You may recall that last month Gus joined with Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania to introduce the Military Personnel Income Tax Exclusion Act, which would exempt all active duty military personnel from paying federal income tax on his or her annual pay up to the first $16,800.

Sgt. Shaft over at The Washington Times has more...

Recently, "Prime Time Radio" - AARP's weekly national hour-long program ran a feature on Florida's Silver Alert Program. The story, which ran on 120 public radio stations across the country, includes three comments from Gus that spotlight his efforts to take the program nationwide.

Tags:  Silver Alert Seniors

Gus, who is Co-Chair of the Military Veterans Caucus, today met with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen during the Caucus’s 111th Congress kick-off event. At the event, Admiral Mullen spoke about his experience with Wounded Warriors and engaged in Q&A with Members.

On Monday, Gus joined The Federal Drive with hosts Tom Temin and Jane Norris to discuss H.R. 1624 , Military Personnel Income Tax Exclusion Act.

St. Petersburg Times Editorial

Praise is due for work to create Silver Alert
In Print: Friday, March 27, 2009

Several Pinellas residents deserve praise for working hard to create Florida's successful Silver Alert program, which uses the Amber Alert model for lost children to help locate lost senior citizens and handicapped adults.

For their efforts on behalf of lost adults, Largo police Chief Lester Aradi and Belleair resident Mary Lallucci were honored recently with the Making a Difference Award by the Area Agency on Aging.

The death of Lallucci's 86-year-old mother, Mary Zelter, sparked her passion for creating a Silver Alert program. Zelter disappeared from her assisted living facility in February 2008. Her submerged car was found in the Intracoastal Waterway at the end of a Clearwater Beach boat ramp. Her body was floating nearby. She apparently had driven her car into the water and drowned.

Yesterday, Gus hosted his seminar on consumer fraud and identity theft.

The seminar was held at the CARES Rao Musunuru, M.D. Activity Center in Hudson and featured officials from the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Postal Service.

Every fifteen minutes a child is born with a congenital heart defect. These defects are the most common and most deadly form of birth defects, affecting nearly 1% of births or about 36,000 newborns a year.  There are over 30 different forms of congenital heart defects, which occur when the structures of the heart are malformed, missing or in the wrong place during development.

Survivors of successful childhood intervention face life-long risks including heart failure, rhythmic disorders, stroke, renal dysfunction, and neuro-cognitive dysfunction. The estimated life expectancy for those with congenital heart disease is significantly lower than for the general population – age 55 for those with moderately complex heart defects and 35 to 40 for those with highly complex defects. Less than 10% of adults living with complex congenital heart disease currently receive recommended cardiac care, and many are unaware that they require life-long specialized health surveillance.

While there is currently no cure for congenital heart disease, modern medicine has made major advances in treating heart defects in newborns. In 1950, a child born with a congenital heart defect only had a mere 20% chance of survival, but today that number has increased to 90%. Due to the increase in childhood survival rates, the population of people living with congenital heart disease increases by an estimated 5% every year.

On Tuesday, Gus  joined with Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL), Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), and Representative Zack Space (D-OH)  to introduce bipartisan legislation that increases awareness, education and research into congenital heart disease – a rapidly growing national health problem.

The Congenital Heart Futures Act aims to prevent premature death and disability and increase the quality of life for the nearly 1.8 million people in the United States living with congenital heart disease.

“This legislation would help provide critical information to physicians and those living with congenital heart disease so they can make more informed decisions about their care,” said Bilirakis.

“A child is born with a congenital heart defect every fifteen minutes,” said Durbin. “Despite the prevalence of congenital heart disease, research, data collection, education and awareness are limited. This legislation will expand research and broaden its scope to help those currently living with congenital heart disease and perhaps, one day, find cures.

“This legislation builds on recommendations by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to support and augment the research being done on congenital heart disease. The research will translate into better clinical treatments for Americans living with congenital heart disease,” said Cochran.

“For too long, we have allowed congenital heart defects to limit, alter, and end the lives of the Americans they afflict. Today, we take a significant step in the effort to end the horrible grip these conditions hold on far too many,” said Space.

Today Gus joined with over 20 of his House colleagues, including House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), in writing a letter to President Barack Obama expressing their strong opposition to shifting health care for the nation’s veterans out of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The letter reads:

“We are writing to express our profound disappointment over news reports that your Administration is considering a proposal to breach a solemn obligation to our nation’s veterans who have courageously fought for our freedom,” the leaders wrote in the letter to the President.  “If true, the proposal under consideration would permit the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to ignore its core responsibility to provide health care services to our men and women who have a service related disability.  We recognize much work needs to be done to improve access to health care services for veterans; however, turning our backs on our veterans by shifting the burden to private health care insurers for their disability-related health care is the wrong policy course.”

By Jeff Mason, Reuters News

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama picked a seasoned emergency response coordinator from Florida on Wednesday to lead the federal agency that was widely panned for its handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.