still remained highly marked , and many clerics at Santa Marta were uncomfortable sharing a communal table with a woman, let alone talking to her.”

The pope himself greeted every guest with a radiant smile, she says, and, unlike the clerics in the dining room, “seemed open to everyone he met.” The highlight of the plenary was a special audience with Francis, where the group presented its recommendations. Scheper-Hughes considered wearing a mantilla, “but I looked so patently absurd that I pulled it out of my hand luggage.” Bareheaded she went, bearing gifts: a note and a little Golden Bear pin from Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, along with her own writings.

A Catholic who was critical of the pope when he was elected, Scheper-Hughes says that as she approached him she wanted to hide. Instead, she bent down to try to kiss his ring, only to discover that he had no papal ring to kiss. “So I awkwardly kissed his bare hand as a Victorian gentleman from Vienna might have done upon being introduced to a woman he did not know,” she wrote in a post-trip letter to friends.

The pope sent Scheper-Hughes home with white papal rosary beads for Dirks.

A mysterious security crackdown inside Santa Marta during her stay — stepped up guard activity and an Internet shutdown — was explained when Scheper-Hughes landed back in the United States. Headlines told of the arrests of nine people on Sardinia whom police had linked to an al Qaeda cell planning a strike on the Vatican as part of a jihad on Italy.

May 7, 2015
Streaming on May 10th: NCCIH Presents When Experts Disagree, The Art of Medical Decision Making

Lecture will feature authors Jerome Groopman, M.D and Pamela Hartzband, M.D

What

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) will welcome acclaimed authors Jerome Groopman, M.D. and Pamela Hartzband, M.D. as featured speakers for the sixth annual Stephen E. Straus Distinguished Lecture in the Science of Complementary Health Therapies. The husband-and-wife team will present When Experts Disagree: The Art of Medical Decision Making. Dr. Groopman is the Dina and Raphael Recanati chair of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Hartzband is assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and attending physician in the division of endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Why

Drs. Groopman and Hartzband reveal that each of us has a ‘medical mind,’ a highly individual approach to weighing the risks and benefits of treatment. To ascertain our unique medical minds, they will present probing questions. Are you a minimalist or a maximalist, a believer or a doubter, do you look for natural healing or the latest technology? Drs. Groopman and Hartzband explain how pitfalls in thinking and the way statistics are presented in pharmaceutical advertisements, the media, and even scientific reports can mislead all of us. The talk will demonstrate the contrast between the roles of population guidelines with the care of the individual, and explain the complexities of end of life care – all factors that contribute to a person’s ‘medical mind.’ In their talk, Drs. Groopman and Hartzband will weave vivid narratives from real patient experiences with insights from recent cognitive research to demonstrate how to arrive at choices that serve the individual best.

When

Monday, May 11, 2015, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. EST

Where

National Institutes of Health, Building 10, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, Md. Lecture: Masur Auditorium. Visitor information is available at http://www.nih.gov/about/visitor.

More information

**The lecture will be streamed live at videocast.nih.gov. You will be able to view the event at http://videocast.nih.gov when the event is live. Sign language interpretation will be provided; for other reasonable accommodation call Prachi Patel at 301-275-4769.

More Information

The event is free and open to the public.

Hosts

Presented by NCCIH and supported by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health with a gift from Bernard and Barbro Osher.

*The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) was formerly the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).

**Editor’s Note: We’ve read a number of New Yorker articles by Dr. Groopman where he has been a writer for over 15 years. If you miss the above lecture, The Aspen Institute has hosted the same topic by the doctors in 2014:

“Despite medical advances and the application of scientific principles to modern medicine, there seems to be increasing controversy about the “right” diagnostic and treatment choices, even for very common medical issues — such as how best to treat high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, whether to take vitamins, especially vitamin D, and who should be screened for cancer with mammograms and PSA. And the debate is very public, fomenting confusion with almost daily stories in the media. Why are experts disagreeing? Why isn’t there a clear “right” answer? And what support do patients need to make decisions in the face of such controversy?”

— From the Aspen Institute’s presentation

May 6, 2015
Congressional Bills Introduced: Sex Differences in Drug Research, Women Vets Medical Care, Sex Offense Victims

Upcoming Hearings:

(1) Overcoming Barriers to More Efficient and Effective VA Staffing

Subcommittee on Health | 334 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC | May 15, 2015 9:45am

(2) Joint Hearing of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees to receive the Legislative Presentation of Multiple Veterans Service Organizations (PVA, AMVETS, MOAA, MOPH, IAVA, VVA, BVA and NCOA)

House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs | 216 Hart Senate Office Building Washington , DC | May 20, 2015 10:00am

Congressman Beto O’Rouke (Democrat of Texas) and his wife, Amy Hoover Sanders

Bills Introduced:

Adoption

H.R. 2068—Rep. James Langevin (D-RI)/Energy and Commerce; Judiciary (4/28/15)—A bill to ensure the safety and well-being of adopted children.

Education

S. 1177—Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)/Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (4/30/15)—An original bill to ensure that every child achieves.

Family Support

H.R. 2091—Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME)/Financial Services (4/29/15)—A bill to clarify the ability to request consumer reports in certain cases to establish and enforce child support payments and awards.

Health

H.R. 2101—Rep. Jim Cooper (D-CA)/Energy and Commerce (4/29/15)—A bill to provide for expedited review of drugs and biological products to provide safer or more effective treatment for males or females, to enhance the consideration of sex differences in basic and clinical research, and for other purposes.

Immigration

H.R. 2095—Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX)/Judiciary (4/29/15)—A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to promote family unity, and for other purposes.

International

H.R. 2100—Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH)/Foreign Affairs (4/29/15)—A bill to authorize the secretary of State and the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to provide assistance to support the rights of women and girls in developing countries, and for other purposes.

Miscellaneous

S.1170—Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)/Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (4/30/15)—A bill to extend the authority of the United States Postal Service to issue a semipostal to raise funds for breast cancer research, and for other purposes.

H.R. 2147—Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH)/Financial Services (4/30/15)—A bill to require the secretary of the Treasury to convene a panel of citizens to make a recommendation to the secretary regarding featuring the likeness of a woman on the twenty dollar bill, and for other purposes.

H.R. 2191—Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA)/Oversight and Government Reform, Energy and Commerce, Armed Services (4/30/15)—A bill to extend the authority of the United States Postal Service to issue a semipostal to raise funds for breast cancer research, and for other purposes.

Tax Policy

H.R. 2184—Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA)/Ways and Means (4/30/15)—A bill to repeal the phasedown of the credit percentage for the dependent care tax credit.

Veterans

H.R. 2054—Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL)/Veterans’ Affairs (4/28/15)—A bill to provide for increased access to Department of Veterans Affairs medical care for women veterans.

Violence Against Women

H.R. 2120—Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)/Judiciary (4/29/15)—A bill to encourage states to expand the protections offered to victims of sex offenses who are not in a familiar or dating relationship with the perpetrators of such offenses.

S.Res. 230—Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)/Judiciary (4/29/15)—A resolution encouraging state-by-state adoption of a sexual assault survivors’ bill of rights.

May 5, 2015