Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

About Jay

Accomplishments

During his tenure in Congress, Jay Inslee has had some noteworthy successes. As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he helped protect Puget Sound by keeping language out of broad energy legislation in November 2005 that would lift limits on oil-tanker traffic in the estuary. In the same year, he also helped promote renewable energy by winning an amendment to the Energy Policy Act that would reduce by 50 percent royalty payments for wind-energy generation on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. 
 
A part of his longtime efforts to stand up for consumers bilked by Enron, Jay won an amendment to an energy and water spending bill that would prohibit the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from enforcing the market-manipulating energy company’s claims to over $100 million in contract termination fees. 

Jay voted against the war in Iraq in October 2002 and consistently has worked to speed the return of U.S. troops. That’s why he got an amendment included in the fiscal year 2006 Defense Department spending bill, which would have eliminated a $500 million cap on funds available for equipping and training Iraqi soldiers. 

For several years, Jay also fought aspects of a controversial personnel system that restricts collective bargaining and dispute settlement rights of civilians who work for the Pentagon.  In June2006, he won an amendment to a defense spending bill that would prohibit the federal government from funding sections of the program a U.S. District Court judge said violates the rights of over 700,000 civilian Defense Department workers, including 16,000 in the Puget Sound area.

In December 2005, Jay took steps to help prevent tragedies like the local case of Crystal Judson Brame, a Tacoma, Wash., woman murdered by her police chief husband in April 2003. He established a new type of federal grant under the Violence Against Women Act that would provide federal funding for law-enforcement agencies to implement policies on domestic violence, sexual assault and other serious crimes committed by officers.

Jay has been a leader on organ donation. A provision aimed at increasing organ donation that he authored was included in the Organ Donation and Recovery Improvement Act and signed into law in April 2004. More recently, in January 2007, legislation Jay sponsored to legalize paired kidney donation was approved by the House.

Since 2003, Jay has supported the creation of a memorial on Bainbridge Island in Washington state to honor the first Japanese Americans in the nation who were forcibly removed from their homes and community during World War II under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. In February 2007, the House passed a bill Jay penned that would include in the national park system the site from which Bainbridge residents of Japanese ancestry were sent to internment camps.