Opinion Editorials
Dear Friends:
From the day I was elected to Congress in 2009, I have been engaged in a fight to change the culture of Washington, D.C.
The revelation of systemic mismanagement and corruption within the Veterans’ Health Administration (VHA) has been a shock to the entire country.
My late father was a WWII and a Korean War combat veteran who retired as an Army master sergeant. I would often hear him say that the best officers were the ones who “took care of their troops.”
My late father was a World War II and Korean War combat veteran who retired as an Army master sergeant. I would often hear him say that the best officers were the ones who “took care of their troops.”
It is not a well-known fact that the fastest-growing segment of organized crime, as well as the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world, is sex trafficking. And while many believe this is only an international problem that pervades Third World countries, the unfortunate reality is that sex trafficking also occurs here in the United States.
We must end the scourge of sexual assaults in our military.
When young women decide to serve their nation in the armed services, they should never be forced to live under a cloud of intimidation or sexual harassment. This is a challenge the military must confront and overcome.
It is time for the federal government to fulfill its promise to our nation’s veterans and get our VA hospitals built, on time and without excessive and avoidable cost overruns. That’s why we are pushing bipartisan legislation to reform a broken bureaucratic system that has been harming our nation’s veterans and wasting precious taxpayer resources.
Obamacare was supposed to “bend the cost curve” when it comes to our nation’s spending on health care but the concerns from my constituents I’ve received in the last few months pertain to increases in health care insurance premiums and reduced benefits through much higher deductibles.
One constituent from Aurora wrote:
I did not serve in the Vietnam War—the last U.S ground troops were departing South Vietnam in August 1972 just as I was completing Army basic training. I finished my two-year enlistment in 1974 and came back home to enroll as a student at the University of Colorado.
This week I decided to sign on as an original cosponsor of the USA Freedom Act. This legislation, sponsored by the original author of the Patriot Act and expected to be introduced on Tuesday, October 29, reforms current law to better protect the constitutional liberties of our nation’s citizens.
In 1996, the Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform legislation, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), allowing states the flexibility to craft their own plans to move families living in subsistence poverty towards self-sufficiency. In 1997, as a State Senator from Aurora, I led the bi-partisan effort in Colorado by writing the welfare reforms that
On July 1, Congress’ partisan gridlock and inability to come together for the sake of the American people was on full display when it allowed the rates for subsidized Stafford loans to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent without any legislative remedy. This comes at a time when tuition rates are rising uncontrollably.
While we are a nation of immigrants, our policies regarding immigration are dysfunctional. This is not just because we can't control our own borders and enforce our immigration laws, but also because even our system of legal immigration fails to reflect the needs of our country.
Recently, as the House Armed Services Committee was writing the initial draft of the Fiscal Year 2014 National Defense Authorization Act - the annual defense bill - I came across a highly informative piece of investigative journalism in The Gazette entitled "Other Than Honorable" which effectively captured what is unfortunately an all too familiar occurrence in the military,
The Department of Veterans Affairs needs a watchdog. This is the single most important thing I have learned since joining the House Veterans Affairs Committee in January. The committee must stay vigilant because, if not, the VA will not perform up to the level the Congress expects and veterans deserve.
The United States military is the most capable and most professional fighting force the world has ever seen. At its core are our men and women in uniform, whose selfless service and sacrifice for the cause of freedom is the main reason Americans have held the military in such high regard. Time and again, they rise to the occasion to defeat and deter America’s enemies. Yet while this fi
I come from a Colorado family with a strong tradition of military service. My late father, a retired Army master sergeant, taught me that there is no higher demonstration of American citizenship than serving in the military. He grew up in poverty in Colorado during the Great Depression and like so many young people of that era he was forced to quit school.