He's certianly a mean one ....

* Tomorrow's cover of the New York Daily News

It could be head wasn't screwed on just right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. But we think that the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small. https://nydn.us/2QIJ6t0

President Obama's Weekly Address 10/3/15: Congress Should Do its Job and Pass a Serious Budget

WASHINGTON, DC — In this week's address, the President emphasized that we need to do everything we can to strengthen economic growth and job creation. This week, despite the fact that more than half of Republicans in Congress voted to shut down the government for the second time in two years, Congress managed to pass a last-minute bill to keep the government open for another ten weeks. That means that in December, we could face yet another Republican threat to shut down the government. The President emphasized that Congress needs to stop kicking the can down the road and do its job. He stressed that Republicans and Democrats need to work together to pass a budget that fully funds the government and reverses the harmful sequestration cuts, and vowed that he would not sign another shortsighted spending bill like the one Congress sent him this past week.

President Obama's Weekly Address 9/19/15 : It’s Time for Congress To Pass a Responsible Budget

WASHINGTON, DC — In this week's address, the President discussed the significant progress we have made in our economy since the financial crisis seven years ago this week, and the steps we can take to build on that momentum and strengthen the economy for the long term. Thanks to the hard work and resilience of folks around the country, our businesses have created over 13 million jobs over the past 66 straight months, housing is bouncing back, manufacturing is growing again, and the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in over seven years. We’ve come a long way from the darkest days of the financial crisis, but there is still more to be done. To keep our economy growing, we must avoid self-inflicted wounds and damaging brinksmanship: that starts with Congress passing a responsible budget before the end of the month. The President has called on Republicans in Congress to stop playing games with our economic progress and instead do its job and pass a budget that reverses the harmful cuts known as the sequester and avoids shutting down the federal government.

Pallone to House Republicans: Don’t Shut Down the Department of Homeland Security

LONG BRANCH, NJ – Today, Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) visited U.S. Coast Guard Station Sandy Hook to urge House Republicans to immediately pass clean legislation to continue funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With only 10 calendar days and four legislative days until DHS shuts down on February 28th, Pallone highlighted the critical resources at stake if the agency is not funded. Pallone was joined by Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance and Atlantic Highlands Councilman Roy Dellosso.

“The department charged with ensuring that our country is safe is set to run out of funding in less than two weeks all because House Republicans insist on pandering to extremists in their own party,” said Congressman Pallone. “Keeping American families safe should be the first priority of Congress. With increased threats around the world and real impacts here at home, holding this funding hostage is the height of irresponsibility. This is not governing. House Republicans must stop with the partisan stunts and, instead, vote to continue funding DHS immediately.”

House Republicans insisted on attaching riders that would disallow enforcement of President Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration to the legislation that would continue to fund DHS. The bill, with these extreme anti-immigrant measures attached, was unable to pass the U.S. Senate, and now House Republicans still refuse to pass a clean proposal. Last week, however, every House Democrat cosponsored clean legislation that will continue funding DHS.

On Monday, a United States District Court ruled against President Obama’s executive actions, and DHS has subsequently announced that it will temporarily suspend implementation of the executive orders until legal issues are resolved. Despite this delay, the GOP is still forcing a shutdown by refusing to bring a clean bill to the House floor.

“Local fishermen depend on the Coast Guard when they find themselves in emergency situations out on the water,” said Jim Donofrio. “And forcing these officials to work without pay will cause a distraction that is not needed when lives are at stake. We need to make sure that DHS is fully funded so that essential personnel are ready and available if needed.”

“We know that the effects of shutting down DHS will be felt here in our community and in communities across the country,” said Councilman Dellosso. “It is reckless to simply ignore the impacts that a potential shutdown will have on our residents and those that serve our community. Putting Americans’ safety at risk all for a partisan stunt is no way to run the government.”

If House Republicans refuse to vote on a clean DHS funding bill, approximately 30,000 employees, who perform critical tasks every day, would be furloughed under a GOP shutdown. Additionally, although tens of thousands of frontline security personnel would continue to work in the event of a shutdown, they would be forced to do so without pay. Among those expected to continue serving and protecting the American people without getting paid would be:

· More than 40,000 Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection Officers;

· More than 50,000 TSA aviation security screeners;

· More than 13,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement law enforcement agents and officers;

· More than 40,000 active duty Coast Guard military members;

· More than 4,000 Secret Service law enforcement agents and officers.


A potential GOP shutdown would also close down the bulk of DHS’s management activities and support of the homeland security infrastructure, built following the 9/11 terrorist attacks that continue to keep our country safe on a daily basis. A DHS shutdown would undermine our national security in the following ways:

• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would have to close down its training activities with local law enforcement on possible Weapons of Mass Destruction events
• DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which helps coordinate the efforts of local law enforcement agencies across the country since 9/11 to detect and report dangerous nuclear materials, would stop operating.
• Research and development activities at DHS would come to a halt. These current R&D activities include working on enhancing passenger screening equipment, enhancing cargo screening technologies, improving nuclear detection equipment, and developing countermeasures to biological threats.
• All DHS and FEMA personnel working on state and local grants programs would be furloughed, further delaying essential state and local grants that help protect the homeland, improve local law enforcement, and keep our communities safe.

President Obama's Weekly Address 10/19/13: Working Together on Behalf of the American People

In this week's address, President Obama said that now that the Federal government is reopened and the threat of default is lifted from the economy, there are three places Washington can take action to serve the American people. First, it's time for a balanced, responsible approach to the budget that grows the economy and shrinks our long term deficits. Second, we must fix our broken immigration system. And finally, Congress should pass a farm bill to give rural communities the opportunity to grow. The President said it's time to put aside politics and work on behalf of the American people and the country we love.

An Unnecessary Crisis

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

Earlier this week, I voted for a compromise measure that reopened the federal government through January 15, 2014 and ensures that America will pay its bills through at least February 7, 2014.

This bill ended an unnecessary, self-induced crisis. But it failed to end sequestration’s painful cuts in government services. It failed to invest in creating new jobs. It followed costly weeks of government shutdown and unnerving the financial world. It set up the prospect of additional confrontations over the budget and the debt ceiling early next year.


Ever since this phony crisis began, a majority of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans alike – sought to reopen the government. Yet Republican leaders, out of misguided deference to the reckless ideologues in their ranks, refused to allow a vote on clean legislation to reopen the government.

On Wednesday that finally changed. The Speaker allowed the majority of House members to work their will, and as a result, our government has reopened and the U.S. can continue paying her debts, as we have for centuries. My hope is that, in the months ahead, Speaker Boehner will follow this week’s precedent and allow votes on other pressing issues, such as job creation and immigration reform, that Democrats and Republicans can agree on. The alternative would be to continue to follow the extreme minority who shut down the government for no apparent reason, with no clear idea of what they hoped to win.

The Evidence Is Clear on School Vouchers

School “vouchers” are a longstanding conservative education reform proposal to allow parents to use taxpayer money to subsidize their children’s attendance at private schools. Proponents hope that vouchers will create a “free market” in education that will improve outcomes – but the evidence shows that, to the contrary, vouchers just drain money from public schools.

In a recent study, researchers at Princeton University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found, overall, no statistical difference in achievement between students receiving vouchers and their peers who remained in public school. In a separate study, Milwaukee voucher students did no better than their public school peers in reading, math, and science from 4th through 10th grade. Similar results were found by independent studies in D.C. and Cleveland.

Guided by such evidence, I have always opposed and voted in Congress against school vouchers. We should work to improve our public schools, not pilfer from them.

Working for You

Recently, I was contacted by a Spotswood woman who had discovered an error in her Social Security benefits: due to a mix-up, the Social Security Administration had wrongly cut her monthly benefit, and she was unable to reach anyone who could fix the problem. After I intervened, she was reimbursed more than $800 for the benefits she had missed, and she will receive the correct benefit amount moving forward.

Have you encountered a similar problem with Social Security or any other federal agency? If so, please drop me a line at 1-87-RUSH-HOLT or by sending an e-mail. I’ll be glad to help.

Sincerely,

Rush Holt
Member of Congress

The Shutdown in New Jersey

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

About 31,000 New Jerseyans work for the federal government. Many of these public servants have been furloughed; the remainder are continuing to perform their duties but will not be paid until Congress funds the government. As a result, Moody’s Analytics estimates that a three-to-four week shutdown would cut economic growth nationwide by more than half in the fourth quarter.

Due to the shutdown, the Children’s Home Society – which administers the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in Mercer County – could not write any food or milk vouchers last week, impacting several thousand women and their families. The state of New Jersey has since stepped forward to support WIC temporarily, but if the shutdown continues, more children could lose access to basic nutrition.


At Rutgers Cooperative Extension, 60 staff members are about to be laid off due to funding shortfalls related to the shutdown. New small business loans, including those for New Jersey’s nearly 200,000 small businesses, are being halted. New student loans for New Jersey’s 440,000 college students are not being disbursed. New applications for Social Security, veterans’ benefits, visas, and passports are not being processed.

These problems will only grow worse if this shutdown is allowed to continue. And if the debt ceiling crisis is not resolved, the increased cost to the government could easily be in the tens of billions of dollars each year.

For Generations

Today Republicans in the House are stalling and filling time while they find the courage to admit they have made a big mistake, substantively and politically, in shutting the federal government and to bring to the floor a resolution to resume funding. So, they are using time to bring up a version of the farm bill that would leave more Americans hungry by reducing SNAP benefits (previously known as food stamps).

According to the Lancet Medical Journal published this past week, “SNAP is in jeopardy, which means American children’s health is in jeopardy.” More than 70 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with children. The program, dating from the 1960s, has been shown to have less waste, fraud, and erroneous awards than other government programs.

The Lancet article continues, “Many studies have shown positive associations between receipt of SNAP and... a lower risk of anemia, obesity, poor health, hospital admission for failure to thrive, and reports of child abuse and neglect. Children aged 5 - 9 years of SNAP-participating families had better academic outcomes and less obesity than had children of non-participating families... Between 1961 and 1975, the programme was implemented county by county, thus, allowing for comparison across counties that differed only by SNAP availability. In SNAP-available counties there was… a significant increase... in mean birthweight [an important measure associated with infant health] for both black and white Americans compared with those counties where SNAP was not available. Children of low-income women in SNAP-available counties were less likely to have metabolic syndrome [ill health such as diabetes] in adulthood, and women who had received food stamps during early childhood were more likely to be economically self-sufficient.”

This seems to me to be a very important point: the societal benefits of food stamps extend far beyond the temporary reduction of hunger pangs, and the benefits last for years, even into the next generation.

Sincerely,

Rush Holt

President Obama's Weekly Address 10/12/13: Let’s Get Back to the Work of the American People

WASHINGTON, DC— In this week’s address, President Obama discussed his meetings with members of Congress of both parties and the ongoing effort to reopen the government and remove the danger of default from our economy. The President urged Congress to pass a budget, put people back to work, and end this shutdown. In his message, the President also called for paying our bills, and preventing an economic shutdown.

Reckless and Undemocratic

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

Today, outrageously, our government is closed. Here’s the most important fact about this shutdown: It is not really about funding the government.

Democrats and Republicans have agreed on a short-term funding level for the federal government. That level is painful for Democrats, as it requires severe cuts in government services – to levels lower even than Paul Ryan first proposed. But I, along with almost all Congressional Democrats, am willing to accept this outcome temporarily to keep our country running.

Yet the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party in the House insists they will block any funding bill unless it includes the de facto repeal of health reform.

Perhaps you support health reform; perhaps you do not. But this much is certain: It was duly enacted, and the Tea Party lacks the votes to repeal it by ordinary, democratic means.

So they are trying a reckless, undemocratic alternative. By shutting down the government and threatening to default on America’s debts, they hope to cause so much pain that Congress and the President will be forced to bend to their will.

But if one faction of one party can overturn any duly passed law at will, what will their next demand be? The privatization of Medicare? Tax cuts for millionaires? The abolition of the minimum wage or the Department of Education? Perhaps, if you are a conservative Republican, these policy changes appeal to you, but bear in mind that an insurgent liberal faction could use the same leverage to demand policies you would despise.

If this strategy succeeds and is legitimated, then the U.S. will become essentially ungovernable. Our public policy will be determined, not by the consent of the people, but by the willingness of minority factions to inflict pain to achieve their ends.

That must not happen. And this outrageous behavior is why we should not say that “Congress” has caused this shutdown, for to do so allows the blameworthy to escape blame. We should hold accountable the reckless few who are trying to break our democracy.

Understanding the Health Reform Law

Despite the government shutdown, the health reform law continues to move forward. On Tuesday, the new federal health insurance Marketplace opened at HealthCare.gov, enabling New Jerseyans to compare and purchase comprehensive insurance options and even qualify for subsidies to help cover the costs of their insurance plans.

I have added a new section of my website dedicated to health reform, including answers to frequently asked questions about the law: What is the Marketplace? What are the differences between bronze, silver, gold, and platinum plans available in the Marketplace? Do you need to take any action if you already have insurance through your employer or Medicare?

The answers to these and many other questions are available online. Of course, if you find that your question is not answered, please do not hesitate to contact me at 1-87-RUSH-HOLT or by sending an e-mail through my website.

A Parable (With Thanks to Rep. Mike Doyle)

As the Affordable Care Act rolls out, I expect we will see some changes that should be made in the law to make it work better. That is true with any major law. And that is something everyone – including the President and the Democrats in Congress – agree on. There should be and can be discussions – civil, constructive discussions – within accepted legislative procedures. So too on the budget. Those who have shut the government wrongly say the Democrats won’t negotiate.

A gang corners a man and says, “We are going to burn your house down.” “No, you’re not,” says the man.

The gang says, “OK, then, we are going to burn the second floor of your house.” “No, you’re not,” says the man.

The gang says, “OK, then, we are going to burn several rooms of your house.” “No, you’re not,” says the man.

The gang leader says, “What’s wrong with you? You won’t negotiate.”

Sincerely,

Rush Holt
Member of Congress

President Obama's Weekly Address 10/5/13: End the Government Shutdown

WASHINGTON, DC— In this week’s address, President Obama said that Republicans in the House of Representatives chose to shut down the government over a health care law they don’t like. He urged the Congress to pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached. The President made clear he will work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul – but not under the shadow of these threats to our economy.

Working Together

Dear Friends and Supporters:

Members of Congress, like myself, are elected to make sure our government functions. It is our job, our responsibility to those who elect us. However, right now I am sure that you and your fellow citizens are questioning how we have come to this point, and how this impasse will be resolved.

The fact is that right-wing, Tea Party Republicans have forced the shutdown of the government for one simple reason - because they disagree with the Affordable Care Act; a statute that passed by both houses of Congress, was upheld by the Supreme Court, and was validated in the 2012 Presidential election. They have shut down the government because they opposed a law that will protect healthcare consumers and provide affordable coverage to millions of Americans. They lost the vote in Congress, in the Supreme Court, and the popular vote of the nation, but they will not relent.

The Republican agenda is focused on dividing our country, and crippling our economy which is finally showing true signs of recovery, unless the Democrats bend to their will. I find this to be a truly despicable tactic, and I have spoken out about it on the House floor repeatedly this week, and will continue to do so until this matter is resolved.

This time it’s the Affordable Care Act, but who knows what next week will bring.

One thing is clear - we must work together. There are moderate Republicans who are speaking out and are willing to cast their vote to reopen the government, without any partisan strings attached.

We are a nation recovering from a major economic recession. We are a state with record unemployment, still struggling from Hurricane Sandy. I am writing to you today to let you know: I’m on your side. Along with my Democratic colleagues in the House, I will not cave to extreme tactics put in place by Republicans more interested in ideology than action. We have important work to do in Washington, and that will always remain my focus.



Sincerely,

Frank Pallone, Jr.

History Has Proven

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

Here’s an idea that would enrage many skeptics of the federal government: Let’s pay the U.S. Navy to invent a matchmaking formula.

To be more precise, let’s use federal funds to develop an algorithm to find “stable” matches: that is, to ensure that each person in a population is matched with the best possible mate who will also accept him or her.

The idea sounds wasteful, even silly, doesn’t it? Yet in 1962, supported by federal funding from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Lloyd Shapley and David Gale created just such an algorithm. Their research may have seemed frivolous at the time, but history has proven otherwise. Their equations are now used to match donated kidneys with ailing patients at hospitals across the country.

Put more simply, their federally funded research has saved many lives.

They aren’t alone. Thomas Brock and Hudson Freeze worked together with federal support in Yellowstone National Park to study bacteria that survived the extreme conditions in the park’s geysers. Inadvertently, they discovered enzymes that helped make possible the genomics revolution.

Another researcher, John Eng, conducted federally sponsored research on the poisonous venom of the Gila Monster – and in the process helped create a drug that combats the complications of diabetes.

To me, these stories show two things: that scientific research often produces huge payoffs – and that those payoffs are often serendipitous. We rarely know exactly how a seemingly esoteric line of scientific inquiry will produce practical results, but centuries of experience show that, on the whole, the scientific endeavor dramatically improves our lives and our economy.

I recently helped honor the scientists behind these breakthroughs at the annual Golden Goose Awards. My hope is that their example will encourage our country to continue making much-needed investments in scientific research and development.

An Oil Spill By Any Other Name

Last week I found myself testifying, yet again, at a House committee hearing about the misguided and dangerous Keystone XL pipeline project. The hearing served no particular legislative purpose; rather, it was convened by the House majority as an opportunity to showboat and to repeat long-debunked boasts about the pipeline’s supposed impact.

If built, Keystone XL would transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of tar sands product – one of the dirtiest energy sources on the planet. I refer to it as “tar sands product” rather than “oil” because it is, unbelievably, not considered oil under the law that requires oil companies to pay into a trust fund that covers the costs of cleaning up oil spills. That is, if and when a spill occurs, taxpayers – not the Keystone XL operators – will be liable for the clean-up costs.

I’ve made efforts to close this loophole by proposing amendments to Keystone XL legislation, but unfortunately those attempts have been rejected by the majority.

Continuing to Serve You

As I noted to you last week, unless Congress acts in the next few days, the U.S. federal government will shut down at the end of the day on Monday.

While many federal agencies are preparing to reduce staff and services in the event of a shutdown, I and my staff in my New Jersey and Washington, D.C. offices will be available to answer your questions or concerns or if you need any assistance. Please do not hesitate to e-mail or call me at 1-87-RUSH-HOLT.

In the meantime, I will continue to work through the weekend and beyond to prevent a government shutdown, which would cause needless pain to millions of vulnerable Americans.

Sincerely,

Rush Holt
Member of Congress

President Obama's Weekly Address 9/28/13 : Averting a Government Shutdown and Expanding Access to Affordable Healthcare

WASHINGTON, DC— In this week’s address, President Obama said that on October 1st, a big part of the Affordable Care Act will go live and give uninsured Americans the same chance to buy quality, affordable health care as everyone else. It is also the day when some Republicans in Congress might shut down the government just because they don’t like the law. The President urged Congress to both pass a budget by Monday and raise the nation’s debt ceiling so that we can keep growing the economy. He also said that those without health insurance and those who buy it on the individual market should visit HealthCare.gov to find out how to get covered on Tuesday.

Governing by Crisis

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

If Congress does not pass a bill to fund the federal government by the end of next week, our government will shut down.

This should be a remarkable statement: how can the wealthiest nation in world history be on the verge of shutting down its most basic operations? Yet in fact, America in recent decades has stood frequently on the edge of shutdown – and we sometimes have dived over the cliff.

Congressman Rush Holt

In late 1995, the government shut down twice over disputes about funding for Medicare, education, and other programs. In early 2011, Tea Party members of Congress threatened to shut down the government before relenting at the last minute. Later in that same year, during the debt ceiling standoff, extremist lawmakers threatened to refuse to pay America’s bills – which would have had the practical effect of shutting down much of the government.

These repeated crises are not coincidental or accidental. They are the direct result of a radical theory that is strangling American politics: “governing by crisis.” The notion seems to be that America is in need of immediate change – and that, because Congress is ordinarily a deliberative and sometimes dysfunctional body, it enacts major changes only slowly or irregularly. To force action, lawmakers must, in essence, hold a gun to their own heads and threaten to pull the trigger. They must invent a crisis.

The problems with this approach are many – beginning with the fact that government shutdowns cause immense pain. During a shutdown, the pay of U.S. troops could be put on hold, as would the pay of other critical public servants, including food safety inspectors, law enforcement officers, and more. Veterans’ benefits could be delayed. Seniors’ applications for Social Security likely will not be processed. Non-essential public workers would be involuntarily furloughed, damaging our economy and costing the public the benefit of their service.

Just as troubling, governing by crisis makes it nearly impossible to undertake those actions that have long-term implications, those things that are important but not easily expressed as an immediate crisis. And governing by crisis perverts the system of checks and balances that our founders so ingeniously designed centuries ago. The Founding Fathers’ premise was that change in America should have broad support. In order for a proposal to become a law, it must be agreed to by the House, the Senate, and the White House.

That kind of broad-based consensus is difficult to build. Yet in today’s complex world, it is easy enough for any one of these actors to threaten, through inaction on the budget or the debt ceiling, to bring the whole country tumbling down. By threatening such a crisis, that party can force policy changes and so usurp power that the Founders never intended for them to have. Right now, in fact, Tea Party Republicans are leveraging the threat of a shutdown to attempt to repeal the health reform law – even though that law was written, debated, passed, and enacted the usual way, and Republicans failed on Election Day to gain the electoral mandate required to repeal it.

Further, governing by crisis damages the public’s faith in our government’s ability to accomplish good things. These constant crises are building a culture of distrust that needlessly deepens divisions between our political parties and between ordinary Americans.

Reminder: Health Insurance Options Workshop on September 30th

Are you a small business owner who has questions about what health reform means for your business? Would you like to know more about tax credits that could help you provide health insurance for your employees?

If so, please join my Small Business Health Insurance Options Program (SHOP) Workshop at 9 a.m. on Monday, September 30th at the East Brunswick Public Library, 2 Jean Walling Civic Center Drive in East Brunswick. Further details and information on how to RSVP are available online.

Celebrating Constitution Day

Every year on September 17, we celebrate Constitution Day, when 39 delegates from 12 state delegations gave this nation our greatest gift – and what I call our greatest invention. This year, I had a chance to recognize the occasion with students at Middlesex County High School.

The Constitution is a remarkably durable document that has withstood the test of time and continues to serve as the foundation of our country. As we commemorate the signing of the document that guides and underpins our representative democracy, I am happy to send you a free, pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. I always carry one. To receive a copy, please request one by clicking here.

Sincerely,

Rush Holt
Member of Congress

President Obama's Weekly Address 4/9/11: President Obama on the Budget Compromise to Avoid a Government Shutdown

After weeks of negotiations, President Obama and leaders from both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress found common ground in an agreement about the United States' budget. This means the government will remain open to serve the public, including small businesses who need need loans to grow, families who've applied for mortgages and others who are visiting national parks and museums. It also means that hundreds of thousands of Americans - including brave men and women in uniform - will get paychecks on time.

In his Weekly Address, the President discusses the importance of the bipartisan budget agreement that represents both a significant investment in the United States' future - and the largest annual spending cut in our history.